Thomas Dolby

Overview

Born
October 14, 1958 · London, England, UK
Birth name
Thomas Morgan Robertson
Nicknames
- Tom
- Dolby
Height
5′ 9″ (1.75 m)

Biography

Family

Spouse

Trivia

Once sued by Dolby Laboratories, the company that holds the patent on the Dolby noise reduction system. He won.
Professor of Music & Film at John Hopkins University.
An avid windsurfer; divides his time between his homes near San Francisco and England's East coast--both good windsurfing locations.
During high school Shane MacGowan of The Pogues was his classmate in English Literature.
Helped create the polyphonic technology that brought ringtones to the world.

Quotes

[on why he didn't produce more records] Producing means months in the studio with a fair amount of responsibility. There's the budget, the deadline, the drummer's drug problem, whatever. You have to be a grown-up, really. When you're the artist, you're allowed to be a crazy kid, and everyone around you supports that behavior, because they know that's where the excitement starts. So they allow you to be irresponsible. I tend to ping-pong between the child and the adult, and I don't think I could've spent all my time in the back seat. Also, I'm something of an exhibitionist. I need to express myself and have my own name attached to it, rather than somebody else's. In balance, you know? In good measure.
People would like to believe that Morrissey lived in a housing project on the outskirts of Manchester, and that he got up every day, dressed in rags, and wrote a couple of heartbreaking songs before his tea brewed. But by the time most people had heard of Morrissey, he was already a millionaire. I've got nothing against him. I think that's great. But it's an unfair requirement to make of musicians to expect them to have no shoes on their feet, or it's not "authentic." That's not reasonable.
[on finding the right performance venue] My least favorite is when it's in the sit-down, table-type venues and there are waitresses busing tables and people pouring beer. My favorite is the old movie theatres that we've done a few of. They have a history about them. People can settle into a comfortable chair, they've had their panini and a glass of wine, and they're prepared to give you their attention for an hour-and-a-half. That works well for me.
[on a 15 year sabbatical away from performance] Initially I got a grant to investigate interactive music, and how music should play in video games and in virtual reality and in location-based entertainment, and eventually the Internet. And over the course of the '90s we made some very innovative music applications - not unlike the apps you can download today. They enabled non-musicians to play music by moving blobs around or or clicking on different buttons to create their own mixes.The core technology was a synthesizer called Beatnik.
[on Peter Gabriel] Peter approaches business the way he approaches his music: it's not digital, it's organic. I am impressed that he's achieved so much in the business world.