The climax of our last chapter is David Bowie’s set at Live Aid in the summer of 1985 . Our guest today was alongside him on the Live Aid stage – and in the helicopter on the nerve-wracking ride out to Wembley Stadium. His name is Thomas Dolby, and his time with Bowie is just one entry on his extremely lengthy resume. On his twitter bio, he describes himself as a recovering synth enthusiast, but even that barely scratches the surface. He’s best known as a techno-pop pioneer who helped define the sound of New Wave with albums like 'The Golden Age of Wireless' and 'The Flat Earth'.' His immortal 1982 smash “She Blinded Me with Science” seemed to predict his move into the burgeoning Silicon Valley tech sphere in the early ‘90s, when he developed innovative audio software for websites and cell phone ringtones. Between 2002 and 2012 he served as the musical director for TED conferences, and is presently on faculty at Johns Hopkins’ Peabody Institute, where he heads up the Music for New Media program.. Dolby was kind enough to share his vast musical insights about David Bowie’s work, and also his truly mind-blowing memories performing with Bowie at this historic concert for an audience of a billion people.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio.
Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Off the Record.
My name's Jordan Runtug. Thanks so much for listening. The
climax of our last chapter is David Bowie said it
live Aid in the summer of one of the most
(00:20):
iconic performances he ever gave. My guest today was alongside
him on the Live Aid stage and in the helicopter
on the nerve racking ride out to Wembley Stadium. His
name is Thomas Dolby and his time with Bowie is
just one entry on his extremely lengthy resume. On his
Twitter bio, he describes himself as a recovering synth enthusiast,
(00:41):
but even that barely scratches the surface. He's best known
as a technopop pioneer who helped defind the sound of
new wave with albums like The Golden Age of Wireless
and The Flat Earth the Ladder, which contains my favorite
song of his screen kiss. His immortal smash he Blinded
Me with Science, seemed to predict his move into the
(01:02):
burgeoning Silicon Valley text fere of the early nineties. His
company beat Nick developed innovative audio software for websites and
cell phone ring tones. In fact, at one point, beat
Nick technology was used in two thirds of the world's
cell phones. Between two thousand two and two thousand twelve,
he served as the musical director for TED conferences, and
(01:23):
since then he's moved into teaching. Coming from a line
of Oxbridge professors, he considers this the family business. He's
presently on faculty at Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute, where he
heads up the Music for New Media program. Thomas or
Professor Dolby, I should say, was kind enough to share
his vast musical insights about David Bowie's work, and also
(01:44):
is truly mind blowing memories performing with Bowie at this
historic concert before nearly a billion people and they barely
even rehearsed. Well, I guess just to start as a
music fan growing up, especially one interested in sort of
technologically innovative sounds, what kind of impact did Bowie have
on you, even back starting with something like space artity
(02:06):
when he had the style phone. What were your first
musical impressions of him? I think probably you know the
age that I was. We were aware of glitter rock
before we really understood you know how how Bowie related
to it. Um. I mean, in fact, I think that
probably All the Young Dudes was the first Bowie song
(02:28):
that I heard, and What the Hoople was sort of
just another glitter rock band, you know at the time. Um,
but glitter was sort of was quite controversial. You know.
I would have been, you know, thirteen, fourteen fifteen at
the time, and it was quite controversial because some of
my crowd sort of thought we took music more seriously
(02:51):
than that, you know. I mean there was also progressive
rock back then, you know, and we were a bit
dubious that somebody that will make up and had sort
of glittery clothes and high heels and stuff could make
serious music as well. So it was, you know, it
was more that the first impression was more the visual one,
(03:12):
the outrage, etcetera. And I think from there, I think
Space Oddity might have been the next thing that I
got into. But I only really, I think probably when
Ziggy Stardus first came out and his popular popularity suddenly skyrocketed.
It's only then that I went back and got into
(03:33):
Manage Sold the World and Hunky Dorry, and I think,
you know, I'm not quite sure of the Steepers. I
might have been aware of of, you know, some of
the you know more the hit songs of Hunky Dorry
like changes in life on Mars and things. I might
have been aware of them before Ziggy came out. But
you know, at that point it was it wasn't it
wasn't a genre to me. You know, I wouldn't have
(03:55):
lumped him in with you know, Mark Boland and Sweet
Wizards and of those people. You know, I realized that
that he was somebody very special. And you know, the
first concerts that I saw of his were round about
that time, and I was in a crowd. You know,
I went to quite high end English schools and there
(04:17):
was a real music intelligentsia who would sit around in
coffee bars, smoking cigarettes and talking about music, you know,
for hours. And in those days, you would every time
a new album came out, you didn't know about it
a couple of months in advance, and you read interviews,
and the day it came out, you'd run out and
(04:37):
spend all your pocket money on it, and you listen
to it back to back, you know, several times while
pouring over the lyrics and the credits and the album
cover and music was such a rare five thing in
those days compared to the way it is now that
it was really very special. When you know an artist
(04:57):
that you that you followed put out a new record,
it was a whole event. It's funny. My friends and
I were just talking about this why I'm thirty three,
and we were saying, we're probably the last age group
that remembers. And I grew up in a small town
in Massachusetts where there was one record store and not
a great selection, and it was it was so you
would just would kind of desperate for for anything. If
(05:17):
you couldn't find the record you wanted, you know, you
would get sort of the adjacent sound just because it was.
It was sort of all there was. And it's and
I as much as I envy um people who are
a little younger that kind of have access to a
whole recorded history out there at their fingertips, I you know,
I sort of I'm sad that they don't get to
feel that sense of the excitement, the building up, the
(05:40):
saving your money, you're going out there and you're bringing
it home, having a physical thing to hold and having
it be kind a funny way a full body experienced. Sure, Yeah, yeah,
I mean, you know, the other thing. So I went
to school in London and the other big deal for
us was that Virgin Records on Oxford Street was the first.
So so before there, I remember record stores where there
(06:01):
were little booths that you could go into. So you
request a certain record and they say Booth four and
you go in there and it's like a little booth
the size of a phone box, you know, surrounded by
sort of egg boxes and it would pipe it in
in the speakers and I remember that growing up. But
Virgin Records came out with so they were initially a
(06:22):
cut price mail order record store. Um, so you know,
you'd see a listing in the back of the magazine
you'd ordered something mail order from them, cut price. But
they opened their first door on Oxford Street in London,
and what was special about it was that they had
a row of aircraft seats, ironically considering where they a
(06:47):
row of aircraft seats and headphones and there they'd say,
you know, go to number four and you put on
headphones and listen and the you know, the I do
I remember spending a pound and a half on an album.
I think probably by the time, you know, by the
time we got to Zegn Stardust, it would have been
(07:08):
seven or eight pounds or something like that was the
price of an album. But that was a hell of
a lot of money. And you know, you've listened to
two or three albums, decide which one of them to
buy based on those listenings, and and you would you
would have the record sleeve in your lap while you're
listening to it, you know, and then you go home
with it in a plastic bag and you couldn't wait
(07:29):
to get it home and put it on your own
record player and then usually listen to side one, side two,
so one, you know, etcetera. And yeah, I mean a
group group of friends of mine, and you know, we
we would really study Bowie and each new phase that
he went through, and we would religiously read articles about
(07:51):
him and stuff, and you know, I mean he to
be a follower of Bowie back then was it was
a very stimulating but also a challenge thing. I mean,
you know, he went through some phases that he didn't
necessarily agree with, you know, like when he came came
back from Berlin and he was like one of the
blood and stations in an open top car giving what
(08:11):
looked like a Nazi salute, and you know, there are
moments like that that were slightly sort of toe curling moments.
And then again, you know when when there was a
BBC documentary called Cracked Actor I don't know if he
came across that, and it was about the Thin White
Duke Tour, and he was such I mean, he was
a skeleton, you know at that point, and it was
(08:34):
very clear that there was sort of psychotic behavior going on,
which we thought was wonderful, of course, but you know
that there's this this one iconic shop where he's in
the back of a limo and he's got a carton
if I can't know if it's milk or orange juice,
and they said it, how does it feel to be
so successful in America? And he said, you know, there's
(08:55):
a fly in this carton of milk, and unlike that fly.
I mean, it must have been difficult to me. Again,
even just you mentioned earlier about how initially he wasn't
somebody that you viewed as making, you know, in inverted
karmas serious music. Was there a moment when that shift occurred,
Like what did something like low do for you? Was
(09:17):
it was it powerful to see someone of his notoriety
using you know, electronic instruments in a in a meaningful
way in in part music. But I'd already made the shift,
I mean, you know, thinking back before that, I remember
seeing Starman on Top of the Pops um which am
I right in thinking that was the first single off
(09:38):
of Z Stardusta. I mean you could, you could look
it up. I mean that, I think that was probably
the first single. And so he was in full glitter gear,
you know, with his his his glitter suit undone to
his navel and he sort of draped himself around Mick
Ronson in a rather homo erotic way. And in those days,
(10:00):
you know Top of the Pops the whole country watched it,
and something like three quarters of the adult population of
the UK watch Top of the Pops every Thursday night.
So if something dramatic happens, if there was a moment
on Top of the Pops, you knew that the whole
country was experiencing it almost simultaneously. And that was one
(10:20):
such moment. I mean, there'd never been anything as avert
as that, and it was just deeply shocking really, but
I think there were there were you know, there are
certain among the younger generations who were just you know,
whatever their own inclination was, they knew this was incredibly
rebellious and outrageous for men to be behaving like this.
(10:44):
And if you were a follower, if you're a disciple,
you felt like this was your people, you know, making
a stand. So to get from that to listening to
a musical artist from more of a sort of musicological standpoint,
you know. So so I went from that to listening
to listen to his records and you know, Vision records
(11:05):
in Oxford Street and pouring over the lyrics and stuff,
and I was, you know, I went from being a
sort of shops individual to being a student and disciple
really relatively quickly and through you know. So Ziggy was
really a watershed Aladdinsane was kind of Ziggy Part two,
(11:26):
but with a bit of a psychotic twist to it,
and had some amazing sort of dystopian futuristic bent to it,
as did Diamond Dogs, you know, songs like Sweet Thing
was just seemed to be a whole like sci fi
movie sort of set in some dark, distant future. And
then I guess Young Americans was a bit of was
(11:49):
a bit puzzling because it was very clean cut by comparison,
and seemed to merge British pop. You know that all
has been a strong sort of soul flavor to British pop,
especially from the north, northern souls we would call it um.
(12:10):
But the idea of an artist sort of crossing over
color barriers like that and yet being clearly accepted and respected,
you know, by by the by American black musicians, M
was pretty mind blowing again, and I think for my
(12:32):
generation sort of opened up for us an interest in
in soul music, in in early funk and so on,
and then in Rapids. I mean, I don't know what
the distance was between these albums, but less than a year,
I would imagine. And suddenly now we hear that he's
gone to Berlin with Brian Eno and he's championing craft
(12:53):
Work and Kurt Vile, and it just you know that
the rate of x fluration and adventure, you know that
that he was going through personally as an artist at
that point, while being under intense pressure as a focus
of attention, you know, as a celebrity, was was just extraordinary.
(13:15):
I can't really think of another example of an artist
who was so much in the limelight, so much in
the thick of the celebrity thing, who still managed to
go on such a sort of artistic voyage with you know,
with his output and the way he was studying and
absorbing and sponging up these multicultural influences. I mean, it's
(13:37):
easier to do nowadays that you fly anywhere in the
world just by clicking a few buttons. But back in
those days, and he didn't even fly, right, he had
to get in the ship to go do this stuff.
You know, Well, you've had the supremely rare and special
experience of being someone who who was was a fan
and did follow him so closely to actually you know,
(13:57):
working with him and performing with him. How did meeting
him in the flesh meet with your expectations? They always say,
you know, you don't you don't meet your heroes. Was
that was that true in your kids? Um? Not? Actually
the contrary, I was. There was a side of me
that was slightly dreading it for that very reason, you know.
(14:18):
I mean, he'd been so important to me, and I
was slightly worried that the you know, it would burst
my bubble to actually meet him. But he says supremely rare.
I would think that most of the people you would
talk to that played with him or whatever had been fans.
You know, you might find something. You might talk to
Gail and she'd say, I've never heard of the guy,
(14:39):
but you know, but for the most part, you know,
we would have been fans. And so meeting somebody sort
of larger than life like that, it is a big
step in your in your personal voyage, and people respond
to it in different ways. But the surprising thing to
me was that, you know, I was expecting the cracked actor,
(14:59):
you the guy in the back of the limo, but
the carton of milk, Yeah, in the carton of milk.
And in fact, he was a total gentleman. You know,
he's very sort of generous, effervescent, warmhearted, made you feel
like you were special, you know, that that you were
sort of you know, without making you feel like you
(15:21):
were being scrutinized or under a microscope. He just seemed
like somebody that appreciated talent, was interested in people. Um
you know, he was a seducer and he seduced me
along along with with countless others. Um. But I do remember,
I mean, I had really very few interactions with him,
to the extent that I could probably list them, you know,
(15:44):
if push Camebishops, like a couple of dozen interactions basically
would start to finish. And so I do remember them
very clearly individually, and I was amazed at the beginning,
how you know. The first conversation I ever had with
him was along these lines. It was, look, you know, Tom,
if I may call you Tom, I've been asked to
(16:06):
do this gig. It's in a couple of weeks. It's
a charity thing. It's it's going to be a big one.
It's that Wembley Bob Geldof's organizing it. My band, my
regular touring bands are off doing other things in the States,
people like else Click and so on. I haven't got them,
and I haven't got much time either, because I'm shooting
(16:27):
this movie with George Lucas called Labyrinth, and I wonder
if you could help me put a band together out
of people that you know. So here Bowie had worked
with Kevin Armstrong and Matthew Seligman, who were sort of
two musicians that I worked with a lot, and I've
been friends with the years on Dancing in the Street
(16:48):
and absolute beginners. And it was then that it recommended
to Bowie, why don't you talk to Thomas because he's
a producer and he's got nose a lot of musicians
and he'd be a good person to to help pull
this together. So it's a boat. Had called them on
my recommendation. He was he was aware of my music
and seemed to like it, and he said, you know,
(17:10):
we haven't got very much time. I'd like Matthew and
Kevin to be involved, but can you help me, you know,
put together the rest of the musicians and if you
could sort of be, you know, in charge of rehearsing
them for me, because I'm only going to have a
few hours, you know, to rehearse with you. So I
sort of along those lines and I said, well, that's
(17:30):
an absolute dream. I'd love to do that, so would you. Oh,
that would be just wonderful, would be just great. And
of course that there's no money or anything. It's a
charity thing. But he seemed to be genuinely bowled over
that a young generation of musicians would be willing to
drop whatever they're doing to play with him, put the
work in, do this charity gig for a good cause.
(17:54):
And and so on. You know, he see he seems
to be genuinely delighted with that. And I remember hanging
up the phone and thinking, you know, I feel like
I just talked to John Gielgood or some sort of
classic you know, some classic English actor, not not the
cracked actor. At it sounds like David gave you an
(18:22):
awful lot of trust and freedom just in letting you
be the band leader. What was he like when you
were actually in the room and performing altogether? It sounds
like he was really generous and letting everyone be themselves
and not micromanaging everyone. Yeah, I mean that was very interesting.
And his his musicianship was very interesting because he always
played it down, you know, you would he wasn't a
(18:43):
muso in terms of talking about why he played a
Martin versus Gibson, and why he liked this tuning on
his strings and you know how he was influenced by
you know, he totally played that down, both his guitar
playing playing and slats playing as well. And he was
(19:04):
a capable musician, but he seemed to feel that it
would diminish his stature as a front man if if
he was viewed as as a sort of multi instrumentalist
or somebody that cared a lot about the music. You know,
he I think wanted to give the impression the music
(19:25):
just flowed out of him. It was just an intuitive thing,
not something he ever studied. And I mean, I don't
very much he ever practice scales, you know, but I
mean he was he as capable musician, and certainly you know,
he could arrange for any instrument. But I think his
his gift really when working with a band was that
(19:47):
he would stand in the middle of the room and
just sort of exude, you know, sunshine and wonderfulness, and
he would you'd look at him and you'd want to
please him. You know, you'd want to play a part
that he would like that he would enjoy um. And
you know, he never got behind the keyboard with me
and showed me something that he was hearing. He would all,
(20:09):
you know, he would give you little hints and push
just prod you in a certain direction. But then there
was it would be my idea that came out and
he goes yes, you know, and then he would just
he sort of moved the band forward like that, and
he would occasionally say I'm not sure about that intro
and he'd leave it at that, and then you know,
the drummer would say, well what if I just started
(20:30):
with this film? All the guitarists would say, okay, I could,
I could play this chord to bring it in, and
the go yeah, that's much better. Um. So he was
the opposite of micromanager. Really. He was somebody that just
inspired you to be at your best. And you mentioned
he was only available to practice a handful of times.
(20:51):
Was that a concern at all for him? Was there
a sense of nervousness leading up to this? At what
point did it become a parent that this wasn't just
a charity show, This was something that was, you know,
a very much bigger deal than that. Yeah. It was
actually three afternoons on consecutive weekdays for about three hours
(21:12):
each in a in a rehearsal room in West London.
Plus we we hadn't really had. That was those the
band rehearsals, and then he wanted to do some vocal rehearsals,
so we went to where he was shooting Labyrinth and
he had a trailer and that the people that were
going to be singing in the live thing. We just
sort of routine some backing vocals in his trailer and
(21:36):
that was it. And yes, it was a concern because
he kept changing his mind about what songs he wants
to do. In fact, at the beginning, when when we
first set up, he said, well, I I need to
promote my current single, which was Loving the Alien, and
I mean, you know, it's not a terrible song, but
it's not you know, wouldn't make his top twenty list
(21:58):
of all time classics. As we got closer to live aid,
I think he realized the magnitude of the show that
it wasn't just you know, some charity festival thing. It
was going to be a global event and it would
be sort of you know, I'm not sure if he
knew then that it would be sort of immortalized, you know,
(22:19):
that it would take on this sort of iconic status
like a woodstock or something like that. But I think
he realized after a while that it wasn't about promoting
your current single. It was it was about just pure
pleasure for the audience, both the live audience and the
TV audience. And he was back to seduce. He was
back in seduction mode again, you know, and he realized
(22:42):
that he had to pull out some sing along feel
good classics from sort of you know, from different eras,
and we had to knock him dead. You know, we
were playing after Queen, who are a great live band,
and he, like you said, he was putting a lot
of trust in us because we were you know, we've
probably had an average age of about twenty four and
(23:03):
we could easily have been overwhelmed by the moment. Now.
He never asked any of us if we'd ever played
a stadium before. The answer was no. I think any
of us have ever played bigger than about two thousand seater.
I'm not sure if I'd ever done an open air
gig at that point. And you know, he sort of
he sort of didn't need to. I think he just
sort of felt it. And I think probably if he'd
walked in the rehearsal room and we'd suck, he would
(23:24):
have thought of a plan be get get Earl and
you carlost On on a plane pronto. Yeah, but no,
I think I think he was feeling it, and I
think he felt that it was appropriate that it being
a UK show, he didn't show up with his professional
American touring band. He had a bunch of local kids.
(23:47):
I think I've read that you share a helicopter ride
with him over to to the Wembley site. What was
that ride like? What was he was? He? Was he nervous?
Was he chatty? What was? What was that? So Live
Aid was was a huge deal in London that day,
to the extent that police were diverting traffic. And you
(24:09):
know that the remember that morning is very very nice day,
and we're going for a walk that morning, and every
upstairs window that was open, you'd hear the radio going
with the preamble to Live Aid. And you know, if
you if you crossed the street the car stopped to
the traffic light, you'd hear that. You'd hear it coming
out of the car. And I was instructed that I
(24:31):
had to fly in the helicopter from central London to
Wembley Stadium, which is about you to drive would be
maybe an hour, but was twelve minutes in the helicopter.
And so we went from Battersea Heliport, which is just
as helicopter pad by the River Thames. And I went
down there at the appointed time, which I think would
(24:51):
have been sort of noon or something like that. And
the word had leaked out that some of the Live aids.
The labs were leaving from there. So there's a gaggle
of autograph hunters at the heliport and there wasn't really security,
so they were just sort of wandering around, you know,
trying to get autographs and things. And we met in
the lounge and he was already dressed for the gig,
(25:14):
as was I, and he was very nervous because he
still wasn't flying at that point, and he'd never been
in a helicopter no, and so he was rather nervous
in the lounge. And we went outside onto the pad
and he had to sign some more scrafts and a
handful of fans were sort of following him with a camera.
(25:34):
I gotta snap myself and I had a little brownie
camera myself. And he was looking nervously at this helicopter
and as soon as we got in, he turned into
the thin white to you know, he had a he
had a Homburg hat and he plumped it on his
head and pulled it down and started chain smoking, and
(25:56):
the pilot was going could he extinguished? Ceare actually saying that,
he went, suck you. And we sort of took off
and he was like basically had his face pressed to
the window, and he kept saying to the pilot, how
long is this flight? And he said about twelve minutes?
Are there any skyscrapers or pilot, what do you do
(26:16):
about pylons and electrical lines and things like that. He was,
you know, he was an absolute diva for for twelve minutes.
And you know, I remember, I've been the how he
got to before. But I remember banking over Wembley Stadium,
which had those sort of two gold towers, so it's
very recognizable from the air, little wisps of cloud, and
(26:40):
we banked over the stadium and I could see the
crowd and the stage. The crowd were all out of
the field, and I could see on the screens at
the side, like a close up of Freddie Mercury sort
of crooning to the heavens in the middle of we
are the Champions or something like that. And and I mean,
and they in the years later when I saw Bohemian Rhapsody,
(27:03):
if you remember that movie, they recreated my bird's eye
view of Wembley Stadium, you know, with a with a
sort of like a drone shot which they created in
c G I with this sort of drone shot into
the stadium and up to the stage with Queen on stage.
So Sobo was a complete bitch for twelve minutes. But
(27:25):
the moment we touched down in like a parking lot
behind Wembley, his face brightened up and he turned into
he turned back into John Gielgud and out on the
tarmac there are about a hundred photographers and he said, oh,
I like this bit, Tom, and he pushed open the
(27:47):
door and he went outside and immediately started posing for
the photographers. And there were some police sort of led
us through the crowd of paparazzi. I was bringing up
the rear and we're taken straight to a green room
at the side of the stage and cool just finishing
up the set, and they said, you'll be on in
(28:08):
about five minutes. No time to get your bearings. You're
just there and you're on. Yeah, just there and on.
And he'd only decided, like the night before, which four
songs he wanted us to do, and we played we
practiced them, but we've never played them back to back,
you know. And when you're rehearsing as a band, you
go through these phases, and one is that you can
(28:30):
you can make a sum sound decent about the third
or fourth time you player, and then eventually you get
to a point where you can play the sums in
any order and they always sound good, you know, but
that's you know, that's after weeks of rehearsal and a
few gigs usually. So he decided the night before what
the set was going to be, and his plan was
to start, as I recall had been to start with
(28:53):
Rebel Rebel. We sat at the side of the stage
and he said, you know what, let's start with TVC
one five And that meant honky Tonk piano solo by
yours true not not universally applauded for my honky Tonk
piano playing um. And and that was that next thing
(29:14):
I knew we were on stage, But I mean that
once once we were on stage, any nerves completely dissipated
and you were just sort of watch it along by
the atmosphere of the crowd. Are there any snapshot moments
that stick out from when you're on the stage There
is at all, really just a blur and electric blur.
(29:34):
Memory is interesting because I mean I've seen I've seen
footage which was almost from my point of view on
the stage of the whole performance. So when when I
think of it, I'm not quite sure whether I'm recalling
it from memory or or whether I'm replaying replaying the video.
I was certainly, I mean it was, it was certainly
(29:55):
quite transcendent, partly because it took a lot of concentration
to play songs that, you know, we were massively under rehearsed.
But the flip side was we've lived in these songs
since we were fifteen, you know. So Heroes, for example,
which is deceptively simple. It's only got a couple of sections, really,
(30:17):
but they vary in length. And sometimes the simple songs
are easy to screw up because you lose track of
where you are. You know, if you're playing a complicated
Stevie Dan chord sequence, then then it's easier to keep
track of where you are than than something that's just
a guitar riff, you know. So I was terrified I
was going to screw it up, but I mean I
just let go and I just sort of I regressed
(30:39):
to my teen fan boy self, you know, as a
as as a Bowie fan, and my fingers basically played
the notes on their own. So you finished the Senate
live the crowd goes wild you walk up the stage.
(31:01):
What was the moment like stepping off? How do you
come down from a moment like that playing in front
of I guess including the television audien it's almost a
billion people. Was it just a massive exhale or did
did Bowie turn to you and say something? What was that? Like?
He was very pleased with the way it has gone.
You know, there wasn't actually a huge sort of backstage scene,
(31:23):
and there weren't a lot of liggers as we call.
There wasn't a party going on backstage. It was mostly
people associated with the bands and their crew and their
management stuff like that. You know. I remember him chatting
with Freddie Mercury and being hustled into an MTV interview,
which I think you can see on YouTube. Already had
(31:45):
two or three beers in me by then, and for
some reason that they asked me if I would if
I would be in the interview with Bowie, and it's
it's it's funny. It's actually sickening when you look at
the interview because they asked Bowie a question that he's
very he's very cool and controlled and put together, and
they turned turned the mic to me and I might
as well just said you know who that is by
(32:11):
you know. But and then they asked him again a
question about the day, about the cause, and the smile
went off his face and he turned to the camera
and he basically said, this is this is an important moment.
You really need to find a way to donate to
this cause. It's a worthwhile cause. And you know, there
(32:34):
are kids starving, and you know, he was like very
sincere and really doing the job for Bob called off
that he was needed to do. And the level of
professionalism was amazing to me that he could he could
sort of switch modes like that. Very very mature, I suppose,
you know, seemed very mature to me. Did you see
him again after that? When was the next time that
(32:55):
that you saw David after after? I've yeah, I mean
I saw him a fume of times. I did another
gig with him in New York at the Beacon Theater.
Um would have been around about two thousand. I would
think there's also a record of that online. It was
filmed by his son for a movie, and it was
it was like a private gig for his web subscribers.
(33:18):
And I had my tech company beat back at the time,
and we've been working with him, who's sort of a
spokesman for my company here. They adopted our technology on
his website and he did an ad campaign for us
and stuff, which was great. And he did this gig
in in New York and I had a V I
(33:40):
P table with a few of my in laws who
are from New York, and halfway through the set, he
just put his hand to his forehead and he said,
is Tom Tolby out there somewhere? Come on, come on
up here, I mean literally, So so I wandered up
on stage and Mike Garson was playing, was playing keyboards,
so they gave me a remote keyboard. I just joined
him for the last few songs and hung out a
(34:02):
little bit. Yeah, we we talked on and off over
the years. He was very interested in technology, you know,
at the height of the Internet boom, and you know,
he always seemed to view me as somebody that sort
of plugged into that world, and he had a lot
of questions for me. You were obviously a great fan
of David's music for years before you met him. By
(34:24):
performing alongside him and sort of being inside his music
with him, did that give you a new perspective, and
there was work or new inside into what he does.
I think I was. I was surprised that you know,
you asked the question did he micro manage you? I
assumed that he had such a level of control over
(34:45):
his music and his arrangements and production that he would
have a hand in all of that. You know, I
mean that there are a number of comparisons to Prince
that I think are quite interesting that you know, we
weren't going to here, but you know, by comparison, Prince
was somebody that absolutely you know, control every note and
every step and every lighting camera angle, and you know,
(35:08):
had had total control over everything. Roger Waters, who I
worked with, the same deal. The other end of the spectrum,
George Clinton as well, like David Bowie. You know, I
never saw I worked with George a lot, and I
never saw him tell a musician what notes to play
or a singer what knowes to sing. He would just
like you know, you either got him smiling and got
(35:29):
his ass wiggling or you didn't, and so he just
sort of drew it out of you. You know, he
was just a lightning conductor. And Bowie really was like that,
and so it surprised me that that somebody could put
such a strong stamp on every aspect of their performance
without being hands on. And I mean personally, I'm more
in the Roger Waters camp. You know, I'm so sort
(35:51):
of insecure that I have to have total control over everything.
So many things I want to talking about. I really
want to talk to you about your position at Johns Hopkins.
For the past I think five or six years now,
you've been teaching an undergraduate degree course in music composition
for Film and Games at the Peabody Conservatory. What has
(36:12):
that experience been like for you can talk a little
more about that. That's that's so fascinating to me as
someone who who loves music and the evolution of how
it's made. Yeah, well, you know, during my career, I've
always been very drawn to things that are sort of
uncharted and undiscovered. Really, I mean in the early day,
early days of d I Y synth music making, when
(36:35):
for the first time technology has became available that would
enable somebody to go into a back room and make
a record without the benefit of a whole recording studio,
just using machines and try and get machines to sound
human and so on. And there were only a handful
of people doing that, you know, in the UK and
(36:57):
nineteen and you know, I think that we were I think,
you know, my generations, probably the first sort of underground
synthpop slash electronic music generation in the UK were all
Bowie fan boys. Basically I was talking about, you know,
the Human Lea soft Sell Orchestra Maneuvers, depeche Mode, people
(37:20):
like Gary Human. We've all grown up with Bowie and
we sort of took the the d i y ethic
that was suggested by by a sort of a vision
that we had of you know, Bowie and in Berlin
somewhere playing with a bunch of machines, and we sort
of turned that into a whole movement of electronic pop.
(37:44):
Five years later, that was no longer appealing in the
same way I mean, And part of that was because
it had all sort of trickled down the street level.
By the end of the eighties, all of that technology
was available, It was affordable, that was reliable, there were
more to put different brands and choices to choose between.
You can get tuition, you could get software, you can
(38:06):
get additional sound libraries, and you had like ten fifteen
years of music to listen to that would sort of
point you in the right direction. So at that point,
that's not a genre or a place to be that
appealed to me anymore. Does that make sense? So because
it has had lost its rarity, it had lost the
(38:27):
I no longer had the sense of being a pioneer
in that world because there were ten thousand other guys
also able to be in the same space. Conversely, in
Silicon Valley there was technology and software and engineering that
offered a whole new range of possibilities from video games
(38:47):
and CD runs and laser discs and installations and you know,
also computer generated images and and all sorts of different
possibilities there and again that that was uncharted. You know,
it was being done in very expensive, high end studios
and laboratories. But to use to take the d I
(39:12):
y epic into those areas and make my own software
and things like that, that was the new frontier, if
that makes sense. So fast forwards another ten years, the
Webers sort of come, Bubbler's grown and propped. But what
was emerging then there were young kids getting their hands
on phones that had never even known the computer, you know,
(39:34):
the first time they've ever been on the internet, was
on a smartphone, and again, you know, this was the
new frontier again, and so that's where I went with
my company Beaten. It spelled forward a few more years
and in filment, digital filmmaking, the same thing was happening.
You know. Film filmmaking used to be something you had
(39:56):
to have a crew, You're to pay union members, you
had to go owned by seleu Lloyd's dock, you had
to rent cameras and lights. And now suddenly, you know,
with a digital camera, you could make a film that
was technically just as good. You could edit it yourself
on your personal computer. You could go to a festival
like sun Dance and show it and maybe you know,
(40:19):
get a big distribution deal. So that was the new frontier.
So so I've always gone to the new frontier. You know,
that's that's where I feel most alive, you know, most stimulated,
most creative, working in an area where nobody's written the
rule book. Yet you know, there is no rule book,
there's no user manual, and so you know, I've popped
(40:40):
from one place to another over the decades, and I
got to a point in my life, you know, in
the early twenty teens where I just I didn't see
where I was going to go next. There was nothing
in particular that appealed to me as the next place
to go and be creative. And but conversely, I thought
(41:00):
back to when I was younger, and you know, now
I had teenage like college age kids myself, and I
realized that when I was, when I was college age,
there was no university course that I could have done
that would have been interesting to me. Danny, you couldn't
go and do a course in experimental filmmaking or electronic
music or synthesis or anything like that. Probably was offering
(41:23):
that in the UK at the time. So I mean,
you know, I left school at sixteen and worked in
a fruit and veg shop, And and yeah, I'm from
a family that is very highly academic. My dad was
not spend professor, my mom taught algebra. I have siblings
that are very distinguished in their fields academically, And it
suddenly occurred to me, I'd like to maybe see if
(41:44):
I can take a shot at teaching what I know
you know too the next generation, um, and see if
if I have in fact accrued any any wisdom and
experience that I could maybe pass on and I was
given that opportunity by John's Hopkins UM, who I only
really knew about as a medical and research institution, but
(42:07):
it turned out that they had an arts whole arts
side as well, and they were looking for somebody to
help them open a film center in a poor part
of Baltimore. I vaguely knew Baltimore. I've been through here
on tour. Like the city very much. Even though some
shocking poverty here, there's some really gorgeous neighborhoods and really
(42:31):
interesting artistic musical history. And I came here and really
liked it, and I liked the atmosphere at Johns Hopkins,
and I liked this opportunity they had to open this
new center, so they gave me a three year gig
doing that. So I got to the end of it.
You know, my wife is here with me, and she's
from New Yorker family and from there, just up the road,
and we said, we're not ready to leave here yet.
(42:54):
And so I talked to various different departments at Johns Hopkins,
and I taught a little bit at the Peopley Institute,
which is their music conservatory, and they said, well, do
you want to come up with an idea for a
degree program. I told them the same thing as I
told you. It's like there was no course I could
have done, you know that would have taught me. You know,
(43:14):
I had to teach myself. And they said, well, can
you devise a course? So I spent a few months
looking around at what else was out there, and I
realized that there was really no undergraduate course where you
could learn how to do music for picture, whether it
was games or film or whatever. Typical thing to do
would be you do an undergraduate music course and then
(43:36):
he go to a master's at n y U or
U c l A or whatever in film music or
game music, maybe Berkeley School of Music in Boston. But
they were master's programs, not really undergraduate programs. So I said, okay, well,
you know, you guys are sort of late to the game.
There are people who was a conventional conservatory. I said,
(43:57):
let's leap frog these other schools and offer an undergra
I do a program in music composition for media, and
that was five years ago, and I've been doing that
aver since. It's funny. My my girlfriend and I met
at film school at n y U undergrad and uh,
and this would have been two thousand and six, two
thou seven eight, when we were still cutting film on
(44:18):
Steambeck machines with you know, actual film, and we were
just saying the other day, you know, I would love
to meet students there now, because they're probably starting on
day one as ten times the filmmaker we could have
ever hoped to be, because they've had just years of
learning to manipulate visuals just on their phone, and there's
such better, more innate visual storytellers just because they've they've
(44:40):
they've grown up with these technologies. Have have you experienced
anything like that with with with your students, where it's
almost like they just grasped these these concepts innately because
it's just been something that they've had the tools since,
you know, in birth. Almost in some ways, well, I
think you'd be surprised actually that that you know, current
(45:02):
ny you film students probably make all the same mistakes
that you guys did us, just don't just stroll them
more cheaply, you know. Um. And part of the reason
for that actually is this, and that is that if
you're eighteen nineteen years old today and you hit the problem,
you you you come across something that you don't understand
(45:25):
or you don't know how to do it, find a
way around it. You're a few key presses away from
a solution because somebody on YouTube will have done a
tutorial on how to solve that problem. You can download
or use a manual. You can post a message on
a forum, and you know, tomorrow morning you'll have a
dozen different answers. You can put your bad film up
(45:48):
on you know, social media, and people were critique it,
get some haters, but you also get some very constructive criticism,
and so you go through this cycle very quickly. But
what you don't need to do is ever really solve,
you know, creatively problem solve yourself, because the solution is
just around the corner, and there are problems with that.
(46:09):
One is that that solution is going to be in
the search results for thousands of other guys that you
ask the same question, so you're all gonna apply the
same solution to it, which tends to homogenize things and
funnel them all into a certain sort of mediocrity. And
the second thing is that you know your brain chemistry
(46:30):
when you're eighteen years old. You're not done learning by
by a lot while, because we're never done learning but
especially at that age, you're still a sponge and if
you're never if you on your journey, you never hit
a hurdle that you have to figure out how to
circumnavigate it using just the tools in front of you,
(46:51):
the limited tools in front of you. You know, a
certain area of your brain never needs to develop. And
I believe that it's in that creative problem solving that
artists established their original voice, and I think if you
take that away, it's very hard for people to develop
a voice that will enable them to rise above the
(47:13):
white noise floor. You know, of all of the people
out there doing attempted to do the same thing. So
you know, one of the folks is really of my course,
is how do you sort of disable some of those
you know that that that how do you that safety
net that that they have of being able to just
google something? Um, how do you take that away and
(47:36):
force them to use their use their mind and their
creative creativity. You think back on some of the Beatles
studio explorations that were mistakes, I mean putting the backwards
guitar solos and the you know, the feedback and I
feel fine, or things like that, the accidents that that
don't happen if you're if you just sort of handed
(47:57):
the correct answer without really working for it. Now, that's
a really be fascinating to think of what what David
David Bowie's music would have been like had he grown
up with Google. Really, yes, uh, And I think I
think he was more about people, really, I think he
was he was more about the popular consciousness, you know
that the way people follow trends and fashions and so on.
(48:22):
I think he and he wanted to be a manipulator
of all of those things, and he was extremely good
at it. Off the Record is a production of I
Heart Radio. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe
(48:43):
and leave us a review. For more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows in
Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio.
Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Off the Record.
My name's Jordan Runtug. Thanks so much for listening. The
climax of our last chapter is David Bowie said it
live Aid in the summer of one of the most
(00:20):
iconic performances he ever gave. My guest today was alongside
him on the Live Aid stage and in the helicopter
on the nerve racking ride out to Wembley Stadium. His
name is Thomas Dolby and his time with Bowie is
just one entry on his extremely lengthy resume. On his
Twitter bio, he describes himself as a recovering synth enthusiast,
(00:41):
but even that barely scratches the surface. He's best known
as a technopop pioneer who helped defind the sound of
new wave with albums like The Golden Age of Wireless
and The Flat Earth the Ladder, which contains my favorite
song of his screen kiss. His immortal smash he Blinded
Me with Science, seemed to predict his move into the
(01:02):
burgeoning Silicon Valley text fere of the early nineties. His
company beat Nick developed innovative audio software for websites and
cell phone ring tones. In fact, at one point, beat
Nick technology was used in two thirds of the world's
cell phones. Between two thousand two and two thousand twelve,
he served as the musical director for TED conferences, and
(01:23):
since then he's moved into teaching. Coming from a line
of Oxbridge professors, he considers this the family business. He's
presently on faculty at Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute, where he
heads up the Music for New Media program. Thomas or
Professor Dolby, I should say, was kind enough to share
his vast musical insights about David Bowie's work, and also
(01:44):
is truly mind blowing memories performing with Bowie at this
historic concert before nearly a billion people and they barely
even rehearsed. Well, I guess just to start as a
music fan growing up, especially one interested in sort of
technologically innovative sounds, what kind of impact did Bowie have
on you, even back starting with something like space artity
(02:06):
when he had the style phone. What were your first
musical impressions of him? I think probably you know the
age that I was. We were aware of glitter rock
before we really understood you know how how Bowie related
to it. Um. I mean, in fact, I think that
probably All the Young Dudes was the first Bowie song
(02:28):
that I heard, and What the Hoople was sort of
just another glitter rock band, you know at the time. Um,
but glitter was sort of was quite controversial. You know.
I would have been, you know, thirteen, fourteen fifteen at
the time, and it was quite controversial because some of
my crowd sort of thought we took music more seriously
(02:51):
than that, you know. I mean there was also progressive
rock back then, you know, and we were a bit
dubious that somebody that will make up and had sort
of glittery clothes and high heels and stuff could make
serious music as well. So it was, you know, it
was more that the first impression was more the visual one,
(03:12):
the outrage, etcetera. And I think from there, I think
Space Oddity might have been the next thing that I
got into. But I only really, I think probably when
Ziggy Stardus first came out and his popular popularity suddenly skyrocketed.
It's only then that I went back and got into
(03:33):
Manage Sold the World and Hunky Dorry, and I think,
you know, I'm not quite sure of the Steepers. I
might have been aware of of, you know, some of
the you know more the hit songs of Hunky Dorry
like changes in life on Mars and things. I might
have been aware of them before Ziggy came out. But
you know, at that point it was it wasn't it
wasn't a genre to me. You know, I wouldn't have
(03:55):
lumped him in with you know, Mark Boland and Sweet
Wizards and of those people. You know, I realized that
that he was somebody very special. And you know, the
first concerts that I saw of his were round about
that time, and I was in a crowd. You know,
I went to quite high end English schools and there
(04:17):
was a real music intelligentsia who would sit around in
coffee bars, smoking cigarettes and talking about music, you know,
for hours. And in those days, you would every time
a new album came out, you didn't know about it
a couple of months in advance, and you read interviews,
and the day it came out, you'd run out and
(04:37):
spend all your pocket money on it, and you listen
to it back to back, you know, several times while
pouring over the lyrics and the credits and the album
cover and music was such a rare five thing in
those days compared to the way it is now that
it was really very special. When you know an artist
(04:57):
that you that you followed put out a new record,
it was a whole event. It's funny. My friends and
I were just talking about this why I'm thirty three,
and we were saying, we're probably the last age group
that remembers. And I grew up in a small town
in Massachusetts where there was one record store and not
a great selection, and it was it was so you
would just would kind of desperate for for anything. If
(05:17):
you couldn't find the record you wanted, you know, you
would get sort of the adjacent sound just because it was.
It was sort of all there was. And it's and
I as much as I envy um people who are
a little younger that kind of have access to a
whole recorded history out there at their fingertips, I you know,
I sort of I'm sad that they don't get to
feel that sense of the excitement, the building up, the
(05:40):
saving your money, you're going out there and you're bringing
it home, having a physical thing to hold and having
it be kind a funny way a full body experienced. Sure, Yeah, yeah,
I mean, you know, the other thing. So I went
to school in London and the other big deal for
us was that Virgin Records on Oxford Street was the first.
So so before there, I remember record stores where there
(06:01):
were little booths that you could go into. So you
request a certain record and they say Booth four and
you go in there and it's like a little booth
the size of a phone box, you know, surrounded by
sort of egg boxes and it would pipe it in
in the speakers and I remember that growing up. But
Virgin Records came out with so they were initially a
(06:22):
cut price mail order record store. Um, so you know,
you'd see a listing in the back of the magazine
you'd ordered something mail order from them, cut price. But
they opened their first door on Oxford Street in London,
and what was special about it was that they had
a row of aircraft seats, ironically considering where they a
(06:47):
row of aircraft seats and headphones and there they'd say,
you know, go to number four and you put on
headphones and listen and the you know, the I do
I remember spending a pound and a half on an album.
I think probably by the time, you know, by the
time we got to Zegn Stardust, it would have been
(07:08):
seven or eight pounds or something like that was the
price of an album. But that was a hell of
a lot of money. And you know, you've listened to
two or three albums, decide which one of them to
buy based on those listenings, and and you would you
would have the record sleeve in your lap while you're
listening to it, you know, and then you go home
with it in a plastic bag and you couldn't wait
(07:29):
to get it home and put it on your own
record player and then usually listen to side one, side two,
so one, you know, etcetera. And yeah, I mean a
group group of friends of mine, and you know, we
we would really study Bowie and each new phase that
he went through, and we would religiously read articles about
(07:51):
him and stuff, and you know, I mean he to
be a follower of Bowie back then was it was
a very stimulating but also a challenge thing. I mean,
you know, he went through some phases that he didn't
necessarily agree with, you know, like when he came came
back from Berlin and he was like one of the
blood and stations in an open top car giving what
(08:11):
looked like a Nazi salute, and you know, there are
moments like that that were slightly sort of toe curling moments.
And then again, you know when when there was a
BBC documentary called Cracked Actor I don't know if he
came across that, and it was about the Thin White
Duke Tour, and he was such I mean, he was
a skeleton, you know at that point, and it was
(08:34):
very clear that there was sort of psychotic behavior going on,
which we thought was wonderful, of course, but you know
that there's this this one iconic shop where he's in
the back of a limo and he's got a carton
if I can't know if it's milk or orange juice,
and they said it, how does it feel to be
so successful in America? And he said, you know, there's
(08:55):
a fly in this carton of milk, and unlike that fly.
I mean, it must have been difficult to me. Again,
even just you mentioned earlier about how initially he wasn't
somebody that you viewed as making, you know, in inverted
karmas serious music. Was there a moment when that shift occurred,
Like what did something like low do for you? Was
(09:17):
it was it powerful to see someone of his notoriety
using you know, electronic instruments in a in a meaningful
way in in part music. But I'd already made the shift,
I mean, you know, thinking back before that, I remember
seeing Starman on Top of the Pops um which am
I right in thinking that was the first single off
(09:38):
of Z Stardusta. I mean you could, you could look
it up. I mean that, I think that was probably
the first single. And so he was in full glitter gear,
you know, with his his his glitter suit undone to
his navel and he sort of draped himself around Mick
Ronson in a rather homo erotic way. And in those days,
(10:00):
you know Top of the Pops the whole country watched it,
and something like three quarters of the adult population of
the UK watch Top of the Pops every Thursday night.
So if something dramatic happens, if there was a moment
on Top of the Pops, you knew that the whole
country was experiencing it almost simultaneously. And that was one
(10:20):
such moment. I mean, there'd never been anything as avert
as that, and it was just deeply shocking really, but
I think there were there were you know, there are
certain among the younger generations who were just you know,
whatever their own inclination was, they knew this was incredibly
rebellious and outrageous for men to be behaving like this.
(10:44):
And if you were a follower, if you're a disciple,
you felt like this was your people, you know, making
a stand. So to get from that to listening to
a musical artist from more of a sort of musicological standpoint,
you know. So so I went from that to listening
to listen to his records and you know, Vision records
(11:05):
in Oxford Street and pouring over the lyrics and stuff,
and I was, you know, I went from being a
sort of shops individual to being a student and disciple
really relatively quickly and through you know. So Ziggy was
really a watershed Aladdinsane was kind of Ziggy Part two,
(11:26):
but with a bit of a psychotic twist to it,
and had some amazing sort of dystopian futuristic bent to it,
as did Diamond Dogs, you know, songs like Sweet Thing
was just seemed to be a whole like sci fi
movie sort of set in some dark, distant future. And
then I guess Young Americans was a bit of was
(11:49):
a bit puzzling because it was very clean cut by comparison,
and seemed to merge British pop. You know that all
has been a strong sort of soul flavor to British pop,
especially from the north, northern souls we would call it um.
(12:10):
But the idea of an artist sort of crossing over
color barriers like that and yet being clearly accepted and respected,
you know, by by the by American black musicians, M
was pretty mind blowing again, and I think for my
(12:32):
generation sort of opened up for us an interest in
in soul music, in in early funk and so on,
and then in Rapids. I mean, I don't know what
the distance was between these albums, but less than a year,
I would imagine. And suddenly now we hear that he's
gone to Berlin with Brian Eno and he's championing craft
(12:53):
Work and Kurt Vile, and it just you know that
the rate of x fluration and adventure, you know that
that he was going through personally as an artist at
that point, while being under intense pressure as a focus
of attention, you know, as a celebrity, was was just extraordinary.
(13:15):
I can't really think of another example of an artist
who was so much in the limelight, so much in
the thick of the celebrity thing, who still managed to
go on such a sort of artistic voyage with you know,
with his output and the way he was studying and
absorbing and sponging up these multicultural influences. I mean, it's
(13:37):
easier to do nowadays that you fly anywhere in the
world just by clicking a few buttons. But back in
those days, and he didn't even fly, right, he had
to get in the ship to go do this stuff.
You know, Well, you've had the supremely rare and special
experience of being someone who who was was a fan
and did follow him so closely to actually you know,
(13:57):
working with him and performing with him. How did meeting
him in the flesh meet with your expectations? They always say,
you know, you don't you don't meet your heroes. Was
that was that true in your kids? Um? Not? Actually
the contrary, I was. There was a side of me
that was slightly dreading it for that very reason, you know.
(14:18):
I mean, he'd been so important to me, and I
was slightly worried that the you know, it would burst
my bubble to actually meet him. But he says supremely rare.
I would think that most of the people you would
talk to that played with him or whatever had been fans.
You know, you might find something. You might talk to
Gail and she'd say, I've never heard of the guy,
(14:39):
but you know, but for the most part, you know,
we would have been fans. And so meeting somebody sort
of larger than life like that, it is a big
step in your in your personal voyage, and people respond
to it in different ways. But the surprising thing to
me was that, you know, I was expecting the cracked actor,
(14:59):
you the guy in the back of the limo, but
the carton of milk, Yeah, in the carton of milk.
And in fact, he was a total gentleman. You know,
he's very sort of generous, effervescent, warmhearted, made you feel
like you were special, you know, that that you were
sort of you know, without making you feel like you
(15:21):
were being scrutinized or under a microscope. He just seemed
like somebody that appreciated talent, was interested in people. Um
you know, he was a seducer and he seduced me
along along with with countless others. Um. But I do remember,
I mean, I had really very few interactions with him,
to the extent that I could probably list them, you know,
(15:44):
if push Camebishops, like a couple of dozen interactions basically
would start to finish. And so I do remember them
very clearly individually, and I was amazed at the beginning,
how you know. The first conversation I ever had with
him was along these lines. It was, look, you know, Tom,
if I may call you Tom, I've been asked to
(16:06):
do this gig. It's in a couple of weeks. It's
a charity thing. It's it's going to be a big one.
It's that Wembley Bob Geldof's organizing it. My band, my
regular touring bands are off doing other things in the States,
people like else Click and so on. I haven't got them,
and I haven't got much time either, because I'm shooting
(16:27):
this movie with George Lucas called Labyrinth, and I wonder
if you could help me put a band together out
of people that you know. So here Bowie had worked
with Kevin Armstrong and Matthew Seligman, who were sort of
two musicians that I worked with a lot, and I've
been friends with the years on Dancing in the Street
(16:48):
and absolute beginners. And it was then that it recommended
to Bowie, why don't you talk to Thomas because he's
a producer and he's got nose a lot of musicians
and he'd be a good person to to help pull
this together. So it's a boat. Had called them on
my recommendation. He was he was aware of my music
and seemed to like it, and he said, you know,
(17:10):
we haven't got very much time. I'd like Matthew and
Kevin to be involved, but can you help me, you know,
put together the rest of the musicians and if you
could sort of be, you know, in charge of rehearsing
them for me, because I'm only going to have a
few hours, you know, to rehearse with you. So I
sort of along those lines and I said, well, that's
(17:30):
an absolute dream. I'd love to do that, so would you. Oh,
that would be just wonderful, would be just great. And
of course that there's no money or anything. It's a
charity thing. But he seemed to be genuinely bowled over
that a young generation of musicians would be willing to
drop whatever they're doing to play with him, put the
work in, do this charity gig for a good cause.
(17:54):
And and so on. You know, he see he seems
to be genuinely delighted with that. And I remember hanging
up the phone and thinking, you know, I feel like
I just talked to John Gielgood or some sort of
classic you know, some classic English actor, not not the
cracked actor. At it sounds like David gave you an
(18:22):
awful lot of trust and freedom just in letting you
be the band leader. What was he like when you
were actually in the room and performing altogether? It sounds
like he was really generous and letting everyone be themselves
and not micromanaging everyone. Yeah, I mean that was very interesting.
And his his musicianship was very interesting because he always
played it down, you know, you would he wasn't a
(18:43):
muso in terms of talking about why he played a
Martin versus Gibson, and why he liked this tuning on
his strings and you know how he was influenced by
you know, he totally played that down, both his guitar
playing playing and slats playing as well. And he was
(19:04):
a capable musician, but he seemed to feel that it
would diminish his stature as a front man if if
he was viewed as as a sort of multi instrumentalist
or somebody that cared a lot about the music. You know,
he I think wanted to give the impression the music
(19:25):
just flowed out of him. It was just an intuitive thing,
not something he ever studied. And I mean, I don't
very much he ever practice scales, you know, but I
mean he was he as capable musician, and certainly you know,
he could arrange for any instrument. But I think his
his gift really when working with a band was that
(19:47):
he would stand in the middle of the room and
just sort of exude, you know, sunshine and wonderfulness, and
he would you'd look at him and you'd want to
please him. You know, you'd want to play a part
that he would like that he would enjoy um. And
you know, he never got behind the keyboard with me
and showed me something that he was hearing. He would all,
(20:09):
you know, he would give you little hints and push
just prod you in a certain direction. But then there
was it would be my idea that came out and
he goes yes, you know, and then he would just
he sort of moved the band forward like that, and
he would occasionally say I'm not sure about that intro
and he'd leave it at that, and then you know,
the drummer would say, well what if I just started
(20:30):
with this film? All the guitarists would say, okay, I could,
I could play this chord to bring it in, and
the go yeah, that's much better. Um. So he was
the opposite of micromanager. Really. He was somebody that just
inspired you to be at your best. And you mentioned
he was only available to practice a handful of times.
(20:51):
Was that a concern at all for him? Was there
a sense of nervousness leading up to this? At what
point did it become a parent that this wasn't just
a charity show, This was something that was, you know,
a very much bigger deal than that. Yeah. It was
actually three afternoons on consecutive weekdays for about three hours
(21:12):
each in a in a rehearsal room in West London.
Plus we we hadn't really had. That was those the
band rehearsals, and then he wanted to do some vocal rehearsals,
so we went to where he was shooting Labyrinth and
he had a trailer and that the people that were
going to be singing in the live thing. We just
sort of routine some backing vocals in his trailer and
(21:36):
that was it. And yes, it was a concern because
he kept changing his mind about what songs he wants
to do. In fact, at the beginning, when when we
first set up, he said, well, I I need to
promote my current single, which was Loving the Alien, and
I mean, you know, it's not a terrible song, but
it's not you know, wouldn't make his top twenty list
(21:58):
of all time classics. As we got closer to live aid,
I think he realized the magnitude of the show that
it wasn't just you know, some charity festival thing. It
was going to be a global event and it would
be sort of you know, I'm not sure if he
knew then that it would be sort of immortalized, you know,
(22:19):
that it would take on this sort of iconic status
like a woodstock or something like that. But I think
he realized after a while that it wasn't about promoting
your current single. It was it was about just pure
pleasure for the audience, both the live audience and the
TV audience. And he was back to seduce. He was
back in seduction mode again, you know, and he realized
(22:42):
that he had to pull out some sing along feel
good classics from sort of you know, from different eras,
and we had to knock him dead. You know, we
were playing after Queen, who are a great live band,
and he, like you said, he was putting a lot
of trust in us because we were you know, we've
probably had an average age of about twenty four and
(23:03):
we could easily have been overwhelmed by the moment. Now.
He never asked any of us if we'd ever played
a stadium before. The answer was no. I think any
of us have ever played bigger than about two thousand seater.
I'm not sure if I'd ever done an open air
gig at that point. And you know, he sort of
he sort of didn't need to. I think he just
sort of felt it. And I think probably if he'd
walked in the rehearsal room and we'd suck, he would
(23:24):
have thought of a plan be get get Earl and
you carlost On on a plane pronto. Yeah, but no,
I think I think he was feeling it, and I
think he felt that it was appropriate that it being
a UK show, he didn't show up with his professional
American touring band. He had a bunch of local kids.
(23:47):
I think I've read that you share a helicopter ride
with him over to to the Wembley site. What was
that ride like? What was he was? He? Was he nervous?
Was he chatty? What was? What was that? So Live
Aid was was a huge deal in London that day,
to the extent that police were diverting traffic. And you
(24:09):
know that the remember that morning is very very nice day,
and we're going for a walk that morning, and every
upstairs window that was open, you'd hear the radio going
with the preamble to Live Aid. And you know, if
you if you crossed the street the car stopped to
the traffic light, you'd hear that. You'd hear it coming
out of the car. And I was instructed that I
(24:31):
had to fly in the helicopter from central London to
Wembley Stadium, which is about you to drive would be
maybe an hour, but was twelve minutes in the helicopter.
And so we went from Battersea Heliport, which is just
as helicopter pad by the River Thames. And I went
down there at the appointed time, which I think would
(24:51):
have been sort of noon or something like that. And
the word had leaked out that some of the Live aids.
The labs were leaving from there. So there's a gaggle
of autograph hunters at the heliport and there wasn't really security,
so they were just sort of wandering around, you know,
trying to get autographs and things. And we met in
the lounge and he was already dressed for the gig,
(25:14):
as was I, and he was very nervous because he
still wasn't flying at that point, and he'd never been
in a helicopter no, and so he was rather nervous
in the lounge. And we went outside onto the pad
and he had to sign some more scrafts and a
handful of fans were sort of following him with a camera.
(25:34):
I gotta snap myself and I had a little brownie
camera myself. And he was looking nervously at this helicopter
and as soon as we got in, he turned into
the thin white to you know, he had a he
had a Homburg hat and he plumped it on his
head and pulled it down and started chain smoking, and
(25:56):
the pilot was going could he extinguished? Ceare actually saying that,
he went, suck you. And we sort of took off
and he was like basically had his face pressed to
the window, and he kept saying to the pilot, how
long is this flight? And he said about twelve minutes?
Are there any skyscrapers or pilot, what do you do
(26:16):
about pylons and electrical lines and things like that. He was,
you know, he was an absolute diva for for twelve minutes.
And you know, I remember, I've been the how he
got to before. But I remember banking over Wembley Stadium,
which had those sort of two gold towers, so it's
very recognizable from the air, little wisps of cloud, and
(26:40):
we banked over the stadium and I could see the
crowd and the stage. The crowd were all out of
the field, and I could see on the screens at
the side, like a close up of Freddie Mercury sort
of crooning to the heavens in the middle of we
are the Champions or something like that. And and I mean,
and they in the years later when I saw Bohemian Rhapsody,
(27:03):
if you remember that movie, they recreated my bird's eye
view of Wembley Stadium, you know, with a with a
sort of like a drone shot which they created in
c G I with this sort of drone shot into
the stadium and up to the stage with Queen on stage.
So Sobo was a complete bitch for twelve minutes. But
(27:25):
the moment we touched down in like a parking lot
behind Wembley, his face brightened up and he turned into
he turned back into John Gielgud and out on the
tarmac there are about a hundred photographers and he said, oh,
I like this bit, Tom, and he pushed open the
(27:47):
door and he went outside and immediately started posing for
the photographers. And there were some police sort of led
us through the crowd of paparazzi. I was bringing up
the rear and we're taken straight to a green room
at the side of the stage and cool just finishing
up the set, and they said, you'll be on in
(28:08):
about five minutes. No time to get your bearings. You're
just there and you're on. Yeah, just there and on.
And he'd only decided, like the night before, which four
songs he wanted us to do, and we played we
practiced them, but we've never played them back to back,
you know. And when you're rehearsing as a band, you
go through these phases, and one is that you can
(28:30):
you can make a sum sound decent about the third
or fourth time you player, and then eventually you get
to a point where you can play the sums in
any order and they always sound good, you know, but
that's you know, that's after weeks of rehearsal and a
few gigs usually. So he decided the night before what
the set was going to be, and his plan was
to start, as I recall had been to start with
(28:53):
Rebel Rebel. We sat at the side of the stage
and he said, you know what, let's start with TVC
one five And that meant honky Tonk piano solo by
yours true not not universally applauded for my honky Tonk
piano playing um. And and that was that next thing
(29:14):
I knew we were on stage, But I mean that
once once we were on stage, any nerves completely dissipated
and you were just sort of watch it along by
the atmosphere of the crowd. Are there any snapshot moments
that stick out from when you're on the stage There
is at all, really just a blur and electric blur.
(29:34):
Memory is interesting because I mean I've seen I've seen
footage which was almost from my point of view on
the stage of the whole performance. So when when I
think of it, I'm not quite sure whether I'm recalling
it from memory or or whether I'm replaying replaying the video.
I was certainly, I mean it was, it was certainly
(29:55):
quite transcendent, partly because it took a lot of concentration
to play songs that, you know, we were massively under rehearsed.
But the flip side was we've lived in these songs
since we were fifteen, you know. So Heroes, for example,
which is deceptively simple. It's only got a couple of sections, really,
(30:17):
but they vary in length. And sometimes the simple songs
are easy to screw up because you lose track of
where you are. You know, if you're playing a complicated
Stevie Dan chord sequence, then then it's easier to keep
track of where you are than than something that's just
a guitar riff, you know. So I was terrified I
was going to screw it up, but I mean I
just let go and I just sort of I regressed
(30:39):
to my teen fan boy self, you know, as a
as as a Bowie fan, and my fingers basically played
the notes on their own. So you finished the Senate
live the crowd goes wild you walk up the stage.
(31:01):
What was the moment like stepping off? How do you
come down from a moment like that playing in front
of I guess including the television audien it's almost a
billion people. Was it just a massive exhale or did
did Bowie turn to you and say something? What was that? Like?
He was very pleased with the way it has gone.
You know, there wasn't actually a huge sort of backstage scene,
(31:23):
and there weren't a lot of liggers as we call.
There wasn't a party going on backstage. It was mostly
people associated with the bands and their crew and their
management stuff like that. You know. I remember him chatting
with Freddie Mercury and being hustled into an MTV interview,
which I think you can see on YouTube. Already had
(31:45):
two or three beers in me by then, and for
some reason that they asked me if I would if
I would be in the interview with Bowie, and it's
it's it's funny. It's actually sickening when you look at
the interview because they asked Bowie a question that he's
very he's very cool and controlled and put together, and
they turned turned the mic to me and I might
as well just said you know who that is by
(32:11):
you know. But and then they asked him again a
question about the day, about the cause, and the smile
went off his face and he turned to the camera
and he basically said, this is this is an important moment.
You really need to find a way to donate to
this cause. It's a worthwhile cause. And you know, there
(32:34):
are kids starving, and you know, he was like very
sincere and really doing the job for Bob called off
that he was needed to do. And the level of
professionalism was amazing to me that he could he could
sort of switch modes like that. Very very mature, I suppose,
you know, seemed very mature to me. Did you see
him again after that? When was the next time that
(32:55):
that you saw David after after? I've yeah, I mean
I saw him a fume of times. I did another
gig with him in New York at the Beacon Theater.
Um would have been around about two thousand. I would
think there's also a record of that online. It was
filmed by his son for a movie, and it was
it was like a private gig for his web subscribers.
(33:18):
And I had my tech company beat back at the time,
and we've been working with him, who's sort of a
spokesman for my company here. They adopted our technology on
his website and he did an ad campaign for us
and stuff, which was great. And he did this gig
in in New York and I had a V I
(33:40):
P table with a few of my in laws who
are from New York, and halfway through the set, he
just put his hand to his forehead and he said,
is Tom Tolby out there somewhere? Come on, come on
up here, I mean literally, So so I wandered up
on stage and Mike Garson was playing, was playing keyboards,
so they gave me a remote keyboard. I just joined
him for the last few songs and hung out a
(34:02):
little bit. Yeah, we we talked on and off over
the years. He was very interested in technology, you know,
at the height of the Internet boom, and you know,
he always seemed to view me as somebody that sort
of plugged into that world, and he had a lot
of questions for me. You were obviously a great fan
of David's music for years before you met him. By
(34:24):
performing alongside him and sort of being inside his music
with him, did that give you a new perspective, and
there was work or new inside into what he does.
I think I was. I was surprised that you know,
you asked the question did he micro manage you? I
assumed that he had such a level of control over
(34:45):
his music and his arrangements and production that he would
have a hand in all of that. You know, I
mean that there are a number of comparisons to Prince
that I think are quite interesting that you know, we
weren't going to here, but you know, by comparison, Prince
was somebody that absolutely you know, control every note and
every step and every lighting camera angle, and you know,
(35:08):
had had total control over everything. Roger Waters, who I
worked with, the same deal. The other end of the spectrum,
George Clinton as well, like David Bowie. You know, I
never saw I worked with George a lot, and I
never saw him tell a musician what notes to play
or a singer what knowes to sing. He would just
like you know, you either got him smiling and got
(35:29):
his ass wiggling or you didn't, and so he just
sort of drew it out of you. You know, he
was just a lightning conductor. And Bowie really was like that,
and so it surprised me that that somebody could put
such a strong stamp on every aspect of their performance
without being hands on. And I mean personally, I'm more
in the Roger Waters camp. You know, I'm so sort
(35:51):
of insecure that I have to have total control over everything.
So many things I want to talking about. I really
want to talk to you about your position at Johns Hopkins.
For the past I think five or six years now,
you've been teaching an undergraduate degree course in music composition
for Film and Games at the Peabody Conservatory. What has
(36:12):
that experience been like for you can talk a little
more about that. That's that's so fascinating to me as
someone who who loves music and the evolution of how
it's made. Yeah, well, you know, during my career, I've
always been very drawn to things that are sort of
uncharted and undiscovered. Really, I mean in the early day,
early days of d I Y synth music making, when
(36:35):
for the first time technology has became available that would
enable somebody to go into a back room and make
a record without the benefit of a whole recording studio,
just using machines and try and get machines to sound
human and so on. And there were only a handful
of people doing that, you know, in the UK and
(36:57):
nineteen and you know, I think that we were I think,
you know, my generations, probably the first sort of underground
synthpop slash electronic music generation in the UK were all
Bowie fan boys. Basically I was talking about, you know,
the Human Lea soft Sell Orchestra Maneuvers, depeche Mode, people
(37:20):
like Gary Human. We've all grown up with Bowie and
we sort of took the the d i y ethic
that was suggested by by a sort of a vision
that we had of you know, Bowie and in Berlin
somewhere playing with a bunch of machines, and we sort
of turned that into a whole movement of electronic pop.
(37:44):
Five years later, that was no longer appealing in the
same way I mean, And part of that was because
it had all sort of trickled down the street level.
By the end of the eighties, all of that technology
was available, It was affordable, that was reliable, there were
more to put different brands and choices to choose between.
You can get tuition, you could get software, you can
(38:06):
get additional sound libraries, and you had like ten fifteen
years of music to listen to that would sort of
point you in the right direction. So at that point,
that's not a genre or a place to be that
appealed to me anymore. Does that make sense? So because
it has had lost its rarity, it had lost the
(38:27):
I no longer had the sense of being a pioneer
in that world because there were ten thousand other guys
also able to be in the same space. Conversely, in
Silicon Valley there was technology and software and engineering that
offered a whole new range of possibilities from video games
(38:47):
and CD runs and laser discs and installations and you know,
also computer generated images and and all sorts of different
possibilities there and again that that was uncharted. You know,
it was being done in very expensive, high end studios
and laboratories. But to use to take the d I
(39:12):
y epic into those areas and make my own software
and things like that, that was the new frontier, if
that makes sense. So fast forwards another ten years, the
Webers sort of come, Bubbler's grown and propped. But what
was emerging then there were young kids getting their hands
on phones that had never even known the computer, you know,
(39:34):
the first time they've ever been on the internet, was
on a smartphone, and again, you know, this was the
new frontier again, and so that's where I went with
my company Beaten. It spelled forward a few more years
and in filment, digital filmmaking, the same thing was happening.
You know. Film filmmaking used to be something you had
(39:56):
to have a crew, You're to pay union members, you
had to go owned by seleu Lloyd's dock, you had
to rent cameras and lights. And now suddenly, you know,
with a digital camera, you could make a film that
was technically just as good. You could edit it yourself
on your personal computer. You could go to a festival
like sun Dance and show it and maybe you know,
(40:19):
get a big distribution deal. So that was the new frontier.
So so I've always gone to the new frontier. You know,
that's that's where I feel most alive, you know, most stimulated,
most creative, working in an area where nobody's written the
rule book. Yet you know, there is no rule book,
there's no user manual, and so you know, I've popped
(40:40):
from one place to another over the decades, and I
got to a point in my life, you know, in
the early twenty teens where I just I didn't see
where I was going to go next. There was nothing
in particular that appealed to me as the next place
to go and be creative. And but conversely, I thought
(41:00):
back to when I was younger, and you know, now
I had teenage like college age kids myself, and I
realized that when I was, when I was college age,
there was no university course that I could have done
that would have been interesting to me. Danny, you couldn't
go and do a course in experimental filmmaking or electronic
music or synthesis or anything like that. Probably was offering
(41:23):
that in the UK at the time. So I mean,
you know, I left school at sixteen and worked in
a fruit and veg shop, And and yeah, I'm from
a family that is very highly academic. My dad was
not spend professor, my mom taught algebra. I have siblings
that are very distinguished in their fields academically, And it
suddenly occurred to me, I'd like to maybe see if
(41:44):
I can take a shot at teaching what I know
you know too the next generation, um, and see if
if I have in fact accrued any any wisdom and
experience that I could maybe pass on and I was
given that opportunity by John's Hopkins UM, who I only
really knew about as a medical and research institution, but
(42:07):
it turned out that they had an arts whole arts
side as well, and they were looking for somebody to
help them open a film center in a poor part
of Baltimore. I vaguely knew Baltimore. I've been through here
on tour. Like the city very much. Even though some
shocking poverty here, there's some really gorgeous neighborhoods and really
(42:31):
interesting artistic musical history. And I came here and really
liked it, and I liked the atmosphere at Johns Hopkins,
and I liked this opportunity they had to open this
new center, so they gave me a three year gig
doing that. So I got to the end of it.
You know, my wife is here with me, and she's
from New Yorker family and from there, just up the road,
and we said, we're not ready to leave here yet.
(42:54):
And so I talked to various different departments at Johns Hopkins,
and I taught a little bit at the Peopley Institute,
which is their music conservatory, and they said, well, do
you want to come up with an idea for a
degree program. I told them the same thing as I
told you. It's like there was no course I could
have done, you know that would have taught me. You know,
(43:14):
I had to teach myself. And they said, well, can
you devise a course? So I spent a few months
looking around at what else was out there, and I
realized that there was really no undergraduate course where you
could learn how to do music for picture, whether it
was games or film or whatever. Typical thing to do
would be you do an undergraduate music course and then
(43:36):
he go to a master's at n y U or
U c l A or whatever in film music or
game music, maybe Berkeley School of Music in Boston. But
they were master's programs, not really undergraduate programs. So I said, okay, well,
you know, you guys are sort of late to the game.
There are people who was a conventional conservatory. I said,
(43:57):
let's leap frog these other schools and offer an undergra
I do a program in music composition for media, and
that was five years ago, and I've been doing that
aver since. It's funny. My my girlfriend and I met
at film school at n y U undergrad and uh,
and this would have been two thousand and six, two
thou seven eight, when we were still cutting film on
(44:18):
Steambeck machines with you know, actual film, and we were
just saying the other day, you know, I would love
to meet students there now, because they're probably starting on
day one as ten times the filmmaker we could have
ever hoped to be, because they've had just years of
learning to manipulate visuals just on their phone, and there's
such better, more innate visual storytellers just because they've they've
(44:40):
they've grown up with these technologies. Have have you experienced
anything like that with with with your students, where it's
almost like they just grasped these these concepts innately because
it's just been something that they've had the tools since,
you know, in birth. Almost in some ways, well, I
think you'd be surprised actually that that you know, current
(45:02):
ny you film students probably make all the same mistakes
that you guys did us, just don't just stroll them
more cheaply, you know. Um. And part of the reason
for that actually is this, and that is that if
you're eighteen nineteen years old today and you hit the problem,
you you you come across something that you don't understand
(45:25):
or you don't know how to do it, find a
way around it. You're a few key presses away from
a solution because somebody on YouTube will have done a
tutorial on how to solve that problem. You can download
or use a manual. You can post a message on
a forum, and you know, tomorrow morning you'll have a
dozen different answers. You can put your bad film up
(45:48):
on you know, social media, and people were critique it,
get some haters, but you also get some very constructive criticism,
and so you go through this cycle very quickly. But
what you don't need to do is ever really solve,
you know, creatively problem solve yourself, because the solution is
just around the corner, and there are problems with that.
(46:09):
One is that that solution is going to be in
the search results for thousands of other guys that you
ask the same question, so you're all gonna apply the
same solution to it, which tends to homogenize things and
funnel them all into a certain sort of mediocrity. And
the second thing is that you know your brain chemistry
(46:30):
when you're eighteen years old. You're not done learning by
by a lot while, because we're never done learning but
especially at that age, you're still a sponge and if
you're never if you on your journey, you never hit
a hurdle that you have to figure out how to
circumnavigate it using just the tools in front of you,
(46:51):
the limited tools in front of you. You know, a
certain area of your brain never needs to develop. And
I believe that it's in that creative problem solving that
artists established their original voice, and I think if you
take that away, it's very hard for people to develop
a voice that will enable them to rise above the
(47:13):
white noise floor. You know, of all of the people
out there doing attempted to do the same thing. So
you know, one of the folks is really of my course,
is how do you sort of disable some of those
you know that that that how do you that safety
net that that they have of being able to just
google something? Um, how do you take that away and
(47:36):
force them to use their use their mind and their
creative creativity. You think back on some of the Beatles
studio explorations that were mistakes, I mean putting the backwards
guitar solos and the you know, the feedback and I
feel fine, or things like that, the accidents that that
don't happen if you're if you just sort of handed
(47:57):
the correct answer without really working for it. Now, that's
a really be fascinating to think of what what David
David Bowie's music would have been like had he grown
up with Google. Really, yes, uh, And I think I
think he was more about people, really, I think he
was he was more about the popular consciousness, you know
that the way people follow trends and fashions and so on.
(48:22):
I think he and he wanted to be a manipulator
of all of those things, and he was extremely good
at it. Off the Record is a production of I
Heart Radio. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe
(48:43):
and leave us a review. For more podcasts from my
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