Eighties record producer and musician Trevor Horn did an end of year tour with his band plus guests performing songs from over more than 40 years of his label, ZTT records, and the vast roster of artists signed to it as well as his own band the Buggles.
The set included hit singles by these artists such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Two Tribes’, played with Horn’s 5-stringed funky basslines, and his own 1979 chart topper ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’, which was number one in 15 countries and saw him sing in his soft, high vocals alongside choppy piano keys, with him joking they had played it early on in the set as opposed to at the end.
There were technical issues throughout the show so the band did the set list in a different order, skipping ahead to 10cc cover, ‘The Dean and I’, sung by Lol Creme (guitar, keyboard, backing vocals) and 2000’s LeAnn Rimes’ ‘Can’t Fight the Moonlight’. Horn performed another Buggles cover, ‘Living in the Plastic Age’, before introducing the Russian number one that he produced back in 2002, ‘All the Things She Said’ by T.A.T.u, which was sung by his two female backing singers. A cover version of 10cc’s ‘I’m Not in Love’, sung beautifully by Jakko Jakszyk (guitar, vocals) of King Crimson, was unfortunately instrumentally flat.
They played another Buggles song in the main set, the jangly ‘Elstree’ from 1980, named after Elstree studios, before the band were supposed to go off for an encore but remained on stage due to the earlier delays to go straight into it with Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’, which sounded clunky, and Buggles song ‘Clean, Clean’. Horn said although he was unable to afford Grace Jones he had secured another special guest, Seal, who came on to perform with them for the rest of the set, doing sexy dancing to Jones’ 1985 funky single ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ from the album of the same name and Yes cover ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’, the groove of which convinced him to sign to the label.
He then sang his own 1994 hit, ‘Kiss from a Rose’, which he previously said he liked after “what Trevor did with the recording. He turned that tape from my corner into another 8 million record sales and my name became a household name”; he partly performed it as a singalong with the audience. The show, which was lacking organisation overall, clumsily finished on his number one collaboration with Adamski, 1990’s ‘Killer’, which he sang mostly unaccompanied by the band as it seemed they had run out of time.
20/12/25: Trevor Horn @ O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London.
Photos © Peter Tainsh.
© Ayisha Khan.