← Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville
Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville
Thomas Dolby On Touring, Storytelling, And Staying Ahead Of Music Tech
00:24:28
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- [00:14]
A
My career in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent. Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects. Industry professionals, whether famous stars or behind the scenes staff, have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life. Stories. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information on how they evolve into their chosen career. We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes, and hear from people who help them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind the scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment. Hi, I'm Tony Mantour. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville. Before we jump in, if you haven't already, tap the follow button. Take two seconds to do that now. It really helps the show reach more people. Few artists have bridged music and technology as seamlessly as Thomas Dolby. From the cultural phenomenon of she Blinded Me with Science to a career that spans songwriting, production, innovation, and an entrepreneur of music technology, he has consistently stayed ahead of the curve over the decades. He's reinvented himself while maintaining a distinct creative voice that continues to influence artists across generations. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I really appreciate you being here.
- [01:46]
B
Yeah, well, nice to be here and looking forward to being back in Nashville.
- [01:49]
A
Yeah, yeah. When you coming in?
- [01:51]
B
22 APR.
- [01:55]
A
Oh, nice, nice.
- [01:57]
B
At the Cannery Ballroom.
- [01:59]
A
Oh, yeah, That's a great place. Good. Yeah, you'll have a great time there. So tell us a little about what you've been up to lately and what's going on with your music.
- [02:07]
B
Yes, I'm getting ready to go on a North American tour. I quite often play solo on tour, but this time I'm playing with a full band. Okay, great musicians. Gail Ann Dorsey, formerly bass player and singer with David Bowie for the last 10 years of his life. Andrew Lipka, who is a Philadelphia songwriter, composer, orchestrator and multi instrumentalist. And Matt Hector, who has drummed with me in the past, who has been the drummer for Iggy Pop and Tom Yorke and various others. And we'll be sharing some vocals on some songs and telling a lot of stories, sort of anecdotes from the 1980s. I wrote a memoir, the Speed of Sound, in which I told some of these stories and people often ask to hear them when I go out live. So I've been sort of weaving them together with musical quotes from the music of that era that, you know, influenced me or stuff I've been involved in as A keyboard player, as a producer, as a songwriter, and so on.
- [03:04]
A
Yeah.
- [03:04]
B
So it's new arrangements of songs that you probably know very well, but a reimagining of those songs, throwing a new light on them.
- [03:12]
A
Yeah, that's awesome. Now, let's talk a little bit about your songwriting. You have a history and always have been associated with technology. So I'm curious, at the start of a song, are you constructing a sound or pursuing a feeling? And what intentional steps do you take to make sure that that translates all the way to the finished record?
- [03:32]
B
Oh, it's never really the sound.
- [03:34]
A
I get that.
- [03:35]
B
I think the sound, you know, the production on records is a byproduct of the song itself. If you have a great arrangement, you know, great parts that work together organically, then if you record them right, you've got great production. It's not really the sonic trickery that makes production great, but. No, I mean, I'm first and foremost a songwriter. I think a lot of my songs, you could convey the essence of them with just a piano and voice or, you know, Fender rose and voice or whatever. And, you know, to be fair, a lot of the songwriters that influenced me when I was growing up were people like that. Not in any given style. You know, some of them were sort of mavericks.
- [04:11]
A
Right.
- [04:11]
B
Dan Hicks or Captain Beefheart. And some of them were more conventional songwriters like Joni Mitchell or Morrison or Elton John.
- [04:19]
A
Yeah. It's the simplicity and the purity of the song that can make a difference.
- [04:23]
B
Exactly.
- [04:23]
A
When it's done in the right way, of course, it touches people's hearts.
- [04:27]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And the amazing thing about music is that, you know, if I'm writing a song and I find a chord change that I like, and it sort of hits me in a certain place.
- [04:35]
A
Yeah.
- [04:36]
B
I put it out there. And amazingly, I find that people all over the world hit them in the same place, you know, and it's like there's something about humanity that makes us respond in a certain way to, you know, resonances within music. And you can't always pinpoint that and analyze it, but it's just a magic that is undoubtedly very real.
- [04:54]
A
Yeah. Not only that, but it's a human connection as well, because when you feel it, you sing it differently. You're not just performing, you're transmitting emotion. And that's what connects you with the listeners.
- [05:07]
B
Exactly. And, you know, I really notice, talking to people who are contemporaries of mine, that if you talk about music in the 1980s, invariably you'll get an enthusiastic response. But when you drill down it means different things to different people. Yeah, you know, to some people it meant, you know, take low lead leg warmers and girls just want to have fun and walking on sunshine. And to others it meant, you know, Bon Jovi and Pat Benatar and Twisted Sister. And to others it meant, you know, Talking Heads and the Smiths and the Cure, you know, so it's like it was such a multifarious kind of era for music, but living through it, it was actually quite dark. You know, I think looking back, you know, we tend to do it with rose colored spectacles. Certainly by today's standards, you know, it was quite a naive, innocent era. But actually, I mean, you know, growing up in England through the miners strike, punk rock riots, the Falklands Thatcher, you know, corporate greed, Reagan, Cold War, et cetera, it was a pretty dark era. Expectations were not very high. And I think that that sort of disassemb, dissociation and loneliness is reflected in, you know, some of the music of that era. And actually, oddly enough, that seems to be resonating with people today more than the sort of walking on sunshine type of 80s music.
- [06:29]
A
Yeah, there's depth to the music that goes beyond entertainment. It carries meaning. It's making statements, not just creating vibes for everyone.
- [06:37]
B
Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, the technology and distribution of the time meant that we went into the studio and we did, you know, serious albums that had 10 or 12 cuts on them and they had a theme to them and so on, and then we went out and promoted them. You know, these days it's a lot more diverse. You know, you get a song in a TV show, you do a collaboration with a DJ or something, and you get individual songs, you know, get millions of streams on Spotify. It's a lot more sort of defocused than it, than it used to be. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. I think that, you know, progress is progress. I mean, you can't turn back the hands of time. But I think you can, you can still be nostalgic about it and I think you can lean into some of the, you know, darker and more personal aspects of it rather than just sort of bathe it in, in white light and pretend that it was all a bed of roses.
- [07:26]
A
Early on, you were creating music that felt either futuristic and meaningful or more commercial and disposable. Did you ever worry that experimenting in those lanes might somehow affect your artistic credibility of what you was doing at that point in time?
- [07:43]
B
Well, I had no artistic credibility to protect, really. At the begin, you know, I was just. I was just diving in at the deep end, and nobody knew what synthesizers were yet. You know, I mean, there was. There was a backlash, you know, you're seeing today against new technologies. It's just a sort of built in, you know, fear of the unknown and the genre of electronic music that maybe I was associated with. A lot of artists listened to the sounds that machines made, and they had a charm to them that they sort of leaned into. But it was like. It was a certain cold mechanism, you know, mechanical nature. So people, craft work and, you know, Barry Newman, the Human League, went along with that and sort of leaned into it and made that the basis of their sound. That was certainly the, you know, the community that I emerged from as a sort of DIY electronic artist. But really I was using synths to make a more sort of cinematic, atmospheric, symphonic sound.
- [08:36]
A
Sure.
- [08:37]
B
Trying to stop them sounding so much like machines and more human in a lot of ways. And I think maybe not on the songs that people heard on the radio, but in. In songs like Airwaves, Screencast, Budapest by Blimp, I Love you, Goodbye, and on. It was definitely the human element that connected with people. And I was very. I'm grateful for my commercial success. That was a springboard, you know, to get people into the deeper cuts. But I find that at my shows, you know, the deep cuts are the ones that people are shouting out for, you know, rather than the radio hits. And that's very gratifying because I think they have longevity with she Blinded Me
- [09:11]
A
With Science becoming such a defining hit, do you think it acted as a gateway for audiences to find the more layered or experimental parts of your work with your deeper cuts that you had?
- [09:24]
B
Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. I think it was, you know, between that and other commercial things I'd played on, like Waiting for a Girl like you for Foreigner or, you know, Heaven Is a Place on Earth for Belinda Carlisle or whatever it may be. Shows I did with David Bowie, with Roger Waters, I think I sort of ambushed people because they go, oh, that guy again. Wait a minute. Didn't I hear his song on the radio? And now here he is, you know, playing keyboards with Bowie. So it was like just a way to sort of triangulate, you know, different aspects. And so that's what got people interested in digging a little bit deeper into my music.
- [09:56]
A
Right.
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B
And, you know, I mean, I'm making it sound like a master plan. This is not a master plan. It's like, in retrospect, this benefit of what happened. But I chose to, you know, roll with that rather than feeling trapped by the commercial success of Shublan and Mirror Science and going out and sort of, you know, cashing in on that formula.
- [10:13]
A
You came up in the analog era where sound had a certain warmer feeling and limitations. Now we are in a fully digital landscape. There's still something about analog that warme sound, the imperfections that many of us still chase digitally. Have you fully embraced the digital aesthetics? What do you feel we might have lost, if anything? And how have you personally evolved with the shift to digital music that we're doing today?
- [10:42]
B
I mean, really, I think that the difference with analog and digital as a recording medium has had less effect on the evolution of music than distribution and the reality of the fact you can go in your back room and record the stuff now. You know, before you had, before we had that, the only place to record music was in an expensive recording studio that took a budget, that took somebody stupid enough to loan a lot of music, a lot of money to a musician, which is not banks, they were called the record labels, you know, so there was this whole sort of obstacle course you had to get through before the public would ever get to hear you. Well, now that barrier is completely gone and it's, you know, the barriers to getting heard by the public are incredibly low. The downside is there's 100,000 other guys that, that are competing for the same space, you know, so it's very hard rise above the noise. I mean, to me that right there is the true significance of digital technology versus analog. You know, analog was rarefied. It was how much music you could get on a piece of vinyl. It was the, you know, where the VU meters would pin in, you know, when you record to tape that there was limitations on it there. But limitations are good. You know, it's like sometimes making the very best out of the hand you're dealt leads to creativity and invention. Look at sergeant Pepper. You know, would they have done the same thing if they had 120 tracks to play with? I don't know. But they were forced to come up with a solution and they maxed it out, you know, with, with the technology that they had that was available. And so I think that's the key really to creativity is, is, you know, your delta hand. You make do with the resources that you have at your disposal and you find creative ways to use them.
- [12:22]
A
You've experienced every side of the creative spectrum. The live stage, the writing process, production chair. You've toured nationally, you've shaped your own Sound and you've helped shape the of other artists. When you look at all that. I'm curious which seat feels more natural to you in this part of your career.
- [12:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, there's no single thing. I mean, really, I'm attracted to anything that's fresh and new, to be perfectly honest. And sometimes that does a full lap and I come back around again. I don't like the feeling of sort of being stultified, you know, it's like, oh, I've got to go back in the studio again next week and start from scratch, you know, when there's something else out there. If you look at my career, you know, there were synthesizers, there were, were samplers, there were MTV videos, there were collaborations, there were video games, there was software, there were ringtones, there was, you know, new technologies, AI now, you know, it's like all of these things unravel a new horizon for me creatively. And so what I'm drawn to is something where I'm unsure, you know, I'm. I'm unsure what the rules are. No user manual for it yet. But I'm attracted to it because I want to dive in and sort of explore it and find out a way to express myself with.
- [13:34]
A
Now you found yourself in Silicon Valley and started a tech company. You were stepping into the role of a music tech founder before that was even a common phrase. At that time, most artists were focused purely on records and touring, not building technology or shaping the infrastructure around music. I'm curious, what was you seeing that others weren't?
- [13:55]
B
Well, I mean, to be perfectly honest, the thing that intrigued me was the fact that the World Wide Web, when you opened a web page, you weren't looking at a jpeg, you were looking at a cluster of elements that were all linked together using code in the background. Because of bandwidth that we had then, that wouldn't be an efficient way. You couldn't send a brochure over the web at the speeds that we had then. Right. So the efficient way to do it was to take certain objects and to link them together using code to lay them out. So this is like MIDI in samples, right? The samples are actually chunks of audio, and the MIDI is the. Is the code that, that tells them what to play and when. So the technology that I created at Beatnik was really a way to actually sort of do MIDI and samples over the Internet, you know, versus streaming technologies like real audio and eventually, you know, Spotify and things like that that were more about how do you take mixed stereo and compress it in A way that it can be streamed and played at the other end. And that was a necessity of the era that we were living in because of processing power, memory, Internet speeds and so on. I mean, as it turned out of people got to play with my technology for free on the web, which is Great. Funded by VCs, nearly an IPO, although the market crashed before we pulled that off. But what we were left with was ringtones. Because Nokia had these tiny devices, mass market devices. They wanted them to play polyphonic ringtones, but they didn't want an expensive audio chip, you know, that would be dependent on Yamaha or Roland or somebody. They wanted to create polyphonic ringtones within with the puny processors that they had in those phones. And at the time they had like over 40% of the world's cell phones and we put our ringtones in them. It was MIDI playing samples in a mass market phone device and they sold 2, 3 billion of them, annoying the heck out of everybody every time the phone went off. But it was an achievement nonetheless.
- [15:50]
A
You've reinvented yourself several times as an artist, a producer, a technologist, even a founder. You've adapted with the industry, sometimes even ahead of it. But when you think back to 1982, the era when the world was discovering you, what part of Thomas Dolby has remained unchanged beneath all the evolution, the technology, the different chapters, what is the constant?
- [16:15]
B
I'm like a kid in a candy store, really. I'm not enough of a grown up to settle into one single career path. I'm too much of a meddler. And that's always been the case.
- [16:28]
A
I'm curious, is there a song in your catalog you wrote with a very specific intention or message behind it, but once it was released into the world, it took on a different meaning for people? Maybe it was misunderstood or maybe audiences connected it in a way that you didn't anticipate. Have you ever experienced that gap between what you were trying to say and what listeners actually heard?
- [16:53]
B
I'm not sure really, because I think, you know, I think people have too short an attention span to waste time on something that they don't get. You know, if you look at my social media, I have very, very few hater. I might get one negative comment for every thousand positive ones, but, you know, there aren't thousands and thousands of comments at all. Because I'm an acquired taste. You know, I'm like the artist that I adored when I was a teenager. I had no idea where Captain Beefheart got in the charts or whether he was on the radio or Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Dan Hicks, Frank Zappa. In fact, if the whole world knew about them, I would have felt a little bit cheated because they were precious to me. I liked being the guy that would show up at a friend's house with these records under my arm and they go, who's this Captain Beefheart guy? And I go, oh, you've got a treat in store for you. And that's the kind of artist I became. I try not to make it important to me whether I get in the charts, on the radio, look at the royalty statements. That's not what drives me, really. I'm just fortunate enough to be comfortable to the point where I can make decisions for the right artistic reasons in order to pay the rent or to become a billionaire.
- [18:01]
A
Okay, let's imagine something for a moment. If 1982 Thomas Dolby, right at the height of that early breakthrough, could sit across from 2026 Thomas Dolby, what do you think would surprise him the most? Would it be the technology, the longevity, the reinventions, or would it be something more personal? The way you see music now, the way you see success, or even the way you see yourself?
- [18:31]
B
Yeah, I mean, possibly that I'd come back around to writing, to filmmaking, to teaching. Those had always been, you know, on the horizon for me, I think when I was, you know, 16 and I left school to work in a fruit and vegetable shop, I didn't know where I was going to end up in my career. So I'm sort of pleased that I got to do all of those things. I got to work with many of my heroes. There's not many sort of bucket list things that I haven't ticked off at this point. Not many people that I would love to have met and worked with that I've never chanced upon. So I feel very satisfied with where I'm at in my career. And that seemed like a good moment, really, a few years ago to sort of, you know, to give back a little bit, become a teacher. When I was 18, there was no program, no career degree available at universities for me to pursue. So it was. I had to do it myself. I had to sort of figure out my own path. But these kids, you know, they've got a mentor. I mean, they've also got fabulous like music theory teachers and professors and so on. But I bring them something different, which is really that sort of spirit of creativity and making do with what you've got. And I think this is increasingly important because, you know, for this generation, their default, if they Hit a roadblock is, oh, here's the answer, you know, okay, you know, how many people in the world got that same exact result at the same exact moment that you did? So. So how do you expect to be an individual and find your own voice if that's the way you go? Now, if you turn that phone off and lock that door and I give you just this keyboard and this drum machine and this recorder and this plugin, what can you do with it in an hour, you know?
- [20:05]
A
Yeah. At its core, creativity isn't about the gadgets or the gear. It's about sitting down with an idea and bringing something into existence from nothing.
- [20:15]
B
Exactly.
- [20:16]
A
Okay, let's have a little fun with this one. If your studio suddenly caught on fire and you could only grab one piece of gear on your way out, what would that piece of gear be?
- [20:27]
B
I mean, looking around, everything is replaceable, really. I've got a pair of Tannoys back there that would be hard to replace. But no, I mean, there's. I don't, I don't like those sort of dependencies. You know, a lot of people assume that I'm hoarding like hardware, synths and things like that. Not really. It's like the literal difference in sound between, you know, a Jupiter 8 plug and an actual Jupiter 8 is not great enough that it's worth dealing with the hassle of maintaining an old synth, you know, like a 40 year old synth, keeping it in tune, you know, there are differences for sure, but it's not worth the hassle for me, you know, it's not what it's all about.
- [21:04]
A
What's one thing you're doing today that has evolved over the years, yet the way you look at it still feels very much the same.
- [21:14]
B
You know, I think probably working from the inside out, I think I got better at that over the years. And I credit my wife with that very much. She's an actor and, you know, before I met her, I sort of thought that acting was about mimicry and accents and body language and stuff like that. And I realized that, you know, great acting is actually more about finding a place within you to make these lines come out real so that they affect people, you know, as if it was real life. So that's, that's acting from the inside out. And I think you can do music in the same way way or you can do it wrong. If you listen to what's on the radio and you go, well, how am I going to make a hit that's going to fit in with that radio fodder that's sort of the wrong way to do things. I don't listen to what my contemporaries are doing and go, oh, there's this new trend to do this. Let me. Let me do something like that. You can't work like that. You have to start from a, you know, feeling that you have. I won't do it unless I feel really compelled to do it. You know, I'm not a 9 to 5 musician who sort of, you know, puts the phone on, do not disturb and goes to work and finish work at the end of the day, it's like, if the muse is not there for me, I can spend days without thinking about music. But conversely, if I get into something, I might not sleep for three nights.
- [22:22]
A
Yeah, I totally get that. When I was out performing, I would always tell my band, don't worry about what others are doing, only worry about what you're doing to make it the very best that it can possibly be.
- [22:34]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [22:35]
A
We've talked about reinvention, technology, creativity and legacy. As we come to a close, what's the one thing you feel listeners need to hear about what you're doing now and about who you've become through all these chapters?
- [22:49]
B
Well, whatever you think you know about me, it's still worth coming to see the show because this is a new direction, and I've tried a bit of this stuff out before in a couple of clubs, and people were really blown away by it and surprised by it. So, you know, as you get older, it's harder to get off your ass and actually go to a club or a theater, and people have mortgages and pets and kids and grandkids to worry about and so on. But I think it's really worth coming to see. And who knows how long there'll be an opportunity to do that. So now is the time.
- [23:17]
A
Time, yes, absolutely. We're reminded all the time that tomorrow isn't promised. So legacy, creativity, and the impact we leave behind, those are all the things that actually carry the weight.
- [23:28]
B
Exactly.
- [23:29]
A
When we're 25, we tend to think we've got forever. But as the years go by, we realize time is more finite than we ever imagined.
- [23:39]
B
Well, I don't think like that. I think I'll live forever.
- [23:44]
A
Well, I certainly hope so, because this has been great, great conversation, great information. I really appreciate you joining us today.
- [23:52]
B
Right on. All right. Antoni, nice to meet you.
- [23:55]
A
The pleasure's been mine. Thanks for your time. Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the show. This has been a Tony Mantour production For more information, contact media at platomusic. Com.