The Speed of Sound

July 25, 2016
In his engaging memoir, British New Wave icon Dolby retraces his journey from London stock clerk to pop star to unlikely success as a Silicon Valley pioneer. A tech savant, Dolby ditched school at 16 and tried for a career in punk-rock London. In short order, he was cowriting, playing, and producing for groups such as Whodini, Prefab Sprout, and Foreigner. He then became a celebrity when “She Blinded Me with Science” flew up the charts in the U.S. Disillusioned with the music business after the commercial failures of his following albums, Dolby turned to an odd new phenomenon known as the Internet and relocated to the Bay Area. Intuition informed him that consumers wanted more than bleeps and blats on their cell phones, and after a decade-long struggle piloting a startup, he hit the jackpot with his RetroFolio ringtone software. Soon afterward, he returned to England and composing. Dolby’s style—understated but acute—and wealth of anecdotes make for an enjoyable narrative, even if he soft-pedals the ambition and talent that drove his success. His winding career crosses the paths of a celebrity ensemble—including Eddie Van Halen, Bill Gates, David Bowie, and George Clinton—under very odd circumstances, including close encounters of the disturbing kind with Michael Jackson. To those who know Dolby only from his 1980s bug-eyed mad-scientist persona, his punk roots and windsurfing chops will come as shock, but the bespectacled Brit is more Renaissance man than one-hit wonder. Agents: Merrilee Heifetz and Lisa DiMona, Writers House. (Oct.), This review has been edited to reflect the correct agent information for the book.

Musician Dolby (Arts/Johns Hopkins Univ.) debuts with an absorbing account of his pioneering work merging digital music with film, technology, and science.Born in 1958 to a Cambridge archaeologist, the author dropped out of school to pursue musical interests after finding a synthesizer in a dumpster. Often mixing sound for bands, he worked as a solo singer/songwriter, with such quirky hits as "She Blinded Me with Science" (1982) and "Hyperactive!" (1984), and began producing short silent film-like music videos as well as soundtracks for computer games and computer-generated animation. By the 1990s, Dolby's unusual tinkering with computer software bridged the worlds of the music business and Silicon Valley, where his companies developed mobile-phone ringtones and other products. In this story-filled memoir, the author draws deeply on his experiences as a synthesized music guru and early internet geek, offering wonderful scenes involving such notables as Michael Jackson, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Steve Jobs, and George Lucas and revealing his battles for artistic control with major record companies. With little interest in the business side ("What's a business model?" he replies to a venture capitalist interested in a Dolby company), he has always regarded himself as "a perfectionist who will choose great art over a pile of cash every time." As a result, he struggled unhappily in the music and technology industries, both of which he deems "random and unjust." Yet his innovative accomplishments, rendered in fascinating detail here, are legendary: "Synthesis, music videos, software, the Web, DIY filmmaking, mobile devices, online games...I just dived in and taught myself by trial and error." The former TED Conference music director now composes on a restored 33-foot lifeboat in the garden of his home in Suffolk and teaches film and media at Hopkins. This stellar book will appeal to students, scholars, and general readers interested in modern technology's startling effects on music and popular culture. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.