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Trevor Horn, C.B.E.
Trevor Charles
Horn was born on 15th July 1949 in Durham, England. He became a bass
player at school and was a member of a youth orchestra at Johnston
Grammar playing in a selection of school bands after being inspired by
his father who played double bass with the Joe Clark Band.
After leaving
school Trevor moved to Leicester and began working as a professional
musician performing in the local ballrooms while building a home studio.
Using his equipment, he began to show a talent for constructing
records. This ability would lead him on his way to becoming a musical
director & record producer, starting out producing jingles and
unsuccessful records including work with some punk bands. His first
claim to fame was being musical director for Tina Charles as well as
being her bass player on her number one hit I Love To Love (But My Baby Loves To Dance) and her the follow up singles
Teaming up with
her keyboard player Geoffrey Downes and guitarist Bruce Woolley the trio
formed The Buggles in 1977. They started off writing and recording
rough demos of songs, in between Trevor producing for Chromium, The
Killers, Lips as well as Gardner & Boult. After the Buggles were
turned down by various record labels in 1978 their big break came in
1979 when Chris Blackwell signed them to Island Records. By this stage
the Buggles were just Trevor and Downes after Wolley had left to pursue
his solo career. The two men recorded their first and only number one
hit single, Video Killed The Radio Star. After that they continued to come up with songs for their debut album The Age Of Plastic,
released in early 1980. The Buggles were on a sharp decline and the
project was abandoned when the two men joined the group Yes. Trevor
became their new vocalist on their album Drama followed up by a
tour before he and Downes left to record a second Buggles album. During
the making of the album Downes left to form the group Asia. Trevor
continued with the album as a solo project with collaborations from
other musicians. After the album Adventures In Modern Recording
failed to chart, and on the advice of his wife & manager Jill
Sinclair, Trevor concentrated on becoming a serious record producer
rather than a performer.
Trevor began to produce for the likes of Dollar, Spandau Ballet, Philip Jap, before making a real impact as a producer on ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love.
By this stage he had gained a production team including Anne Dudley,
Louis Jardim, JJ Jeczalik, Bob Kraushaar, Steve Lipson, Andy Richards
and his right hand man, engineer Gary Langan. The next big project for
the producer was Malcolm McLaren’s influential Duck Rock album before returning to Yes as a producer.
During
this time Trevor was setting up his record label, ZTT with his wife and
ex-NME journalist Paul Morley. He & his wife had already set up a
publishing company called Perfect Songs Ltd. in 1982 along with his own
production company Trevor Horn Productions. A label was the next logical
step for his activities, although they had no acts to sign until Langan
played Trevor a cassette of what he & Jeczalik had came up with.
Trevor soon became part of the Art of Noise along with Dudley &
Morley and launched ZTT with that group.
The second act
signed to ZTT was Frankie Goes To Hollywood and by producing them made
Trevor a household name. From 1983 onwards whatever Trevor produced
became a hit earning him no less than three BPI Brit Awards for Best
British Producer (1983, 1985, 1992). His work with that band resulted in
three number one hit singles: Relax; Two Tribes and The Power Of Love along with a number one album Welcome To The Pleasure Dome
all in 1984. In that same year he also produced for ZTT’s third act,
Propaganda as well as letting Midge Ure & Bob Geldof use his SARM
recording studio (that he had purchased from Chris Blackwell) free of
charge to record the infamous charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas? by Band Aid with Trevor mixing the 12” version.
In 1985 Trevor went onto produce Godley & Creme’s Cry and the Grace Jones album Slave To The Rhythm.
After 18 months of chart success with his Zang Tuum Tumb label, the
three
main acts began to leave. Art of Noise were first in 1985, followed by
Propaganda in 1986 and then Frankie Goes To Hollywood a year later. This
left the pioneering label without a big
name act and ZTT’s chart domination was over.
Trevor
bounced back producing Pet Shop Boys, Simple Minds and Paul McCartney
before signing new acts to his label including 808 State and Seal where
ZTT started to have big hits once again. The collaboration with Trevor
& Seal went onto become a long term partnership and saw the producer
win a 1995 Grammy Award for Record Producer Of The Year for the hit Kiss From A Rose.
Throughout the
1990s ZTT signed more diverse acts to it’s repertoire including MC
Tunes, Shades of Rhythm along with Trevor producing other signed acts
including Shane McGowan, Lomax, Tom Jones and the late Kirsty MacColl to
name but a few. As the decade rolled on he would continue producing
non-ZTT acts including Rod Stewart, Mike Oldfield, Marc Almond, Betsy
Cook, Tina Turner, Richard Marx, Gary Barlow and Genesis as well as
scoring the music for the film Toys with composer Hans Zimmer.
In the final
couple of years of that decade Trevor began working with Dudley &
Morley, the result was partially reformed Art of Noise with the
involvement of Lol Creme. The result was the concept album The Seduction Of Claude Debussy
based upon the music of his favourite composer. The album was released
in 1999 and was followed by a tour in 1999/2000 before disbanding.
The
new millennium has seen Trevor work with Lisa Stansfield, t.A.T.u.,
Belle & Sebastian, Captain, Leann Rimes, Faith Hill and Elton John.
In 2004 Trevor took to the stage with the Buggles, Art of Noise and
various acts he had produced since 1979 ending with a reformed Frankie
Goes To Hollywood for the Prince’s Trust Concert – Produced By Trevor
Horn in the presence of H.R.H. Prince Charles. To tie-in with the event
ZTT released a double CD entitled Produced By Trevor Horn featuring 25 years of hits as a record producer. The concert was released on DVD as Slaves To The Rhythm
in 2008 featuring behind the scenes footage and interviews. 2006 saw
Trevor contribute towards the making of the Art of Noise archive box setAnd What Have You Done With My Body, God? Later that year saw
the producer form yet another band, this time with Creme, Steve Lipson,
Chris Braide and Ash Soan called The Producers. This new group has
played several live shows over the years and released their debut singleBarking Up The Wrong Tree in August 2007 before releasing their long awaited album Made In Basing Street in 2012 issued on Trevor's new ZTT offshoot label The Last Label.
2008 saw the 25th
anniversary of ZTT and the release a box set containing the best of the
label’s back catalogue that was released in October of that year. The
last quarter of a century has seen a wide range of other artists signed
to the label including: Act, Andrew Poppy, Adamski’s Thing, David’s
Daughters, David Jordan, Glenn Gregory & Claudia Brucken, All Saints
1.9.7.5., Honky, Lisa Stansfield, Lee Griffiths, Raging Speedhorn, The
Frames, The Flood and The Marbles. Earlier in 2008 Trevor and Langan
recorded material for Escala’s debut album before playing with ABC at
the Royal Albert Hall performing their classic album The Lexicon Of Love in 2009.
In 2010 Trevor was awarded the PRS for Music Outstanding Contribution to British Music Award at the 55th Ivor Novello Awards, following on from his Sound Fellowship Award
at the third annual APRS Sound Fellowship Lunch in 2009 before being
appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in
the 2011 New Year Honours for services to the music industry.
A
special concert was staged for a one-off reformation of the Buggles in
October 2011 following on from 2010's charity gig with special guests
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Alison Moyet, Richard O' Brien and
former Propaganda vocalist Claudia Brücken that raised money for the
Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. Trevor continues to play live gigs
with The Producers as well as taking time out from his busy production
schedule to give lectures. In late 2013, Trevor reunited with Jeczalik
when they took part in the making of a new television pilot that
discussed how they, along with Lipson and Andy Richards created the
infamous number one single, Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
With over 34 years of producing hits behind
him, Trevor remains one of the world's biggest and most sort after
producers with his skills in demand.
© Copyright K.M. Whitehouse 2008, 2013
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This website © Copyright K.M. Whitehouse 2008 - 2022
The content in this website is copyright of the curator, K.M. Whitehouse,
all other images, quoted reviews are copyright of the respective copyright holders.
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