As well as being a leading producer himself, Thomas Dolby worked with two of the greatest producers of the 80s, Mutt Lange and Trevor Horn (pictured left). Taking on the role of keyboard player on Def Leppard’s mega-selling 1983 album Pyromania, Thomas saw Mutt’s infamously exacting methods up close. “Mutt was amazingly fastidious,” confides Thomas. “He’d be hunched over the mixing desk for 10 hours, then push his chair back and say ‘OK, play it from the top’. He’d be able to listen as if he’d never heard the song before, and say at the end: ‘That middle-eight is four bars too long.’ His ears, and his ability to zoom in and out of a song, were incredible. That attention to detail could be very frustrating to the artist – it’s 3am, but he’s making you do yet another take of a piece you feel you’d nailed six hours earlier. Bryan Adams had never spent more than a month on an entire album, but Mutt takes a month to get the bass drum sound on one song! But Bryan will acknowledge Mutt had a huge part in his success.”
Trevor’s style was totally different. “I never saw Trevor at a mixing board,” Thomas reveals. “He was more like a tastemaker – he’d always be on a couch, rolling a joint, with his eyes bugging out from behind those big specs. He was brilliant at knowing how it should sound, before he’d get bored after half-an-hour to go to the studio next door to oversee a Frankie Goes To Hollywood remix. Two of the best producers ever – and their approach couldn’t be more different.”