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 February 2012
The Selfish Altruist
I have a reputation. It’s a mixed reputation I dare say. Exacting, a perfectionist, demanding on colleagues, frank and truthful to a cringing degree, determined to succeed. I also have a reputation for doing stuff for other people. In particular I seem to have an obsession with sorting out others and enabling them to realise their potential.
So this makes me an altruist right? I’m not going to bother with an online dictionary; I’m going to guess: an altruist is someone who does things purely for the good of others with no selfish motivation or gain.
Well that’s not me for sure.
Going back to my earliest days as a musician, the first record I put out was a hit. In a minor way I became a celebrity in Paris. I hated it. For years after that I played guitar with various bands... I never wanted to be the front man, the lead singer, always to stand at the side. I found TV shows embarrassing; I found groupies very off-putting – shagging someone who knew nothing about me and vice versa was not for me. But I wanted my fellow band members to taste success and to play my part.
I started a recording studio – Power Plant – as a way of getting a foot in the door in the UK. I started training young people to become recording engineers and then producers. The first successes of those young people – Phil Legge with Terence Trent D’Arby; Dave Anderson with The Sundays; Pete Brown with Sam Brown – all these gave me a pleasure I had never experienced before... and when my own productions sent Everything But The Girl and Sade into the limelight I was able to enjoy their success completely.
The satisfaction was massive; the pleasure unadulterated; the pride infinite. But I did not go to the Brit Awards show when ‘Diamond Life’ won best album. I was round at a friend’s house watching the telly with a cup of tea while Sade collected the award.
Now Jim Abbiss is the best producer in the world (Adele). Jim trained for 5 years at Power Plant, straight from college. I couldn’t be happier for him and it feels much better to me than when I did it.
So enabling others is not altruism to me. It’s an utterly self-indulgent pleasure with no downside.
To see the full archive of thought pieces click here.
