Robin Millar

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2015

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the record producer, Robin Millar.

One of the UK's most successful record producers with over 160 gold, silver and platinum discs, he has over forty-four number one records to his credit. His 1984 production of Sade's debut album, 'Diamond Life', was named one of the best ten albums of the last thirty years at the 2010 Brit Awards.

He experienced problems with his eyesight from birth, especially in the dark, and had tunnel vision. Aged 16, a diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa was confirmed and he was told that he would eventually lose his sight completely. On leaving school he studied law at Cambridge before becoming a music producer. The production of Sade's second album coincided with the loss of his remaining sight. In 2012 he underwent a retina implant which gave him some sight but the success was brief and later his body rejected it.

He works with a number of charities, mentors young musicians and was given a CBE for services to music in 2010.

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. The My castaway this week is the record producer Robin Miller, nicknamed Golden Ears by Boy George.
0:40.0	He is one of our most successful music makers with over 44 number ones to his credit.
0:46.0	Randy Crawford, the Style Council, Courtney Pine, everything but the girl throughout the years
0:50.0	they and many, many more have benefited from his technical innovations and exacting standards.
0:56.4	Beyond the womb of the soundproof studio walls, his life has been no less rock and roll.
1:01.2	Touring as part of the Rolling Stones on Terrage in the late 60s, modeling nude, and a bit more besides,
1:06.6	in Paris in the 70s.
1:08.4	And then in the 80s he produced one of the defining albums of the decade,
1:13.0	Shade's diamond life.
1:15.0	It spent 99 weeks in the UK chart.
1:18.0	More extraordinary still is that as he went through it all,
1:21.0	he knew that an inherited genetic disorder meant he would
1:24.9	one day go blind. Losing his sight completely led him to forge a life very much influenced
1:31.0	by his Guyanese nurse mother and Irish doctor dad.
1:34.4	He now spends a lot of his time helping disadvantaged youngsters,
1:38.0	mentoring the disabled and fundraising.
1:40.9	He says, I knew I wanted to make music that was sexy and visceral and very, very popular.
1:47.0	Back then I wanted to make lots of money and have great cars and houses and all.
1:51.0	I did get all that, but then I grew up and I wonder Robin Miller what age you
	...

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