“Once inside, you found yourself in a splendid top-floor loft, with brick walls and arched windows looking down on railway sidings covered in snow, like a scene from post-World War II Eastern Europe,” Dolby writes. In The Speed of Sound, Dolby describes how securing a personal recording/rehearsal space in an industrial section of London influenced his recording. That’s how he began to finance The Golden Age of Wireless. Dolby worked for a month on the Foreigner record, picking up a cool $6,500. I credit/blame that episode of teenage dorkiness on Thomas Dolby and his Roland JP4 synthesizer. Then the song ended, the spell was broken, and we went back to talking about Dungeons and Dragons. Our conversation stopped as we got temporarily lost in reveries concerning girls. “Waiting for a Girl Like You” started playing on the radio. ![]() I distinctly remember being in a car with two high school friends. While Foreigner isn’t one of my serious go-to bands, I can attest to the powerful and dreamy effectiveness of “Waiting for a Girl Like You”, though not the way you might imagine. ![]() While Dolby’s work can be found throughout Foreigner’s 4, it is most prominent in the eerie introduction to the ballad, “Waiting for a Girl Like You”, a huge hit single. When they finally connected, Dolby agreed to fly to New York City’s Electric Lady Studio and apply some synths to Foreigner’s tunes. Lange and Jones were impressed with the textured sounds Dolby had created and were in desperate need of a keyboardist who could give Foreigner’s sound a modern kick on their upcoming 4 LP. Meanwhile, the demo recordings of “Leipzig”/”Urges” came to the attention of music producer Robert “Mutt” Lange and Foreigner mastermind Mick Jones. A despondent Dolby journeyed to Paris and spent some time busking with a friend. Dolby had recorded a pair of evocative songs, “Leipzig” and “Urges”, that would be released as his debut single, but the record deal suddenly soured. He had even written “New Toy” for Lovich. Dolby’s book is well-worth reading, but here’s a thumbnail sketch of the circuitous path The Golden Age of Wireless took on its way to becoming an acknowledged synthpop classic.ĭolby was an up-and-coming “new wave” keyboardist and fledging songwriter who had played with Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club and Lene Lovich’s band. ![]() I highly recommend the book, in which Dolby recounts his experiences as both a songwriter/musician and a pop star in the 1980s and his subsequent second career in the world of high tech and venture capitalism. Let’s focus on Thomas Dolby’s path to The Golden Age of Wireless, which – spoiler alert – did not initially include “She Blinded Me With Science”.ĭolby quite capably tells his own story in a 2016 memoir, The Speed of Sound: Breaking the Barriers Between Music and Technology. I’ll reconsider “She Blinded Me With Science” in a little while. ![]() It’s a fun song, and, just as it was for many people, “She Blinded Me With Science” was my introduction to Thomas Dolby’s music. As I launch into a celebration of Thomas Dolby’s The Golden Age of Wireless on the 40th anniversary of its release, let me be clear: I come here to praise Dolby’s most famous song, “She Blinded Me With Science”, not to bury it.
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