Fact #160461

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THOMAS DOLBY – by Johnny Black (Jan 2000)
Emerging from behind the synth-bank of criminally under-rated late 70s combo Bruce Woolley's Camera Club, Thomas Dolby's professorish image and electro-pop confections brought him critical acclaim in the UK and a huge American hit. Then what?

Thomas Dolby : My biggest single in Britain was Hyperactive, but a combination of MTV exposure and dance club plays made She Blinded Me With Science Top 5 in America. MTV was still very new, and not everybody was doing videos, so I became one of the first video hits.

I don't quite understand what happened, and why it happened in America and not in my home country and the country where I work and where presumably most of my influences come from.

If nobody in England had ever heard of me I'd be a little bit worried because 'Science' is tongue-in-cheek in a way that I would expect a lot of people to grasp. It's angered me that the only thing people have to associate me with is synthesisers but I've probably done a lot to encourage that. What I could have done, in retrospect, is present myself to the unknowing public as something completely different, and then people would never have thought of using that kind of vocabulary in the same breath as the name. But I've never been one for manipulating the public's vision of me. But at the same time I accept that it is necessary for people to have associations.

It just angers me - even at the time of writing 'Science' it angered me - that I'd let it go that far and 'Science' was almost taking it to its extreme. Saying, 'Right, if it's so important to have a public face, let's go completely over the top, to the extent of getting Magnus Pyke into it. Let's really throw caution to the wind'

And it worked in the States - this is the odd thing. That in the most materialistic and capitalistic country in the world, where consumers are treated like complete morons, it has worked. The stuff that people are writing about me in the States now - even though 'Science' was Top Five and was obviously the one everyone would know - shows they also know enough about me to know that it is not serious. They know there is something else behind it.

One bizarre side effect of the She Blinded Me With Science video was that it was directed by Steve Barron who also did Billie Jean for Michael Jackson. When Jackson saw my video, he was amazed, because he’d assumed I was a black American kid. I spoke with him on the phone and he gave me his number in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Then Science became a hit in America and I had to do promotion in LA. So I rang up Michael and he invited me to his house. We sat and talked, with him in this enormous medieval throne, surrounded by fabulous art treasures. Then I heard my song playing upstairs, and there were all these kids peering down from the balcony at me. But we had a pleasant chat, and then Randy took me night-clubbing. So that was my first night in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Really though, Science was untypical of my music, most of which is more quiet, lush and personal, but, for me, it was a springboard to other things. It enabled me to branch out into film and tv music, production work, and keyboard playing for other artists … I did the music for Ken Russell’s film Gothic, and the songs for George Lucas’s Howard The Duck. I had to teach the girl band in that film how to play. I did production for Joni Mitchell, George Clinton, Prefab Sprout, and gradually my solo work became the lesser part of my activity.

I was never very happy with EMI, which was always like a huge corporate machine. Richard Branson was always telling me he’d love to have me on Virgin, so I finagled my way out of the EMI deal and I moved to Virgin. Six months later, Branson sold it to EMI, so I was back at square one. Then during 1993, I was living in Hollywood, and my house in the Hollywood hills slid down into the valley during an earthquake. Unfortunately, I was the victim of an insurance scam so I didn’t even get the money back. I lost almost everything.

I went through a disastrous label deal with Giant Records, and things didn’t pick up until I started getting asked to do music and sound for virtual reality, video games and websites. The technology was so new, I had to hire engineers and programmers to help me deliver good audio quality within those new formats. So in 1993 I started a company, Beatnik, out here in San Mateo, California, and it has blossomed to 120 people. The briefest description is that it’s an internet-based music technology which makes it possible to add interactive soundtracks to web content. It consumes all my time, and I still find it challenging and exciting to be on the cutting edge of this new technology, but I intend eventually to take a step back from it, leave the company in the hands of my partner, and get back to making music.

I’m married to the actress Kathleen Beller, who was formerly Kirby Colby in Dynasty, and we live with our children in a cliff-top house on Half Moon Bay, overlooking the Pacific. I still have a house in Suffolk, though, which we visit when we can.”

Thomas Dolby’s Beatnik website is at http://www.beatnik.com