47 Facts About Thomas Dolby

Thomas Dolby has worked as a producer and as a session musician.

At school in London, Thomas Dolby was good friends with Shane MacGowan of The Pogues and used to sit with him in the back row of the English Literature class.

Thomas Dolby later attended Abingdon School in Oxfordshire, England, from 1975 to 1976, where he completed his A Levels.

Thomas Dolby spoke of his early musical experiences in a 2012 interview:.

The stage name Thomas Dolby originated from a nickname "Dolby" that he picked up in the early 1970s, when he was "always messing around with keyboards and tapes".

The name derives from the name of the audio noise-reduction process of Thomas Dolby Laboratories used for audio recording and playback.

Thomas Dolby adopted the stage name "Thomas Dolby" to avoid confusion with British singer Tom Robinson, who was popular when he began his career.

Dolby is unrelated to Thomas "Tom" Dolby, who is a novelist, filmmaker, and son of the Dolby Laboratories founder Ray Dolby.

Thomas Dolby wrote songs for other artists and worked as a record producer before launching his solo career in 1981.

Thomas Dolby is associated with the new wave movement of the early 1980s, a form of pop music incorporating electronic instruments, but Thomas Dolby's work covers a wide range of musical styles and moods distinct from the high-energy pop sound of his few, better-known commercial successes.

Thomas Dolby's Cube released a single in 1983, another in 1985, and performed soundtrack work for the film Howard the Duck in 1986.

In contrast to the overall introverted nature of The Flat Earth, Thomas Dolby described his next release, Aliens Ate My Buick :.

Thomas Dolby performed his first public solo show in 15 years at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco, California, on 21 January 2006, surprising the crowd who were there to see local band Notorious.

Thomas Dolby then launched an American tour, the Sole Inhabitant Tour, on 12 April 2006, comprising a string of small dates in California, a science education benefit in Boulder, Colorado, and gigs across America before receptive crowds.

Thomas Dolby autographed and numbered the first 1,000 copies of the CD and DVD.

Thomas Dolby toured throughout the months of November and December 2006 with electronic musician BT.

In 2010 Thomas Dolby began work on a new studio album entitled A Map of the Floating City.

In June 2011 Thomas Dolby announced the game A Map of the Floating City, a multiplayer online game that shares a title with the full-length album release planned to follow after the game's conclusion.

Parallel to his solo career, Thomas Dolby worked as a session musician and record producer.

Thomas Dolby played on albums such as Thompson Twins album Set and Foreigner's 1981 album 4.

Thomas Dolby worked as session keyboard player on Def Leppard's 1983 Pyromania album.

In 1985, Thomas Dolby was a member of David Bowie's band for his performance at Live Aid.

Thomas Dolby provided production on Joni Mitchell's album Dog Eat Dog.

Thomas Dolby had previously covered the Mitchell song "The Jungle Line" in 1981 after being inspired by her 1975 album The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

Thomas Dolby wrote in his memoir that he was "probably too much of a brat, with my own blinkered way of working".

Thomas Dolby produced two albums for the English sophisti-pop band Prefab Sprout: 1985's Steve McQueen and 1990's Jordan: The Comeback.

Thomas Dolby produced four tracks from 1988's From Langley Park to Memphis, including the hit single "The King of Rock 'n' Roll".

In 1987, Thomas Dolby played synthesizer on Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth", which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States that December.

Thomas Dolby has composed for a handful of films and video games.

In 2012, Thomas Dolby learned of the decommissioning of the Orfordness Lighthouse near his Suffolk home, and proceeded to film a documentary, The Invisible Lighthouse, to chronicle the shutdown of the lighthouse as well as his childhood growing up in the area.

Thomas Dolby took this film on the road through the US and UK in the Autumn of 2013, accompanying the film with live music, narration, and sound effects by Blake Leyh.

Thomas Dolby was later approached to create MIDI-based music for WebTV, leading to Dolby composing several key music tracks that were bundled with the devices.

Thomas Dolby stepped down from his position as CEO in 2002, feeling that the business was no longer interesting to him, although he remained on the board.

Thomas Dolby ended business in 2005 and has since been suspended by Secretary of State of California.

Thomas Dolby created hundreds of digital polyphonic ringtones on mobile phones, both at Beatnik and Retro Ringtones.

Thomas Dolby was often a speaker at technology conferences such as Comdex, Websphere, and Nokia.

On 4 October 2018, Thomas Dolby performed a live score for the High Fidelity VR event 'Escape from Zombie Island.

Thomas Dolby performed his first ever full VR concert at the Futvrelands Festival on 17 November 2018, in front of over 250 other avatars.

From 2001 to 2012, Thomas Dolby was musical director of the TED Conference, an annual event held, first, in Monterey, California, and subsequently in Long Beach, California.

Thomas Dolby provided live musical introductions to sessions, sometimes with a TED house band, and helped secure guest musicians and entertainers.

Thomas Dolby stood down from the position in September 2012 to pursue music.

In March 2012, at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, Thomas Dolby spoke at the DESIGN West conference, produced by UBM Electronics.

In March 2014, Thomas Dolby was named Homewood Professor of the Arts at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University.

Thomas Dolby married actress Kathleen Beller in 1988; they have three children.

Thomas Dolby's brother is the probabilistic information retrieval researcher Stephen Robertson.

In February 2018, Thomas Dolby was awarded the Roland Lifetime Achievement Award.

Thomas Dolby has received four Grammy nominations, two each in 1984 and 1988.