TREVOR Horn certainly knows a thing or two about putting out a hit record.

As a producer, he was the man to go to in the 80s working with the likes of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ABC and the Pet Shop Boys. As a performer he was responsible for the Buggle’s hit Video Killed the Radio Star and was even part of supergroup Yes.

Now he’s heading out on his own tour with his own band and an orchestra.

“It’s my first headlining mini tour and I’ll be just turned 70 so it’s taken me a little time to get there,” he laughed. “But the thing is, I’m going to have 20 musicians on stage and that’s always a really good experience.”

The tour, which comes to Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall on Wednesday, follows the release of the album Trevor Horn Reimagines the Eighties which came out at the beginning of the year and saw Trevor work his magic to create different versions of songs ranging from Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark to Joe Jackson’s It’s Different for Girls.

“For the album, I basically chose songs I liked the lyrics of,” said Trevor. “There were certainly plenty to go at.

“When you do an album with an artist there will normally be one or two that you’re not very keen on. In this case, that didn’t apply.

“Anything that didn’t last or didn’t come alive we moved on and tried something else.

“If it’s a good song, you ought to be able to do it two or three different ways and it will still work.”

Doing things a different way is something Trevor has always worked on.

“I’ve been doing it all my life,” he said. “I always try to imagine a way of doing a song. You have to think what’s the best way to present a song and a singer.”

Trevor is very keen to get on the road for his new series of concerts.

“I have been playing with my band for 10 years now but this will be a much bigger sound,” he said.

“In these days of hard drives, we actually play and that makes a big difference in terms of the dynamics of the band.

“That’s the part of it I enjoy, all the rest of it can be a bit of a pain in the neck at times. As someone once said ‘they pay me to wait, I’ll play for nothing’.

“I think for the audience to hear these songs played by what is in effect a 20-piece band will be really exciting. It’s how the songs should sound.

“Most pop records from the 80s had a lot more instruments on them than the way were presented in the media.

“They might have been a four-piece band but there would be far more on there than that - that was certainly the case with the records I produced!”

Trevor was very much an innovator, introducing a whole range of production techniques and sounds which had not been put on record before. But now with the rapid advance of technology, artists and producers have so much more at their fingertips than he did in the Eighties.

Does he fear that there now may be too many toys in the toy box?

“Oh no, you can never have too much control, you can never have too much to play with,” he said. “It’s how you use them that really counts.

“Because of technology, a lot of the things that took us a long time to do you can do a lot faster now. But you still can’t replicate a great performance by a singer. Whatever jiggery pokery a producer may get up to, that person has still got to be able to sing.”

Trevor Horn, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, Wednesday, July 31. Details from www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk or 0161 907 9000