How Rockstar Thomas Dolby Met Superstar Michael Jackson. A Magnificent Story

Thomas Dolby, the great pop rocker is a friend of mine. Also, on occasion a colleague. And on occasion a mentor. And on occasion a fellow traveler on the creative path.

I asked him how his first hit record, She Blinded Me With Science was created and how it became one of MTV’s first video hits & one of the early provocateurs of music video. When he began to tell me the story, I realized that my subscribers and others would enjoy not only the story and the period of pop music history it was a part of, but also the way Thomas tells it.

Thomas describes the London underground rock ’n' roll pop culture in the 1970s and early 1980s including many of the top stars like the Sex Pistols, Clash, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, Adam Ant, and Sting, in part because he played backup synthesizer for so many groups. When my documentary colleagues and I first saw MTV and what was being done with Video Killed the Radio Star and She Blinded Me With Science, it opened a whole new opportunity to create without having to go to the networks for money. Thomas and others created a new video music form that became big business and provided fantastic opportunities for outsiders like myself.

I thank Thomas and MTV.

These days Thomas is a music professor at Johns Hopkins University. Please visit his website using the keywords thomasdolbyofficial.