Тревор Хорн выступит на фестивале Rewind, где он исполнит хиты с The Buggles и 10cc

12:50PM, Thursday 16 July 2026 MUSIC producer Trevor Horn loved living in Checkendon. The bass player and songwriter, who is coming to perform at this year’s Rewind Festival, bought a 16th century manor house in the village in the Nineties and turned it into Sarm Hook End, a residential recording studio. “We were there for quite a long time,” says Trevor, 76. “I was very sad when we sold it, but it was a residential recording studio. We really did it up a lot and I used to do a lot of horse-riding back in the day. I used to ride round all over the place. “My late wife and I, we had about six horses, because we had so much land, we had about 200 acres out there. We used to go through all the woods, it’s beautiful. The Thames Valley is a beautiful place. “There’s so many interesting weird things that go on in the Thames Valley, like steam fairs. There was a beautiful house right near us, about two miles away across the fields, that had been built by a very wealthy industrialist and they’ve made them into flats, a beautiful old gothic house. “There are some amazing really old pubs that are really like when a pub was meant to be like a house.” Starting out as a session musician, Trevor worked with Yes, then hit the big time in 1979 as part of The Buggles. Their song, Video Killed the Radio Star, was the first music video broadcast on MTV, on August 1, 1981. The channel closed on December 31 last year, bookending its run by ending its final broadcast with the song. He also produced artists such as ABC, Seal, Grace Jones, Yes, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, T.A.T.u. and Art of Noise, which he co-founded. He says: “I left regular employment when I was 18 which would have been in 1967, ’68 and I never went back. “I was lucky because I started out playing the bass guitar in big bands, I started out playing double bass and I could read music. “Then all the way through my twenties, that stood me in really good stead because I could always earn money. The thing is, if you can read, then you’re quite useful to the other people. “I can sightread bass parts, bass parts are generally simpler than trumpet parts for instance. When I started out bass parts were very simple and so they were pretty easy to read, but as the Sixties went on, they got more and more complicated, all that syncopation. I used to say, ‘My god, what the hell’s this?’ It definitely was a good thing that I could read music. “Quite a few of the songs that I’ve done are fairly demanding to play, so it’s enough for me just to play the bass. “We had Jim Kerr coming in and guesting with us over the Rewind up in Scotland a few years back, and we did Waterfront, and I spent ages and I learned the guitar part, Charlie Burchill’s guitar part and I got Lol to play the bass. “The trouble is, being a bass player all my life, the first hit I made on guitar, I pushed all the strings up it, I hit it too high. So it took me most of the rest of the song to get anything back to being playable again. “So I thought after that, nah, I’ll stick to the bass. “I really like playing the bass, even though it’s just one note and just that one note makes so much difference to everything. “It’s one of the great experiences in the world is to play on stage with a bunch of musicians, it’s a lovely thing, especially when they’re all good players. Somebody told me when I was like 20, 21, they said make sure you’re always the worst musician in the band. Don’t ever be in a band where you’re like head and shoulders above everybody else. So I’ve always tried to do that.” Trevor’s late wife, Jill Sinclair, was also in the music business. They met in the Seventies and had four children. She helped persuade musician Seal to sign to Trevor’s ZTT label in the Nineties. “My wife could be incredibly charming when she wanted to be. She could be also quite fearsome when she wanted to be. “She charmed Seal and I think she did him a lot of good. She had a lot of conviction, she was an amazing person. “I’ve got four children and they’re all grown-up. “My daughter has started doing my social media. She seems to have a good instinct for what people are interested in. I wouldn’t ever have thought that people would be interested in me babbling on about which guitars I like but she tells me people are interested. She’s just told me she wants to start learning how to play the bass guitar, and that’s nice. “My son’s really good at music, although I never encouraged him to be a musician because it’s not an easy profession. I’ve been lucky, I’ve managed to earn a living from it, but it’s not easy. If you’re not careful, you end up playing a lot of stuff that you hate just to keep the wolf from the door.” The Trevor Horn Band playing Rewind comprises Trevor, his long-time collaborator Lol Crème and several others. “Lol is my partner in crime. He used to be in 10cc, so that gives us a couple of 10cc tunes to play. Lol is the same as me, he just likes to play. I spent 45 years of my life in recording studios and they’re wonderful places, but as you get older, you do start to want to get out a bit. “The thing about Rewind is you’re only playing for 35 minutes, you don’t get a soundcheck. So you’ve got no idea what it’s going to sound like, no in-ears when you start. But I’ve always quite enjoyed Rewind because it’s always a good audience.” Trevor is looking forward to revisiting his old haunts when he comes to town. “I used to love Henley. I like the theatre, I used to go, whatever cr---y thing they had on I used to see and I really liked the cinema too. I used to think the Waitrose in Henley was like heaven. I couldn’t imagine a better shop. “My mother-in-law, Irene Sinclair, may god rest her soul, who only died recently at 101, was evacuated from London out to Henley and so she spent a lot of the war in Henley. “She’d tell us about catching a train at Shiplake and most of the woods around that we had, there had been places where they had American troops, and if not American troops they had Polish or other people there in those internment camps. She said she woke up one day and looked out and Henley was packed with Americans, they’d all just come over, just for the war. “She said the thing about Henley was that it’s in a dip, and not easy to see from above, so it was never really bombed, because the Luftwaffe couldn’t see it. If you think about it, it is a bit like that. “We’re looking forward to it, we’ve played Henley before. “I’m looking forward to coming back because I want to have a little mooch around and see if anything’s changed. It’s lovely.” The Trevor Horn Band plays Rewind South at Temple Island Meadows on Saturday, August 22. For more information, visit south.rewindfestival.com Most read Top Articles The roof of the rear extension of the Crooked Billet pub in Stoke Row was damaged in the blaze, which began at around 4am on Sunday. WATCHES were stolen from the headquarters of manufacturer Bremont. Expect train and travel disruptions, emergency services warnings, school closures and other updates.