Adventures in Modern Recording Quotes

“I knew whatever they sang, it would sound like a translation because of their accents, so I wanted to keep it a bit formal. After several goes, I eventually came up with the lines, ‘I’m in serious shit, I feel totally lost / If I’m asking for help, it’s only because / Being with you has opened my eyes, could I ever believe such a perfect surprise? / I keep asking myself wondering how / I keep closing my eyes but I can’t block you out / Want to find a place where it’s just you and me / Nobody else so we can be free’. And that was it. I had the beginnings of the lyric, after which, and much to my relief, the rest of the song came. For some reason the Beatles’ song ‘Things We Said Today’ popped into my head. I changed it to ‘All the Things She Said’ and I had the chorus.”
― Trevor Horn, Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT

“Quincy was producing Michael Jackson at the time and said he liked Propaganda so much, he wanted them on his label in the US. So I know that Quincy Jones was listening to Propaganda, and I’m positive you can hear its influence on ‘Bad’.”
― Trevor Horn, Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT

“We had a good gag in the middle of the song where the lyric talks about ‘being left out on the pavement,’ and a girl’s voice says, ‘Goodbye.’ The girl we used for that is the actual girl who’d dumped Martin and caused him all the heartache that inspired the album. The words Martin came up with for the end of the song were ‘And all my friends just might ask me. They say, “Martin, maybe one day you’ll find true love,”’ which I thought worked well, and we capped it off by a block of vocals at the end, during which you can hear me singing, ‘Be lucky in love.”
― Trevor Horn, Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT

“One evening, Jill sat me down in front of Top of the Pops, during which the Sheffield band ABC appeared, singing ‘Tears Are Not Enough’ (or ‘Tears of Noddy Nuff’ as we later called it). ‘This is who you should produce next, they’re perfect for you,’ she told me.”
― Trevor Horn, Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT

“Drum machines were exciting. Mellotrons were exciting, but the Fairlight was on another level.”
― Trevor Horn, Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT

“The nascent synth-poppers probably didn’t know it yet, but they were waiting for a bit of kit called a Fairlight CMI, the first digital sampler. Not that they could have afforded one. In 1982, a Fairlight would set you back at least £18,000. It always makes me laugh when people say things like, ‘Back when £18,000 was a lot of money.’ It still is. Who’s going to turn their nose up at £18,000? The thing is that in 1982, £18,000 was an enormous amount of money – it would buy you a house.”
― Trevor Horn, Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT

“At some point Hans Zimmer came on board. This is the same Hans Zimmer who later went on to compose soundtracks for Gladiator, The Lion King, Inception, etc., but back then was a 23-year-old budding keyboard genius who came with his very own Prophet-5, which was a five-note polyphonic keyboard. The Prophet-5 was something of a revelation. Prior to that we’d been using our old Polymoog synth, which as well as being a bit temperamental, lacked the ability to ‘remember’ sounds. The Prophet-5 allowed you to program a sound and then save it to patch memory, meaning you could recall your programmed sound at the touch of a button.”
― Trevor Horn, Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT

“Hans was charming, good fun to be around, and an excellent programmer. Gradually he became part of the band and his Prophet-5 was integral to the sound that we came up with.”
― Trevor Horn, Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT