I think one of the real innovations was Horn's push to loop, cut and paste the drums to capture a feel. The fact that the band was instinctively 'over complicating' the feel Horn wanted is telling. The fact that Alan was upset, also points to the influence of Trevor Horn. Telling a drummer of Alan White's calibre that he is overplaying and you are going loop 2 bars of his playing! Reminds me of on interview with Jon Giblin (or it may have been the drummer, Mel Gaynor) from Simple Minds, apparently they (rhythm section) were jamming in the studio playing fusiony stuff - and Steve Lillywhite asked them where you could find fusion in the record store. When they replied that they did not know he responded with "Neither does anyone else. Now stop playing that shit and get on with it.." now I am paraphrasing but these producers have some big balls!
In Paul Stump's book, "The music's all that Matters - A History of Progressive Rock", he points to the producer's/band's use of technology and the studio in the early eighties as the genuine "progressive" aspect of Yes at that point.
I was lucky enough to have a chat with Doug Wimbish a few years ago and told him how much a fan I was of his playing on the first Seal album produced by TH, particularly the song "Wild". He told me that what he played was chopped and changed so much that it quite different to the finished product.
Amazing when you think about it.
Back to the clip, the reference to the reverb on the drums also showed Trevor Horn to be a 'free thinker'. When most others would have gone for the typical drum sound of the time (see Mutt Lange and Steve Lillywhite), as wanted by Trevor Rabin (and the roadie NuNu apparently!), he chose a (imho) tastier approach.
I am glad that some of you appreciate the interview as much as I did.
Cheers,
PS For those who did not know, I am pretty sure that Chris Squire came up with the outro 'Motown' riff on Owner.
I wonder how the 'points' for this song were allocated. Maybe Rabin>Horn>Squire>Anderson? Given that Anderson contributed a few words (not melody). The next bit of the interview discusses Horn's attitude to points, but not in detail as re this song.
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