Thomas Dolby - The Speed of Sound: Breaking the Barriers Between Music and Technology: A Memoir

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This is an entirely true story, though some names and details have been changed and time frames compressed. I should also make it clear to the reader that I am not associated in any way with Dolby Laboratories, Inc., maker of Dolby noise reduction systems, nor am I related to its founder, Ray Dolby, or to his son the writer Tom Dolby.

For Harper, Talia, and Graham, who once asked me, Daddy, how come youre not a multimillionaire?

January 17, 1984

Dan the driver opened the pneumatic door of the tour bus and I stumbled out, blinking in the Nevada sun. I had my arms full of electronic equipment: a Philips cassette machine, my Radio Shack portable computer, assorted cables, and those weird rubber acoustic cups that you push the phone receiver into to send and receive files. The pockets of my corduroy trousers were bulging with quarters.

Id made Dan pull off the highway at a run-down gas station a million miles from anywhere. This pissed him right off, but I needed to use the phone booth. He brought the bus to a stop in a cloud of its own dust. There was a beaten-up wooden shack with a porch andI kid you notan old guy in a rocker with a pipe.

The sun was getting high now and the desert landscape was dull, featureless. Wrecked cars, the odd cactus. Somewhere off in the distance a glistening metropolis called Las Vegas rose out of the desert. It would be the middle of the morning by the time our forty-five-foot silver Prevost tour bus rolled up the Strip, still less than halfway to our destination, Salt Lake City.

Dan the bus driver was from Texas. He had his little tin of amphetamines open on the dash and he was determined to make it all the way to Salt Lake by midafternoon. By law his limit was ten straight hours of driving. But he wanted that overdrive bonus bad, so hed waved away the idea of bringing a relief driver; and he still reckoned we would arrive at the venue just in time for sound check. Barring unscheduled stops.

It was all because of Michael Jackson. Hed been on the guest list for our gig at the Greek Theatre and afterwards he came backstage. Id just finished my encores and I was cooling off in this big tent theyd set up as a green room. His entourage outnumbered my band and crew, which was awkward, but he beckoned me off into a corner and we stood facing the canvas wall and talked as the backstage freeloaders kept their distance, pretending not to look.

I hadnt seen Michael since that rainy night at his house in Encino the previous February. His skin was translucent, like a lithe black vampires. He was evolving.

He spoke in a whisper, but I think he said he really liked the show. He knew the names of the individual songs, and was impressed that I had a Fairlight up there onstage, a fragile $90,000 computer music instrument. Was it better than his Synclavier, which cost twice as much? I gave him my views on both. I spouted bit rates and azimuth. This calmed me down. I was nervous because he was a showbiz genius, possessor of a God-given talent. He could have gotten up there and moonwalked circles around me any day of the week, singing his lungs out, and we both knew it. So I thought, I might as well blind him with science.

We talked like that for ten minutes before he told me he had to get back to the Record Plant, where he and his brothers were supposed to be recording a new album. It was chaos and they were way behind schedule. Each of the Jackson brothers had come in with his own demos, and everybody wanted a songwriting or production credit. But most of the songs, Michael admitted, were lame. His brothers wanted a piece of the action because his new solo album Thriller was selling millions, smashing all Billboard chart records. The smallest songwriting credit on a multiplatinum album was worth a fortune. He was worried the brothers squabbling was going to escalate into full-scale war unless they could find some decent tunes pronto.

I told him I had some great ideas Id been working on in the back of the tour bus. You mean like Hyperactive!? he asked, I love the groove on that. Yes! I said, enthusiastically. As it happens I have one just like Hyperactive! and another thats as good.

Michael wanted to hear demos. I told him I could send him some later on that night or the next day. Were leaving town right after the party. Oh, but I can send them to you from my portable computer. He said, Youve got a computer on your tour bus? Cooool. I told him about my Radio Shack TRS-80, state of the art. It could even send files over a telephone line.

I was thinking to myself, Ill stay up all night if I have to and write the damn songs.

I skipped the afterparty, and by the time the bus was ready to roll out of L.A. at about 3 a.m. I was already hard at work on the demos. Dan the Texan bus driver walked the length of the bus to check everyone was on board before he hit the road. My backing band was still in a partying mood, and in the main lounge the booze and drugs were flowing. Someone had been chopping out lines of cocaine on the steel countertop. Lyndon, my six-foot-two keyboard player, was still wearing the wedding frock and blond wig that he favored for important gigs. Justin, a chain-smoking drummer with the airs of an English aristocrat, sat up front with Dan trading bawdy jokes. Matthew and Lesley seemed to be deeply involved in a game of mental chess. Our diminutive Colombian guitarist Chucho, hair greased back, looking like a freedom fighter in his shades and army fatigues, was trying to sweet-talk a waitress from Orange County into staying on board for the overnight trip to the next gig.

In the twilight of the rear lounge I was rocking out by myself, my face all lit up by LEDs. I had my battery-powered Roland TR-606 drum machine and TB-303 Bassline fired up through some Akai headphones. I was punching in melodies on the miniature keys and jotting down random lyric ideas on a yellow pad. My number-one white linen suit and shirt, still damp with sweat from my onstage gyrations at the Greek, were hung up to dry next to me on a mirror. I was wriggling around on the bench seat as I fiddled with my shiny silver boxes, my sopping stage clothes dripping onto the Naugahyde. Dan stuck his head through the curtain and scowled. Gayest damn bus AH ever drove, he muttered.

The sun came up somewhere around Barstow. The band had passed out in their coffinlike bunk beds. I was nearing completion of my two demos and getting ready to put down a rough vocal. I was pleased with the first, called Interference. It had an irresistible, elastic groove. Okay, so it was a touch reminiscent of Wanna Be Startin Somethin, from Michaels Off the Wall album; but only a touch. He was bound to go for it. I felt he might like the second even better, though it was more restrained, more like a Prince power ballad. But I knew Id better not mention that. Michael didnt approve of the Purple One. Prince is too dirty, he had told me once. You cant sing songs about sleeping with your sister!

So there I was, in the middle of the Nevada desert, head stuffed into a phone booth in the rising heat, trying to hook up my acoustic couplers. Id called ahead to Michaels sound engineer, Bill Bottrell, who had another TRS-80 at the Record Plant ready to receive the digital files. But Id tried three times and I was not getting a dial tone. My stash of quarters wouldnt last forever. I called Bill back and he said, Michael just walked in, Im going to put him on. Michael came on the phone and I apologized for my tech problems and told him where I was. Oh, he said. Why dont you just sing it down the phone, like in the old days?