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Trevor Horn webchat – post your questions now! Trevor Horn on Grace Jones, smoking with Malcolm McLaren, and why video didn't kill the radio star
(about 16 hours later)
He’s credited as the man who invented the 80s – or at least its sound, thanks to his early acquisition of a Fairlight sampler and a LinnDrum machine. Whoever else might lay claim to that title, Trevor Horn certainly predicted pop’s most visual era as half of the Buggles, with their massive 1979 hit Video Killed the Radio Star, and then capitalised on it in the decade to come. He collaborated with that great pop showman, Malcolm McLaren, cofounded the ZTT label and brought the world Frankie Goes to Hollywood, with their indelible imagery and pristine knack for controversy. Interesting questions! Made me really think. Thanks very much.
His work that decade is a murderers’ row of hits: ABC’s The Look of Love, Grace Jones’s Slave to the Rhythm, Godley & Creme’s Cry, Pet Shop Boys’ Left to My Own Devices. He might as well have been the guy who invented the 90s, too: as part of the Art of Noise from 1983, Horn pioneered the sampling technology that would change the sound and scope of hip-hop in the years to come. AlexNeedham asks:
His success continued through the 90s – Horn was behind Seal’s eponymous debut album – and into unexpected places in the early 2000s: ersatz Russian lesbians tATu’s English market debut, 200km/h in the Wrong Lane, contains three Horn productions, and is an underrated millennium-era classic. Slave to the Rhythm is a classic. What was Grace Jones like to work with, would you ever make another record with her, and whose idea was it to have an album that was one song done eight ways?
For better or worse (probably for better, to be fair), Lena Katina and Julia Volkova don’t appear on Horn’s most recent album, Trevor Horn Reimagines the Eighties, which employs Robbie Williams, Gabrielle Aplin, All Saints and Seal, among others, to do, well, exactly what it says on the tin. That’s the album Horn is touring this month – starting at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on 27 July – and the occasion for his visit to Guardian HQ, where he will be taking your questions from 12 noon BST on Tuesday 23 July. Post your enquiries below! Grace was great. Working with her's always good. Getting her to the studio was tough! But once we got her there, she was wonderful. Slave to the Rhythm, we really sprung it on her. She'd done a totally different version of it with us, the first session, but then we got her in in New York and it was totally different. She was like, "I see what you've done, I can feel it!" It was the end of a long day of work, she sang it sitting down. I'd work with her again like a shot.
BillyBudd asks:
What are your thoughts on the production of ABC’s Beauty Stab (their follow up to Lexicon) and how different would it have sounded if you had produced it?
That's a leading question because it was produced by my engineer, Gary. I liked the production on Beauty Stab. If Beauty Stab wasn't as successful as Lexicon of Love, it was still a solidly respectable second album and there was nothing wrong with the production. If it didn't sell as many, that would be for a lot of reasons, not necessarily to do with the production. I think it would have sounded quite similar if I had done it.
Xoxarle asks:
Do you regret circumstances preventing you from having a crack at Propaganda’s A Secret Wish, a ZTT highpoint, and how different would it have sounded if you and not Steve Lipson had manned the mixing desk?
I think Steve did a great job of that record. I think that if I'd have done it, I don't know if it would have been more orchestral. Do you know, I never think these thoughts, really. The Propaganda album, if you listen to Michael Jackson's Bad album, you hear a lot of the inspiration on that come from what Steve did on Secret Wish.
GregRandall asks:
Are you still in touch with Paul Morley and how much did he contribute to the mid 80s ZZT image? It was his album sleeve texts, especially on Into Battle With the Art of Noise and Propaganda’s Secret Wish that turned me on to “art”. Regards.
I still talk to him sometimes!
DWFan1 asks:
What’s your favourite Pixar film?
I liked The Incredibles.
chrisgriff asks:
What happened with Lee Griffiths? He was tipped for wonderful things in the late 90s, then he was supposed to have an album produced by you. But he disappeared.
I produced his album. At the time, no one was interested. I still think he's a brilliant singer and a really good writer. I don't think he's disappeared, I think he's still playing.
AlexNorris asks:
You produced two of the best pop singles of the 2000s in t.A.T.u.’s All the Things She Said and Not Gonna Get Us – how did you end up getting involved with the group and how did you find working with Yulia and Lena?
I went to see Jimmy Iovine in America to see if there was anybody that needed a producer. After the meeting, the head of marketing called me into a side room and played me Not Gonna Get Us, the Russian version, and All the Things She Said (the Russian version). He said they wanted to see if they could cross it over. He asked me if I'd remake two tracks for them. I was intrigued by the idea but they obviously tried a couple of people after that, before me. A couple of DJs remixing them, but it didn't work. I don't think they had much money. Interestingly enough, I thought when they offered it to me, I thought I was gonna get the multitrack from the Russian version but they wouldn't give it to me, so I had to completely remake the record. Writing the lyric for that song was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. It took me a long time to figure it out. I had a translation of the Russian lyric, and it was like, "yes I'm mad! I am on fire for her!" I didn't have a clue. And I also knew they couldn't sing English very well. So I tried to write the lyric as if it was a translation of something. "I'm in serious shit, I feel totally lost" - and it worked! Not immediately - we spent two weeks working on their voices on that track. And there was no budget so I had to play all the instruments myself. My late wife said, you had all these bloody guitars, time to put them to use! I ended up quite enjoying it really. Sometimes records come out well, sometimes they don't, but that one did. There was one point where we gave up for a day - we thought, we've blown it. I remember having a day off then going back to the Russian version and thinking, I've made a mistake somewhere. I found the way that the Russian version repeated certain words was really clever, so I changed mine the same way - "running through my head, running through my head". By then, the girls had gone back to Russia. But luckily we got the first access to some software that allowed us to change the pitch of their voices.
Not Gonna Get Us - I had to write the Russian lyrics out phonetically. It's difficult, man, it really is tricky. I have to be honest, when I finished it, a guy said to me, what do you think? And I said, if you listen past the first chorus, it's a really good record. I was being my normal doom-laden self. I forgot about it then got a call and said it's No 1. Then we sold 7, 8m albums really fast.
They were nice girls. We got on really well. They both could play the piano quite brilliantly. It made me think in a lot of ways, the Russians have a lot of culture that we don't have. The Russian guy was awful, I didn't like the manager. He said, "I've got two girls, trying to get them to sing in English" – that's not a situation where you're going to start being rough with people, but he would say to me, "you're too kind, you're too gentle". I was like, if you think you can do better... You'd do an hour, have a break, do another hour - he said, "you need to push!" I said, "go ahead if you want". He went in, within five minutes, both of them were crying. So I kicked him out. There's no shortcut, you can't bully people. So I didn't like him. But I liked the girls. They were both bumming cigarettes off me. They were 18, the manager didn't want them to be seen smoking. They were my daughters' age. Nice girls.
The lesbian thing, they told me, we're not really "career lesbians". But it wasn't of any interest to me. I wrote the lyric of the song, the whole thing about "all the things she said", the original Russian one, was about two girls that had a crush on each other and didn't know whether they wanted to act on it. So I wrote it like that. That's what it was about.
I tell you what was amazing, was when Russia hosted Eurovision - they played an acoustic version of Not Gonna Get Us singing in English lyrics. That was amazing, fuck me. This is their thing and they're singing my words.
25aubrey asks:
Just looking at the album cover of English Garden, which incidentally is still in perfect condition after 40 years, and what I’d like to ask is, which palm house was it shot in? I may be wrong here, but was it in Sefton Park, Liverpool?
You're asking the wrong person!
Saf45K asks:
Were you aware how influential Art of Noise’s track Beatbox was in hip-hop, and what can you tell us about Anne Dudley’s wonderful piano outro?
I coined the term "beatbox", and yes I was aware because I met Afrika Bambaata in 1981, 1982 in New York and had a long conversation with him. He told me his favourite band at the time was the Guess Who, because they turned into Bachman Turner Overdrive. They had that big tune, American Woman. And when he told me that was his favourite band – it didn't strike me as the kind of band he would like. He said, "I don't like the songs but I have a live album and the drum breaks are great." So I thought, of course – when I heard the drum beat for Beatbox, I knew that Afrika would love it. So yes, I was aware.
Anne Dudley – Anne is an absolutely brilliant piano player. I used to say to her, "Play some piano", and that's probably exactly what she did.
Buzzaboom asks:
Did you realise that Art of Noise were so ground breaking at the time? I can’t imagine many people being in a studio and thinking ‘this literally hasn’t existed before’.
Yes, I did think that AON were wildly groundbreaking at the time because I could see what people around me were trying to do with the same bits and pieces, only I had a great big box load of them because I'd been around the world with Malcolm McLaren, so I had samples from Nashville, Cuba, South Africa.
Brian Capaloff asks:
I can recall getting a front row seat for Yes many years ago, at the Rainbow, with Geoff Downes and you having just taken over the vocal and keyboard reins. How did that period feel for you, bearing in mind the nature of the audience and the music, which was vastly different from Video Killed the Radio Star (a rendition of which was given at the gig!).
I remember the Rainbow, that was Finsbury Park, wasn't it? I remember that show. My mother-in-law, who's still alive, and is 96, came to that concert. She was obviously a lot younger then. She's a big Nat King Cole fan. So I said, being silly, "Here's a song for my mother-in-law, special request, we're going to play a Nat King Cole medley – Starship Trooper!" That period – I just did my best.
Saf45K asks:
Whose idea was it to release remixes of FGTH’s Two Tribe? Were you surprised it was at No 1 for 9 weeks? How did you spend the cash?
The record label! We'd done so well with 12-ins of Relax that I felt that the 12-in of Two Tribes was almost more important than the single. And I only actually delivered Two Tribes when I mixed the first 12-in because then I felt confident that we had something worthwhile to put out. I wasn't surprised that it went to No 1, but I wasn't expecting it to be there for nine weeks. Cash – it doesn't work like that. I probably owed the bank millions and the royalties don't come through for a few years. There was no big cash spend. People get this idea that you get loads of money – they don't know what it takes to get yourself there.
concerndium asks:
You were groundbreaking with your use of samplers, but synth-wise, what direction do you lean, East or West coast?
West coast!
Stevewebster60 asks:
What was it like to work with Lol Creme of 10cc. Is he as talented as I think he is?
Yes, he is. Lol's a brilliant painter. I have lots of his pictures in my house. He's a lovely guitar player. I've always liked working with Lol, ever since we met back in... god knows when. 1983? If you listen back to some of those 10cc records, they all worked on the production, but Lol had the idea for how they did I'm Not in Love, and in the late 70s that was my holy grail of record production.
jimble675 asks:
What was the inspiration behind the “Love, coupled with a minced pie” lyric as spoken by Arnold Rimmer on War off of Welcome to the Pleasuredome? Ever since, I’ve always thought the world’s problems could be solved with mince pies, but, to be frank, the lack of a more liquid-based accompaniment to this vision of Xanadu has left me scratching my head...
I'm afraid you've got that wrong – it's "love, coupled with immense pride". It sounds so funny because it's Ronald Reagan saying it. What was the inspiration behind that? I think you might find a lot of that stuff that was on War was basically stuff that Paul Morley gave me. When I went in to do the 12-in I said I needed some spoken word stuff. I always used to get professional actors to say the lyrics. All that stuff on War, I discovered afterwards, was from Mein Kampf. Which shocked me a bit! But Paul was always doing that kind of thing. I said, "Man, I don't know if I agree with it, where's it from?!"