Welcome to Robin Millar's web site
The original 'Smooth Operator' Robin Millar is one of Britain's most successful ever record producers with 150 gold, silver and platinum discs and 44 No1's to his credit, including Sade's iconic 'Diamond Life' album.
His productions have sold well over 55 million copies, earning the UK over £400 million in foreign income and have won almost every major global music award including Brit and Grammy Awards. In 2010 The Brit Awards Voting Academy nominated 'Diamond Life' as 'one of the best 10 British albums of the last 30 years'.
To date, Robin has sold more records than R.E.M. , The Police, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, Nirvana, Johnny Cash, Jay-Z or Black Sabbath.
To reflect his musical and campaigning career Robin has been awarded a CBE in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours. He was inducted last year as a Fellow of the Association of Professional Recording Services with Peter Gabriel.
Dubbed 'Golden ears' by Boy George, Robin is the man behind Sade, the producer of the first acid jazz record and of the biggest selling French album of all time.
He is an accomplished guitarist and has worked with legendary artists including Randy Crawford, Everything But The Girl, Fine Young Cannibals, Big Country, Eric Clapton, Sting and many many others. He is an artist in his own right and is now returning to contemporary dance music with his own brand of jazz-dance. He produced and mixed last summer's official Ibiza dance anthem with U.S. legend Arthur Baker.
Robin also goes out as a DJ / guitarist under the name TOSO playing classic cool grooves from the last 40 years.
More recently, Robin has become equally recognised as an academic, a coach and mentor to FTSE business leaders, one of the most charismatic and in-demand keynote speakers and panelists, a major fundraiser and champion for vulnerable people and as a spokesman to the Government for the whole music sector.
In November 2007 he was awarded Honorary Professor status at The University of West London.
Robin is the only British person to have produced an Olympic Games opening ceremony [Atlanta 1996].
He is Hon. Patron of the Music Producers Guild, a member of the Human Genetics Commission Consultative Panel and a board member of The National Skills Academy.
Robin has owned and run businesses in and out of the music industry for 25 years, including Power Plant, Maison Rouge and Whitfield Street Studios, Rent-A-Ferrari, Scarlett Group PLC and Arts Media.
He has been a visiting professor and lecturer in commercial music for 15 years at The Royal Academy of Music, London College of Music, Surrey University and The University of Modena in Italy.
His outstanding work for the world's most oppressed people has involved work as patron of UNHCR Geneva, trustee of The Playing Alive Foundation and a long-time trustee of the Vietnamese Boat Peoples' Appeal and his campaigning concerts and recordings for Oxfam, UNICEF, British Lung Foundation, Namibian Freedom Fighters, Artists Against Apartheid and others have raised millions of pounds. Robin was awarded the 2002 Windrush Award for his work with minorities.
In December last year Robin began a mission for the UN to the 22 poorest regions in the world to teach young disabled people to use professional recording equipment.
Robin has been registered blind since the age of 16 and has had no sight since 1985. His amazing life as a punk guitarist, Ferrari renter, nude model, academic and producer of 'Smooth Operator' and 'The Sweetest Taboo' is still full of adventure, fun and a source of inspiration to others.
"I've made and lost many millions, broken all the rules and I've developed a strong and deep understanding of how lucky some of us are. I'm more of a rough diamond than a smooth operator . . . adventure should be real and not imagined."
Robin Millar CBE FAPRS MA
The details above are taken from the Berklee College Of Music Celebrity Scholarship PatronsInformation Archive.
DJ work: to hear a sample of TOSO's unique classic cool DJ set and Robin's live guitar visit http://snd.sc/oEW65a
For a detailed list of Robin’s production, musician and engineering credits go to albumcredits.com/Profile/105898 (external website).
Public Speaking
To book Robin for motivational speaking, high level mentoring or just for fun, adventure and anecdotes of his life with the rich, famous and bizarre, contact Kruger Cown - Click here for more info and to see testimonials.
New Video & Audio Broadcast Sections
We have introduced a new video section starting with a video of Robin giving an LCM Masterclass. View the video here.
Also, we have introduced a Broadcast section starting with a half-hour interview with Robin about his life and career.
Listen to the part 1 of the interview here and part 2 of the interview here.
Thought for January 2012
Dirty Old Man?
I’m not going to succumb to the grandiose new year contemplations on life, the future and our place in the great scheme of things which one might expect at the new year. Instead my thoughts have been rambling through the ramifications, if any, of reaching my sixties.
There is a cliché that, as we grow older, we feel the same inside but just look different on the outside. If that is true for many people then I have to assume that they have developed no philosophies, that they have never tried to fathom what their priorities are, that they have not tried to evolve in a way which minimises stupidity, selfishness and pointless fucking about.
From my late twenties onwards I have thought, worked, philosophised, revised my views constantly and I have continued, I hope, to evolve. I haven’t seen myself in a mirror since I was around 30 so I’ve been lucky not to see myself growing older and perhaps assuming that I was also growing wiser. I had to work at it and I stil have to work at it. The face I remember is young, a bit devilish, full of over-assured over-confident swagger. That’s the image I’m trying to improve upon every day. I don’t know if it’s working but it still feels like the right way to travel. I still rarely plan; I still insure nothing whatsoever; I still look forward with a smile to a future with untold possibilities but I have long since lost the sense of my own importance in the scheme of things.
There is, however, one troubling matter. Sex appeal. I reckon until you are around 40 years old then any adult in which you are interested is both appropriate and realistic as an aspiration. Recently, however, I attended an awayday seminar and caught myself feeling something strong and a bit new. One of the directors, a man a few years younger than I, had come down to stay overnight with his new PA. She was a lovely girl of around 24 I guess. In the hotel bar around 11pm there was the director, pretty sloshed, arm around his PA and positively drooling. My immediate and unheralded thought was ‘You dirty old man, this sucks’.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I like women, I like being with them, I like them to like me. I don’t see them as any particular age – see above – some of them are very realised at 24, some are still not out of nappies at 50 plus. But I have decided to be careful with how I deal with younger women now. I recently spent an afternoon with a truly lovely girl of 32. A musician and friend. ‘Rob you are looking very sexy lately you know?’ Alarm bells started ringing. I needed to get to the bottom of this. ‘In what way do you mean?’ ‘Well, in a sort of Steve Mcqueen kind of way I mean.’ ‘That’ll do nicely’ I thought….’Ok Millar think fast here. Lovely young girls say this kind of thing to you quite a lot don’t they?’
It’s because they can. It’s because they feel safe with me. It’s because – important this – they ARE safe with me. They would not talk to a man of 30 like this, whatever they felt…but imagine if I were to make a move on them…I think about my parent’s friends when I was a teenager. I imagine an uncle or a neighbour in his fifties or sixties making a lunge at one of my sisters or trying for a snog in the kitchen at Christmas…..aaarrrggghhh! say no more.
So my one tiny pearl of wisdom is directed at young women and old men. Young women, just remember that when you tell an old guy he’s as cool as Robert de Niro he probably thinks you are moist with desire for him. Old men, whatever happens, button it up, keep calm and whatever you do don’t think you are turning on the girl when you turn on the charm.
To see the full archive of thought pieces click here.
