Name: Trevor Horn
Nationality: British
Occupation: Producer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter
Current release: For his new studio album Echoes – Ancient & Modern, Trevor Horn revisited some of his favourite songs. These include compositions he originally recorded himself as well as pieces penned and produced by other artists and colleagues. The selection features classics like "Slave to the Rhythm," "Relax," and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" as well as "Personal Jesus," "Drive," and "Avalon" – brought to life by vocalists like Tori Amos, Seal, Marillion's H, Iggy Pop, and Andrea Corr.

The album is out December 1st 2023 via Deutsche Grammophon. There is also a blu-ray version via Super Deluxe Edition with plenty of bonus content.

If you enjoyed this Trevor Horn interview and would like to stay up to date with his releases and productions, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



In determining the success, both commercial and creative of a song, how do you see the balance between arrangement and composition?

I think they're both absolutely vital. The song is going to have to be pretty good in the first place. But then getting the right arrangement with the right instrumentation, getting the song to flow and getting it to sort of work - that's really the key to the whole thing.

I would say that one of the best arranged songs I've ever heard is “Maria” from the West Side Story.



The arrangement of that, the way one part flows into the next is absolutely brilliant, the way it changes keys and the way the lines dovetail into each other. I can't imagine that song without that arrangement.

One could be a little bit more cynical about arrangements because most of the great symphony writers would steal all of the tunes that they used, they'd be folk tunes, or they'd just nick them from somewhere. And then a symphony is basically an arrangement of those tunes. So the arrangement is really important.

In pop songs, the lyric is equally important. It is the thing that differentiates one song from another, even more than the music. I mean, if you think about the blues, nearly every blues song has the same chord sequence, give or take a few bars. It's the lyrics that make it more different. Same with early rock'n'roll. “Tutti Frutti,” or “Blue suede shoes.” The chords were more or less the same.



The way that lyrics kind of capture people's imagination at any given time … the world is in flux all the time, things are changing. I believe the world's never been as scary as it is now.

While preparing for this interview, I listened to 30 to 40 Cover versions of “Relax.” 99% of those I listened to were almost identical to the original. And the 1%, which were different were really bad. Which makes me believe that sometimes the arrangement is so integral that it can no longer be separated from the song.

The first time I heard “Relax” was on the radio. The second time I heard it, I thought, yeah, I could do something with that. When I actually started work on it, I realised that it wasn't really a song, it was more like a jingle. It already had that “Shoot it in the right direction” middle eight. But it wasn't like verse-chorus, verse-chorus.



It's true, it's a great arrangement. But that's because I've played it live quite a lot of times. And it always works perfectly with people. What we do with it, is that we kind of state the main theme - “Relax, don't do it” - and then play around with it after that. We keep doing that, but we get crazier each time. In a way, we're like jazz musicians, sort of jamming until the music hits the ultimate huge orgasm, and finishes. To get there took a bit of time.

At the time, we'd already made three versions of it. And then, you know, the three of us worked out the final record in our heads as we were kind of going along. I think it was the first time anyone ever heard something like that. People had been playing eights on the piano for years. But it doesn't sound the same if it's coming out of a sequencer.

So yes, that's a song where it would have been hard to arrange it as a solo piano thing.

It is an incredibly powerful statement of what electronic tools can add to the process. So what's the role of technology in terms of songwriting and arrangement?

Understanding what the latest technology is, and how it works is really important. When I first bought a Fairlight, I cut myself off from the world and spent three weeks learning how to work it.

The thing is, you can hire somebody to deal with the technology. With the Fairlight, too, it was very time consuming, so I handed it over to somebody. But I knew what it did. So I could say to him, Look, I'm gonna do all these backing vocals on this record, what's the longest note I can have? Which allows me to focus on a sort of philosophical way of dealing with the record. How you approach it. Knowing when it's finished, knowing what to do when you get depressed and lose heart. Getting somebody in the right frame of mind, particularly if it's a singer, or even if it's a band.

But I came to production from being a songwriter, singer. So I've always approached it much more like that - getting the song in the right shape, there are so many things to deal with in that respect. Knowing when a song is right, is, in a way is much more important.

You said you've always disliked punk and that it sounded like badly produced rock. Do you think it's that is a question of the arrangement of the songwriting, then? Or maybe both?  

Well, it depends what you call pop. I liked “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and “Come as you are” and some of Nirvana's other stuff. I couldn't listen to the music for a long time because of the fact that Kurt Cobain killed himself. I also like The Clash, “London Calling,” and “Rock the Casbah.”



But most of the time, punk bands were horrible. They were awful.

Even the Sex Pistols?

I don't believe in them. I've worked with Malcolm McLaren and I think they used session guys on those records. The guitar sound on “Pretty Vacant” is too sophisticated. It's pretty great. It's a really good sound. Malcolm told me it was Chris Spedding who played the guitar.



Actually, the original bass player in the 60s …

… Glen Matlock …

yes, he was good. I don't think Sid Vicious could play the bass to save his life. 

But there was something really great about punk in that it lowered the bar. You know, in the 70s, if you were coming to making records, you were up against Elton John. Queen. Those Queen records have never been bettered in in the same way big band music with crooners like Sinatra has never been bettered. The records that were made in the 50s sound the best, no one has managed to make those record sound as good. No one's come close to “Killer Queen.”



As a piece of record production, it has got every trick in it - the phasing, the backwards echo, the harmonies. That's what you're up against. I mean, to produce something like that! The guy that engineered it was a brilliant engineer, and the band really clever. Those records are so good.

So it was daunting, you know? Or think of those Elton John albums, or Led Zeppelin, they sounded fantastic. Suddenly, punk came along and blew all that right out of the water. Suddenly, you could think, well, fuck me, what am I worried about?

But that was not your perspective?

My thing was always to try and mix craft work with pop music. I loved craft work. I loved the idea that it was something different to Elton John, different to Queen, those big drums and all those guitars on it. That was sort of my ambition.

That's also why I love drum machines. They have such a great feel and they played repetitive things perfectly in time. The Man Machine album by Kraftwerk was like the Bible. I never heard anything like that before. It actually had a couple of great singles.



Or The Normal.



There was a whole little period where there were really exciting new records coming out in the 80s. You could feel something was changing. I guess that's what we picked up on with “Video Killed the Radio.”