By THIRSTY
During Thomas Dolby’s 35-year
career in music: he earned Grammy Award nominations for his work, including one for Producer of the Year; he blazed a trail for
electronic music; and,
he recorded with Foreigner, Def Leppard, George Clinton and Joni Mitchell. He
appeared live with Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock at the Grammy Awards, and at
Live Aid with David Bowie. He wrote
“She Blinded Me With Science” that became a Top 5 Billboard hit that went on to become an anthem of the 1980s and he wrote
original music for feature films produced by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and
Ken Russell.
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| Thomas Dolby |
Dolby also created music and soundtracks for computer games including Siberia (PC), Grand Theft Auto (Playstation), Double Switch (Sega), Obsidian (MacOS), Toadlickers (iOS), and The Dark Eye (CD-ROM) and originated the first-ever music-oriented Virtual Reality installation, The Virtual String Quartet, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1993. He is the holder of multiple patents in the field of interactive audio.
Thomas Dolby will lead the Johns
Hopkins’ Peabody Institute’s Music for New Media program slated to enroll
its first students in the fall semester of 2018. Since 2014, he has been the
Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University and he released his
memoir, The Speed Of Sound, in
2016.
Stay
Thirsty Magazine was privileged to visit with Thomas Dolby for this
Conversation about his career, the future of music and the role of education in
the next wave of music innovation.
STAY THIRSTY: You are known for your hit songs “She Blinded Me with
Science” and “Hyperactive.” They were the first of many successful singles and
albums in your career. Looking back, how important was achieving success so
early?
THOMAS DOLBY: Vitally important, because it's what opened so many
other doors for me. After the hits, I got approached by a myriad of different
people – needing synth playing, production, film scores and so on – and it led
to a diverse and varied career.
STAY THIRSTY: You are also known for your early involvement in
music’s “new wave” movement. Who were the influences back in the 1980s that
contributed to the development of your sound?
THOMAS DOLBY: My sound owed a lot to Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Bowie,
Prince, George Clinton ... but also quirky individualistic songwriters in many
different genres such as Frank Zappa, Van Morrison, Dan Hicks, and Joni
Mitchell.
STAY THIRSTY: In 1985, you performed at the Grammy Awards with
Stevie Wonder Herbie Hancock and Howard Jones. What did that experience teach
you?
THOMAS DOLBY: The road to MIDI Hell is paved with bad hairpieces.
STAY THIRSTY: You also performed in Live Aid as part of David Bowie’s band. Did Bowie’s style of music
have any place in your lexicon in the years that followed?
THOMAS DOLBY: If anything, playing with Bowie actually exorcised
that influence from my music. Post-1985 there's a lot less Bowie in my singing
and songwriting.
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| Thomas Dolby Memoir |
STAY THIRSTY: You have also scored movie and video games. Are there
special skills required for each genre or are the techniques generally the
same?
THOMAS DOLBY: They're very different. In a movie you have a
pre-existing linear template to work to – though it's often a moving target – and
your job is to enhance the drama and emotion, the sense of time and place,
empathy or suspicion of a given character, the grandeur of the landscape, etc.
In a game you're looking to match the player's excitement but it's the player
that dictates the pace and the action. So you have to put your movie score
smarts into a real time situation. This is becoming truer as games get more
sophisticated, and certainly with the arrival of VR, where it's all about being
in the moment.
STAY THIRSTY: Retro-futurist music, steampunk and diesel punk, noise
music, jazz and dance music all seem to have a place in your head and in your
creations. How do you sort this all out when you are writing new music? How
organic and personal are your songs and albums?
THOMAS DOLBY: There's no “sorting out” to do. I don't set out to
write in a given style. Sometimes a particular musical idiom works for me as an
aid to telling the story. For “Aliens Ate My Buick,” I adopted a saucy funk
style to suit the “pop culture” kitsch of the songs, whereas on my last album,
songs like “17 Hills” and “Toadlickers” needed more of an Americana feel to
them, to help tell very middle American-flavored stories.
STAY THIRSTY: How do you view “roots music” and what is its role in
contemporary music?
THOMAS DOLBY: Certain kinds of music are definitely “indigenous” and
seem to belong in a particular
locale or era. For example, steel drum music started because the British
littered the Caribbean with empty oil drums and the locals picked them up on
the beach and started hitting them. Some African music stemmed from the use of
drums to carry messages long distances. Okay, that's very nice for the
musicologists. But there's also a type of music that belongs in Liverpool in
the early Sixties, or San Francisco in the Summer of Love, Seattle in the 90s,
you name it. Some music is made as part of a localized upswelling, other music
(e.g., mine) defies all those categories, because I prefer to have the freedom
to dabble in lots of exciting music styles. Still, I respect people who were
part of a movement, and sometimes I envy them. The closest I came is to the
underground DIY electronic music scene out of London and Sheffield in the late
70s. It was a reaction to the garishness of punk rock and to the big corporate
labels.
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| Peabody Institute's Music for New Media Program |
STAY THIRSTY: In the fall of 2018, you will be heading up the
Peabody Institute’s Music for New Media program. How did this come about and
what are your goals? How necessary is it for music students of today to know
about the “new media” currently in use and being developed in order to better
navigate their musical careers?
THOMAS DOLBY: The Peabody Institute is one of the finest conservatories
in the country, and for years it has turned out brilliant classical musicians.
But there are simply not enough jobs in professional orchestras. Conversely, in
TV, movies, games and VR there are lots of opportunities for sound and music
experts, and many of those seats are currently being filled by people who like
me are enthusiastic and creative but not trained in the fundamentals of music
theory, sight reading, orchestration, etc. When I started out there was nowhere
to go to study this stuff, so I graduated from high school at 16 and went it
alone. Even today there are few people qualified to teach it, plus it's a
rapidly evolving landscape. However, I have real-world experience and I have
constantly encountered new challenges, and treated them as an opportunity to
express myself musically. That's what I want to rub off on my students in the
new degree course – a willingness to creatively problem-solve, and to delight
and entertain. In five or so years these students will go out into the
workforce and be equipped to take on those challenges, regardless of what
twists technology takes. By then we might be getting
lasers shot into our eyeballs, or smart contact lenses and spatialized audio
ear buds; or maybe we'll all be jacking into the Matrix direct; but my students
will know how to make the experience better with great music and sound.
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