Work To The Rhythm

"I always try to put two things together that don't normally fit," says Trevor Horn by way of trying to sum up a hugely diverse career as producer, musician and songwriter. That would explain the latest release to bear his name, which sees a number of curious marriages of artists and repertoire on a new album of covers.
Who else would commission Toyah Willcox and her prog-aristocrat husband Robert Fripp to tackle Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Relax? Or persuade Rick Astley to take on Yes's 1980s prog-pop chartbuster, Owner Of A Lonely Heart? Elsewhere, Steve Hogarth offers his reading of The Cars' haunting, Live Aid-associated lament Drive, alongside numerous other curious match-ups.
It's a convenient jumping-off point from which to discuss a career that has been reliably unpredictable. He may be best-known to most as the producer who helped define the 80s with a string of ingeniously engineered pop releases - while wearing none-more-80s hornrimmed specs - but he also played a notable cameo role in the history of prog as singer, then producer, of Yes.
The now 74-year-old Horn's new project is Echoes - Ancient & Modern, something of a follow-up to his 2019 set Trevor Horn Reimagines The Eighties, which also featured Hogarth among the line-up and also included a take on Owner..., on that occasion with Horn on the mic. The impetus behind it was Deutsche Grammophon.
"We were talking about doing an acoustic record," Horn explains. "But then I thought, there's plenty of other people that can make boring acoustic records, and I don't need to join them.
So I went back to do what I normally do, and although quite a few of the songs start out quite sparse, they then build up into something else." A case in point being his bossa novatinged reimagining of Joe Jackson's jazz-inflected 1982 synthpop hit Steppin' Out, with Horn's old protégé Seal fronting a less urgent affair than the original. "The original is very fast," Horn says. "A bit like: 'You've just done a line of blow and you're going out in New York.' This new version is more like: 'You just took some magic mushrooms and are going out in LA."" More radical overhauls ensue, such as Tori Amos's repurposing of Kendrick Lamar's Swimming Pools and Lady Blackbird's loungey torch-song interpretation of Grace Jones's Slave To The Rhythm. But it's Toyah and Fripp's camp strut through Relax that's probably the most startling moment, the result of Horn's approach of 'if it ain't broke, fix it anyway and see what happens'. "At least it's different, you know?" he says. "And I love Fripp's guitar solo on it." As a long-time Yes fan, was he also a Crimson devotee in his formative years? "I really liked In The Court Of The Crimson King, and I liked Starless And Bible Black and Red, I bought both of those. Then, probably like a lot of people, I lost track of them for a while.
But then I saw them a couple of years ago and I'd never heard such expertly orchestrated chaos in my life! "I've got a lot of respect for Robert Fripp," he adds, "because when he goes out on the road with his band, he really looks after them. And that's quite a rarity for artists to be so considerate to their musicians." And there we were, imagining Fripp to be a schoolmasterly presence conducting his charges with ruthless precision, the prog answer to James Brown, rapping his band's knuckles for the slightest hint of a bum note...
Horn grins. "You're confusing him with Roger Waters." OK, then. The storied producer's appreciation of Steve Hogarth, who fronts Drive on this album and tackled Joe Jackson's It's Different For Girls on Trevor Horn Reimagines The Eighties, has been a recent development.
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"My girlfriend's a big Marillion fan, and I've grown to like them too," he reveals. "I'm kind of a connoisseur of voices and I think Steve's got a great one. He's also a lovely fella. I think one of the reasons Marillion are still going is because of him."
The presence of Owner Of A Lonely Heart on both those albums is a reflection of its prominent place on Horn's CV. The version of the track sung by Rick Astley is a relatively faithful rendition of the song, but the original was a masterpiece of progressive pop, even if its birth was a traumatic one to say the least.
By that time, though, Horn had earned the respect of the band, after having previously been a full member - frontman, in fact, for a faintly surreal spell. After he and Geoff Downes shot to brief fame as the Buggles via their deathless 1979 chart-topper Video Killed The Radio Star, the manager they shared with Yes, Brian Lane, had the startling idea of the pair replacing Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman in the band after the latter two had walked out during early studio sessions for Drama in March 1980.
As it turned out, it was something of a youthful dream come true. A bass player by trade, Horn had long been in awe of Chris Squire in particular.
"I thought he came up with more original bass lines than any other player. The first time I met him was pretty memorable. He was so big, like 6'5" or something. And he had a way of talking, kiiiind of liiike thiiis... and I thought, 'Oh my God! Is he thick?' Of course, I was totally wrong. It was just a way he had of disarming people."
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Although the newcomer held his own creatively in the band, he always felt daunted by stepping up to the same mic as his predecessor. "Jon Anderson's a hell of a singer, you know? He must have a range beyond mine in terms of being able to get up there [into the higher registers]. Still, it was one of the great experiences of my life. And what a moment, being in a rehearsal room and listening to Alan White, Chris Squire and Steve Howe play close up.
I never heard anything like it. I mean, the intensity of it..." Contrary to some accounts (Rick Wakeman once quoted Chris Squire as having told him it was "an absolute nightmare from start to finish" due to their fans' adverse reactions), Horn doesn't remember receiving much flak.
"I think people were reasonably accepting. I think they understood that I was the price that they had to pay, you know, to hear the band they loved.
So they put up with me. I mean, they're a pretty civilised lot, Yes fans. It's not like you're joining the Sex Pistols!" Yes splintered further after the tour, with Downes and Howe leaving to form Asia. Meanwhile, Horn met the increasing demand for his services as an innovative producer, helping to sculpt post-modern pop par excellence with Dollar and ABC while also mentoring ...