Richard James Burgess
| Richard James Burgess | |
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Burgess in 2015
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| Born |
29 June 1949 London, England |
| Origin | Christchurch, New Zealand |
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| Years active | 1974–present |
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| Website | richardjamesburgess |
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Roland MC-8 Microcomposer Simmons SDS-V Fairlight CMI Drums |
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Richard James Burgess (born 29 June 1949) is an English-born New Zealand studio drummer, music-computer programmer, recording artist, record producer, composer, author, manager, marketer and inventor.
Burgess's music career spans more than 40 years. He came to prominence in the early 1980s as co-founder and co-lead singer of the Synthpop band Landscape, which released a top 10 hit in 1981 with the single "Einstein A Go-Go". Burgess is one of the main composers of Landscape's music, and made major lyrical contributions to the band's songs. After the band's break-up, he pursued a brief, moderately successful solo career releasing one mini-album, Richard James Burgess in 1984.
He launched his career as a producer with Spandau Ballet's debut UK hit "To Cut a Long Story Short", which marked the commercial beginnings of the New Romantic movement.
Burgess currently serves as the CEO of A2IM: American Association of Independent Music
Richard Burgess was born in London, England, and his family emigrated to Christchurch, New Zealand in 1959. He showed an early interest in music, especially drums, and bought his first drum set at the age of 14. As a drummer, he gained experience in local bands including Fred Henry, Orange, Easy Street, The Lordships and Barry Saunders. Burgess also showed an early interest in recording production, buying a portable Tandberg tape recorder when he was sixteen to make amateur recordings.
Burgess studied electronics at college before turning to studies in music. In 1972 he left New Zealand to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, and in 1973 moved to London to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Glamorgan (now the University of South Wales).
In the early 1980s, Burgess emerged as the first producer of the New Romantic movement, producing Spandau Ballet's first two gold albums and first six charting singles. He won a Music Week magazine sales award as a producer, and has created twenty-four chart singles and fourteen charting albums. Other productions included recordings for Adam Ant, King, New Edition, Melba Moore, Colonel Abrams, America, Kim Wilde, Five Star, Tony Banks and Fish. He was also an ambient pioneer in producing the British group Praise. He produced, engineered and mixed albums by Rubicon and X-CNN under the pseudonym Caleb Kadesh and did several mixes using the pseudonym Cadillac Jack. He was co-producer, co-executive producer, project manager and an author for Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology and is credited as associate producer on Tony Trischka's Territory and as a compiler of Classic Piano Blues for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
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