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Source: |
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Author: |
Phil Sutcliffe |
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Publication Date: |
January 1989 |
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Title: |
ANNE DUDLEY ON ARRANGEMENT |
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A former student of both The
Royal College Of Music and Kings College (London), classical clarinet
and piano player Anne Dudley worked nightshifts behind the keyboards on
the late ‘70s Mecca dance band circuit. There, amid the cover versions
of Bee Gees and Boomtown Rats, she met occasional bassist Trevor Horn,
shortly to have a hit with Buggies, turn producer and offer her work as
an arranger. Now also a member of The Art Of Noise, she tells Phil
Sutcliffe about some of her best-known work.
On my first record, Dollar’s Give Me Back My Heart
in 1981, I wasn’t brought in specifically as an arranger but Trevor
Horn, who produced it, sent me a demo and said, "What do you think?" I
came up with some ideas, we threw some out, developed some. We worked
from the bottom — got a bass part down, drums, a guide vocal, then saw
where the counter-melodies would fit in. It was improvisatory. Trevor
made it very easy. He was then — and maybe is now, I’m not sure — an
absolutely superb producer. He knew what sounds work and he brought
people’s confidence out. I’ve worked with producers who are less than
great: they’re not decisive because they don’t really know when you’ve
done something good. He’s a dominant character in the studio. He didn’t
feel the need to have David or Theresa from Dollar about, but Theresa
might make suggestions when she heard the tapes, and Trevor always
listened to the artist.
The big step into arranging came when we were working on ABC’s Lexicon Of Love, a track called The Look Of Love.
Trevor said, "I think we ought to have strings on this, can you do it?"
He was quite a hip producer by then, big budget, and he had about 30
musicians in this huge studio, Abbey Road One. I was absolutely
terrified standing up in front of them for the first time like that —
until they started to play, that is. Then it was fantastic. The whole
band came to that first session. I remember turning around when we’d
finished the run through and they were all in the box smiling away. It
was lovely. Then what got me when I heard the final mix was the strings
were so loud. I couldn’t believe it. I said to Trevor, "You don’t think
you’ve gone over the top here do you?" Of course he had. He always did!
The first time I worked with Paul McCartney I played synthesizer on No More Lonely Nights. Later on he asked me to arrange a couple of tracks on Press To Play. I
was very nervous. It’s difficult for someone like him to get through
the living legend business but he’s used to it and makes it very easy
for you. Basically he told me to do what I wanted to do. On one song,
However Absurd, at Abbey Road the lyrics were very peculiar and the
point of the string arrangement was to sound surrealistic — so what
happens is the orchestra bursts out and plays a little symphony at the
end for no apparent reason. Some of the orchestra had worked on Abbey
Road and Sgt. Pepper so they’d done the chaotic bit on A Dayln The Life.
Malcolm McLaren was a big challenge an artist with no visible signs of talent, no songs, a pop group manager who wanted to make an album (Duck Rock,
1983). I was involved with that when he came back from his travels in
America and Africa I didn’t fancy slogging around the world with Malcolm
— he’s an entertaining chap and all that but fairly hard work. The most
outrageous track was Buffalo Gals. He had all these strange
elements — a New York rap duo, a redneck hillbilly song, and a style
that was later known as hip hop. It wasn’t anything as organised as
arrangement, just set a pattern going, play some chords, some bass
parts, and then the Supreme Team rapped all this nonsense over it.
Occasionally Malcolm would come to the studio with a crazy idea and
Trevor, being a patient man, would spend the five hours it took to try
something Malcolm had just tossed off the top of his head. We got on
much faster without him.
Doing the brass on Young Guns for Wham! I discovered that George Michael
has a very fine ear for music. One example early on shook me rigid. I’d
voiced one chord slightly differently in the key change. He said, "That
chord doesn’t sound right." I said, "It’s the same chord, George" "No,"
he said, "it sounds different." I said, "Well I have swapped the inside
parts around." "It’s different then, isn’t it?" he said. Found me out.
It was only the second time he’d recorded I think. As he gained
confidence he was able to tell me much more specifically what he had in
mind. On Young Guns we ended up just using trumpets, no other
brass at all. After that first session George would sing to me what he
wanted. Back then he couldn’t play any instruments and he seemed a bit
afraid of "real" musicians.
I orchestrated the opening of Two Tribes for Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
Fairly straight forward. Trevor said, "How many players would you
like?" I said about 20. He said, "Right, we’ll have 40. Or 50. Or 60. We
want to spend lots of money here." So there were clarinets and flutes
and French horns and timps. But it never felt like making a record
because there were too many versions. It didn’t really exist I didn’t
feel very involved with it.
Johnny Hates Jazz was an unfortunate experience. I arranged strings on Turn Back The Clock.
It was so badly organised. They rang me up on a Tuesday and said,
"We’ve got to do the strings on Thursday, we’re sending you a tape." No
time to sit down and talk in advance. So we did the run-through and one
of them didn’t like what I’d written for the chorus. He said, "Instead
of da-da-da can we have dum-dum-dum?" I told the section, "OK, bar 16,
two quavers and a crochet instead of four quavers." "Nah, don’t like
that. Maybe just a long note." "Which one?" "Daaaa." "OK." Back to the
players. "Bar 16, a long G above middle c." "Nah, doesn’t really work.
What was it you had before?" And so on for about three hours. When I
heard their final mix it was two notes of what I’d written and duck out,
then another note and duck out. I’m annoyed it says "String arrangement
by Anne Dudley".
I’m quite proud of what The Art Of Noise (currently Dudley plus Fairlight programmer J. Jeczalik) did with Duane Eddy (Peter Gunn, 1986) and Tom Jones (Kiss)
because we were working with a featured artist and we didn’t muck about
with them — put them in a Fairlight and turn upside down or anything.
We constructed jigsaw puzzles around them, interesting pieces that fit
together and complement one another. On Kiss the question was,
how would we justify equal billing with Tom Jones? We worked it out in a
strange but logical way. We have a recognisable sound: on our
instrumentals we put drums up front throughout and everything else
changes around them. So we decided Tom’s vocal would be the drums, in
effect. Verse one does have the big drum sound you’d expect from us
alongside the vocal, but on verse two it becomes tiny, goes down into
mono, like a little rhythm box. Although Tom’s still out front, suddenly
the track’s opened right up, there’s all the room you want to stick in
things like the piano and brass stabs. For the middle section, the drums
come back big again, huge sound. Then verse three has a Latin-American
rhythm, cha-cha. The whole thing is really cheeky, but the continuity is
there in Tom’s vocal — we’re completely faithful to it. Well, that’s
the idea behind the arrangement. And nobody has noticed!
Phil Collins, he’s a little gem. I was composing the score for Buster and he asked me to work on A Groovy Kind Of Love with
him. I found this A sustained chord for the end and decided that a key
change would be a good idea, although that gave Phil the screaming
abdabs because he said, "I can only play this in G." So I taught it to
him in A too. He insisted on playing keyboards which is fine because he
has a certain style which suits his voice I didn’t want to barge in and
say, "Get out of the way Phil, I’ll do the keyboards!" Then I said, "One
final thing. There’s this new chord at the end", and he said, "Oh no,
not another new chord!" I said, "It’s very easy, Phil, honest, just
three notes in the right hand and an octave in the left." He’s an
amazing bloke. The evening we did this at Maison Rouge he was
programming the rhythm box and at the same time he was giving an
interview to a magazine and he was of playing a drum session in the
other studio as a favour to the owner.
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