Thomas Dolby Mad Scientists, Hip-Hop Hits, the Wall and the Nokia Signature Tone
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Thomas Dolby Mad scientists, hip-hop hits, The Wall and the Nokia signature tone. Once described as steampunk’s Iggy Pop, this boffin-like new waver is certainly out there with his paeans to eco warriors and the golden CUNEIFORM RECORDS CUNEIFORM age of radio. But now we ask the big question: how prog is Thomas Dolby? Words: Paul Lester remember seeing She Blinded Me prototype. “Eno performed similar With Science, the song Thomas Aliens Ate My feats but he never compromised his Dolby did with Magnus Pyke instrumental work, which has been – who in the early 80s was the Buick made so influential over the years.” definitive TV ‘mad scientist’ me realise Like Eno – and Gabriel and, for that “Iwhite-haired boffin – on telly when matter, Todd Rundgren – Dolby is I was about 10,” recalls Steve Jefferis that taking yourself virtually synonymous with eclecticism of Warm Digits, those north-eastern and electronic experimentation, with purveyors of kosmische electronica too seriously gadgetry and whizkiddery. and technoid prog. “It was like the is ridiculous. “Peter Gabriel is one of the few Open University had suddenly opened people in the world I would happily a portal onto the stage of Top Of The Simon Godfrey change places with,” he admits. “He’s Pops, and now seems like a great a wonderful writer and singer. He’s example of the plain weirdness that Dolby, Brian Eno was going to move always been single-minded, making passed for mainstream pop when in at one point. Prog ventures that his albums under his own steam despite we were kids. It was as if the BBC daring, spacious production for Prefab pressure from the business to churn Radiophonic Workshop had suddenly Sprout on their second, third and out product more often. And he’s got the funk, or Cabaret Voltaire had fourth albums echoed Eno’s radical always been fashionable without gone slapstick. That faintly comedic transformation of Talking Heads on being a slave to fashion – all element certainly helped it burrow into the three albums following their debut. admirable qualities. Plus, we share an our brains at that impressionable age, “That’s an interesting way to see excitement for new technology and the and now looks like a very ahead-of-its- it,” he says, flattered. “I really admire possibilities they open up.” time version of steampunk.” Eno as a producer and artist. He’s the He cites as an example his Having performed onstage with Leonardo da Vinci of modern music. acquisition of a Fairlight, that early Roger Waters and collaborated with Leonardo who, of course, painted the digital sampling synthesizer, back numerous musicians who have Mona Lisa as well as invented the when, he estimates, only Gabriel, skirted the outer limits of prog, such helicopter – and the drum machine.” Trevor Horn and Kate Bush owned one. as Andy Partridge, David Bowie and Dolby is referring to the Renaissance It cost about a third of the price of the Peter Gabriel, it’s not that weird to polymath’s mechanical rhythm flat in Hammersmith, West London, find Thomas Dolby in these pages. that he bought the same year. “By Then again, having written a seminal modern standards it would be worth early hip-hop track (Magic’s Wand about a million and a half quid,” he for Whodini), he could just as easily says with a shudder. be written about in a rap magazine. Still, you can’t put a price on Or because of his 80s synthpop hits innovation, a feeling he shares with such as …Science and Hyperactive!, he Rundgren, who he met a few times could appear in a journal forensically in the early 90s during a lengthy examining the history of electronica. hiatus from the music business, when “I was surprised to find myself in he chose to ride the dotcom wave some hip-hop hall of fame the other as, among other things, the head of day,” remarks Dolby from his home a company designing ringtones for in Suffolk, in a house overlooking mobile phones. the North Sea. He has his own solar- “We brushed up a few times and wind-powered recording studio in the cyber-tech years when moored in his back garden – ‘moored’ Silicon Valley was starting to get because, before it was converted, it saw 1982’s debut The Golden arty,” he recalls. “Both Todd and active service as a lifeboat. With its Age Of Wireless and left, myself were pioneering in the area Dolby as The Teacher in miniature turret, the house next door Roger waters’ 1990 of multimedia and CD-ROMs so resembles a tiny castle. According to version of The Wall. we followed parallel courses. 76 progrockmag.com ROP39.outer.indd 76 9/12/13 1:13 AM Sonic explorer: Dolby’s songs take in everything from prog rock to pop, electrofunk and hip‑hop, marking him out as a genuinely progressive artist. progrockmag.com 77 ROP39.outer.indd 77 9/12/13 1:13 AM “I’m proud to be a cult like Todd,” he Stones – it’s all rubbish, dead dinosaur Dolby has always considered adds. “When I was growing up, my music.’ He said we should be listening himself an outsider. Despite his hit favourite artists were the cult ones. to New York Dolls, MC5 and Iggy Pop singles and the fame they brought You didn’t care how many records instead. This was just before punk.” him in the mid-80s – he would hang they sold or whether they were on the Dolby had started buying records out with Michael Jackson (Dolby radio. You just pored over their double back in 1972: his first acquisitions were originally wrote Hyperactive! with gatefold sleeves for hours. People like Elton John’s Honky Château and Joni Jacko in mind) and performed at Live Captain Beefheart and Dan Hicks were Mitchell’s Blue. Soon he was exploring Aid with Bowie – Dolby feels as precious. In a way, it would have spoilt prog’s topographic oceans. “I was though he has been “on the margins it if they’d gone into the charts.” really into Soft Machine, Genesis and for most of my life”. The one time he Dolby wasn’t born with the surname Yes,” he says. “Yes’s double and triple felt truly at the centre of things was of the famous noise-reduction albums were seldom off my turntable. during punk. laboratory. Before he acquired the It wasn’t the virtuosity that appealed, “I was working in a fruit and veg nickname that would help afford him it was their approach to composition. shop and was living in a bedsit,” he a reputation as a computer-pop geek, When I listened to Close To The remembers, somewhat contradicting he was known as Thomas Robertson. Edge, what interested me was the the idea of him as the scion of The son of an eminent professor of way a rock band could come up with The Flat Earth blends funk, wealth and privilege, the middle- electro and prog, while classical Greek art and archeology different textures, chord sequences Aliens Ate My Buick is what class electro-boffin scorned by the at Oxford University, he went to and arrangements. They were getting Dolby says is his “most NME. “I had spiky, dyed hair and Oxford’s Abingdon School and then away from the blues and traditional extrovert album”, with his torn trousers and would go to see “most bittersweet homage Westminster School, where he became rock figures, and I found that really to Europe” in Budapest The Clash or The Sex Pistols.” friends with future Pogues frontman stimulating. The freedom to change By Blimp. If he was energised by punk, it was Shane MacGowan. key or tempo was very exciting.” seeing Gary Numan that encouraged “We’d sit in coffee bars and discuss He was soon trying out these him to try his hand as a solo music,” he recalls. “Shane was a music techniques himself after he became electronicist, and hearing Kraftwerk guru – he had an encyclopaedic the keyboard player for “the best band and The Human League that made knowledge. I remember him coming in in school” with his newly acquired him realise electronics could be used one day and saying, ‘Led Zep and the Wurlitzer electric piano. His next to create succinct, melodic songs. But purchase was a Transcendent 2000 it was the prog bands that opened synth that he bought based on an ad his eyes to the possibilities of the describing it as “a poor man’s VCS3, recording studio. as used by Pink Floyd”. “They were the first to sit in “Obviously, Dark Side Of The Moon multitrack studios with time on their was a hugely influential album at that hands, record company money and an time, and I thought, ‘I want that!’ The endless supply of psychedelic drugs,” Keith Emersons, Rick Wakemans he chuckles. “They were the first to and Joe Zawinuls weren’t really what say that a rock band doesn’t have to interested me. For a start, I never had sound like a rock band; that you can the patience and discipline to practise create worlds within worlds and use scales; I was much more interested in the studio as a place to dream – and texture, in simple melodic lines, not have the headache later on of how to pyrotechnics. I liked Chick Corea’s play it live!” solo synth work: he was the first Between 1980, when he played keyboardist to copy techniques from his first solo gig, and the release of guitarists and horn players.” his debut album The Golden Age Of Wireless in 1982, Dolby had played keyboards with Bruce Woolley And The Camera Club, toured with and written a hit single for new-wave kook Lene Lovich, written Magic’s Wand, and added synth parts to albums by Thompson Twins, Robyn Hitchcock and Foreigner.