RELAX ... Frankie’s back
As one of the biggest albums of the 80s is re-released. MARION McMULLEN catches up with the hit-maker behind many of the decade’s iconic sounds
DO YOU know what ABC, Grace Jones and Frankie Goes To Hollywood all have in common?
The answer is multitalented music producer Trevor Horn. He was behind some of the biggest hits of the 1980s and the first music video to ever be played on MTV in 1981 was Video Killed The Radio Star – the song he recorded as part of Buggles.
He was also a founding member of The Art Of Noise, worked with rock group Yes and produced ABC’s hit album The Lexicon Of Love, songs such as Hand Held In Black And White for singing duo Dollar and the Grace Jones hit Slave To The Rhythm.
Trevor’s music was the soundtrack of the decade and he helped bring sex, love and nuclear war to the charts with Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s debut 1984 double album Welcome To The Pleasuredome. The must-have fashion item of the time was a Frankie Says Relax T-shirt and everyone was counting down to the release of the band’s first album.
“It was a very interesting period of time,” remembers Trevor with a smile. “We were working in the studio from January onwards doing the album. It seemed like we didn’t have enough material at the start. Two Tribes and Relax were so big and it felt weird putting them on the album with just a few other tracks.
“The album was always going to be called Welcome To The Pleasuredome, but when we started the album the track was three-and-ahalf minutes long and by the time it was finished it was one whole side of the album.”
Trevor says they embraced new technology that had never been available before and created a distinctive sound of pop, funk and disco.
“The band really started to come together on that record,” he says. “They played Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run on one track and practised for days. They wanted it to be perfect. I would normally work from late morning until two or three the following morning but, you know, if you get on a roll you just keep going – I did take weekends off though.”
The double album was recorded with engineer Steve Lipson at the Sarm West Studios in West London – where Band Aid also recorded charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas in the same year.
“It was a lovely time,” says 68-yearold Trevor. “Sarm West, where we did everything, is just off Portobello Road and we would have Pet Shop Boys in one studio and George Michael in another. George practically lived in Studio Two. There was a real vibe about the whole place and at night you had 15 or 20 regulars who would just come in and George would be wandering about the corridors.
“With Relax we had to do the song pretty quickly – three or four days in the end. We worked on different versions but, when we got it, it was exciting. When we came to work on the album, Two Tribes and Relax were both still in the top 20 and to follow up such big records was really hard. You know if you get it wrong people lose interest.”
Welcome To The Pleasuredome was released on October 29, 1984, and went straight to number one in the UK album chart with advance orders of one million sales alone. The album track The Power Of Love became the band’s third number one single. The groundbreaking record has now been re-released as part of BMG’s Art Of The Album series as a deluxe edition, pictured above.
Trevor says: “Listening to it now it is an amazing record. It used technology that does not exist now, well, it does but people don’t really use it, and it is an amazing sound.”
Music has always played a big part of Trevor’s life. “I played bass in the youth orchestra. My dad was a bass player, so I played bass and then I played bass guitar. I was 15 or 16 and I played just about everywhere.
“There was only me and a bass player in Leicester who could read music and play bass guitar. I stopped trying to work in the normal world at 16 and became a professional musician. I was working every night and during the day doing various sessions for people and working on TV. If you can sight read music you can work. You can show up and play and if you were working for dance bands you had to read music.”
Trevor worked as a session musician until he was 30 when Buggles came along and since then he has worked with many of the top names in music from Robbie Williams and Seal to Tom Jones and Paul McCartney. He says he always feels at home in the recording studio.
“I’ve worked with a lot of people that’s for sure,” he laughs, “there’s so many I forget sometimes. It’s about helping people to get what they want on a record and helping them achieve what they want to achieve.
“A studio is a wonderful place if you like music. It’s soundproofed, locked away, and you are working so people can’t disturb you.
“I was walking through Bel Air Hotel six months ago and the Art Of Noise song Moments In Love was blasting out by the side of the pool and I remember thinking that was cool.
“I’ve heard the music I’ve done all over the place. It’s an amazing thing to make a record and it goes out and loads of people hear it. In the studio you are the first people to here it and then it goes off and it’s comes to life. When you get it right, it’s exciting.
“I have heard my stuff all over the place, in the weirdest places, and it’s a thrill. I remember hearing Living In The Plastic Age in east Jerusalem.”
Trevor says the music business has changed completely since the days of Welcome To The Pleasuredome. “We had TV shows who played solo artists and records and there is nothing like that now. There’s Jools (Holland), God bless him, but Top Of The Pops had a massive audience back then and really helped the whole British music scene. But you can’t bring it back. It wouldn’t be the same. You can’t go back.”
Trevor performs with his ninepiece band of seven musicians and two singers.
He adds: “I went to see Grace Jones at the Hollywood Bowl a couple of years back when she was touring. She must have been through most of the first set before I realised that she was naked from the waist up because she was strangely painted.
“I didn’t want to lag behind at the end and get caught in the crowds and I was leaving when she started singing the last song Slave To The Rhythm. It made me pause and I stopped and listened and it sounded great.”
THE Art Of The Album special edition of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Welcome To The Pleasuredome is out now via BMG.