Revealed. Research done by Wouter Weyland. Last changed April 13 2001.
Revealed - The First Endeavours As A Producer
By Wouter Weyland
"There is a 1979 single by Dusty Springfield called "Baby Blue", written by
Downes/Horn/Woolley. It is not produced by Trevor Horn, nor arranged. It's available as 12"
version on her compilation 2cd "something special". I got a reply from Andy,
a webmaster for www.dustyspringfield.co.uk giving me some details. It
was written especially for Dusty according to him, and the odd thing was
that the 12" version was made before the 7". Though still I assume that
there may be more artists with this song. There are quite a lot of them. I
traced like 80 artists of which perhaps 15 still stand a chance of having
this song."
"I was spending the whole weekend surfing for new old info on Trevor Horn in
my determination to clear the mist around the pre-Buggles era. I mailed
Shakatak's female singer, who forwarded it to Roger Odell, who used to gig
with Trevor Horn. I received one mail back about mostly his part of the
cooperation with Trevor Horn.
Visit his bio for some great new details from
the past, though not anything still existing on record."
"Some other old news about failed recordings, mostly from interviews, some also by hearsay"
In 1981 Amanda Lear went into the studio to record an album more of her
taste, in a rock style, but the record company turned it down and the
material was never released.
Wendy & Lisa who were urging Horn to hurry with the record before it takes 6 to 7 years, cited one of his expressions as perfectionist:
Trevor would come back and say (putting on a heavy English accent) "You know
this song here, right? It's not working.Not reeeally." So we were always going
back, re-working songs. They made 25 songs 7 of which Wendy & Lisa thought
were really good, until losing character being processed in the Pro-tools
and other stuff.
Get the whole interview here.
Billy McKenzie (who also sang many songs for Swiss band Yello - ed. note) recorded a song with Trevor Horn in 1988, but Billy was not
content about it and it was not released. In a press folder cited to me by
another ZTT fan I regretfully lost contact with by delaying writing to him,
it was read that Billy McKenzie would be a new ZTT act "the best white male
singer in the world". When I phoned ZTT, still in 1988 but months after the
press folder, a spokesman told me that there was only talked about. (McKenzie also worked on various, never released
projects with Dave Steward around that time)
Godley & Creme had very concrete plans shooting a movie (of sort/format/size unknown) about the outlaw
John Wesley Harding, called "Howling at the moon", the soundtrack of which
would be done by Robbie Robertson and Trevor Horn. Does anyone have more on this?
(Some additional info can be found here.
Their History Mix apart from Cry, is very probably not at all the work of
Trevor Horn, according to Godly & Creme themselves. He only did Cry with them. They
credited some completely different persons, even not JJ Jeczkalik that much.
Martin Fry said that Trevor Horn would not mess with perfection. He would
not remix The Look of Love. So whose are the mixes? Not Trevor's anyway
(fortunately, for I think they are disgusting). The credits on the album are
so general that one might think that the production credits fit all tracks,
like the single Hand Held in Black And White/Heartbeat or Godley& Creme's album.
In 1989 or 1990, Trevor Horn would produce a band called "Killer Dogs", by
his contact with guitar player Billy Liesegang. They started recording, but
Trevor Horn wanted the hardrock voice singer replaced by John Wetton. The
project did not make it at a certain stage to CD.
In 1988 (same press folder as mentioned earlier) Trevor Horn and Paul
Morley would make a new studio project like Art Of Noise, called "Machete",
a joint venture of different artists around a basic line-up.
Hans Zimmer did a keyboard session for Video Killed the Radio Star and he
is the thi3d buggle in the videoclip. Before the session, he was working for
a company called "Air Edel", making jingles and such like. (Trevor did that
too, but not for the same company as Zimmer. In another interview, with Geoff Downes, I read that Trevor Horn and
Geoff Downes did a lot of recordings together, anything, for anyone who
offered the money. (For more on that you should check out this ASIA link.
In 1987 there was a song by Viva Voce on the radio sometimes, and the radio
DJ circuit as well as the Wisseloord studios are based in the same region.
The rumour went that their 7" India was probably secretly produced by Trevor
Horn. I must admit that its sound is like early Simple Minds but more
massive. The tempo is rather slow, but when you listen back to Art of Noise,
it's also slow compared to nowadays Techno. I phoned the singer, also about
1988, and he told me that they were in the Wisseloord studios at the same
time as FGTH, and that they sometimes had contact with the band and Trevor
Horn and Steve Lipson, but that it came down basically on exchanging some
influences. Anyway it is the single that stands far out of the other stuff
they made, (even though I only heard a couple of other singles, and don't want to judge all their music). It never made it to the charts though."
Unveiled - The Very First Single?
Thanks to Timothy Schoonover of the Buggles mailing list, we can add the
following:
Gardner and Boult-7" Hollywood (Toby Records 1979)
a) Hollywood (F.Gardner/J.Boult) prod. Trevor Horn, mix/exec.Ral Lofting
b) Nite After Nite (F.Gardner/J.Boult) prod. Trevor Horn, exec. Ral Lofting
Big A - 7" promo Fly On UFO, with text flyer.
a) Fly On Ufo
b) Ofu No Ylf (with backward voice mixed into the song, with more text than
the official version)
And some further research by Wouter produced:
12" Gardner And Boult-Magic Eyes (Gem Toby Records 1979, Gem12 16D) promo
Formidable Music/Heath Levy Music Co
a) Magic Eyes (F.Gardner/J.Boult) prod. Trevor Horn, exec./mix Ral Lofting
b) Always One Love Behind (F.Gardner/J.Boult) prod. Trevor Horn, exec.Ral
Lofting
7" Boogatti - Come Back Marianne (Polydor 1977) 2040 175
a) Come Back Marianne (Bruce Woolley/Rod Thompson) prod. Peter Janssen
Discoton/Everblue Music
b) Boot Boot Woman (Trevor Horn) prod. Peter Janssen
Pingo/Everblue Music
Wouter's comment after listening:
"Well it's hard to describe the songs. Gardner and Boult varies from Disco
(Magic Eyes) to carpenters like (Hollywood). Hollywood is quite inaccessible
at first hearing, but it starts to nestle under your skin soon! Welcome! And
there are nice string machines again on most of the songs. Some are a far
cry from the later Trevor Horn, but all of them have their beautiful moments
for sure."
The Trevor Horn Worship Hall - trevorhorn.net.
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Copyright © 1995-2005 Christoph Roeckerath, Germany.
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