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The British synthpop artist Thomas Dolby\u2019s career has spanned nearly 50 years, mirroring music\u2019s technological and innovative changes. Of those decades, he will always be associated with the 1980s, a period that saw him achieve stardom thanks to the smash hits \u201cShe Blinded Me With Science\u201d and \u201cHyperactive\u201d; it was also a decade that saw him as a renowned session keyboardist for the likes of Def Leppard and Foreigner, and a producer for records by Prefab Sprout and Joni Mitchell.<\/p>\n
So it only makes sense that Dolby\u2019s upcoming headline tour is titled Iconic 80s Recollections<\/em><\/a>, which starts this week and covers the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland. For these series of dates, Dolby will share his songs and stories from his memories of the decade that gave us Trivial Pursuit, MTV and, of course, synthpop.<\/p>\n The shows are sort of a precursor to an orchestral project that Dolby is working on called Requiem for the 80s<\/em>. \u201cThis will be performed, hopefully starting ’27, but still in ’28, where I have a band performing in front of a symphony orchestra in cities around the world,\u201d Dolby says. \u201cAnd it’s designed as one of those touring orchestral hybrid packages.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo on this tour,\u201d he later adds, \u201cyou will hear a virtual symphony orchestra, which is done with MIDI and samples. You’ll see sort of artistic shots of orchestral instruments projected on the video screen to give you some sense of what the audience experience will be like. It’s really a way for me to workshop the material, both in terms of the structure and flow of the music and my sort of spoken shtick.\u201d<\/p>\n While subsequent generations see the \u201880s as bright and shiny, especially in the music, it was kind of dark for those who lived through it, according to Dolby.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had Margaret Thatcher. We had the Falklands, the miners\u2019 strike. And then we had the Berlin Wall. We had Ronald Reagan, corporate greed, all that sort of thing. That tends to be glossed over in people\u2019s nostalgia for the ’80s. And I actually find that when you speak to people who were there, they can actually relate to that,” he says.<\/p>\n “There was a period of quite a lot of dissociative behavior, which I think was reflected by English bands like The Smiths, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo and the Bunnymen, people like that,\u201d Dolby later adds.<\/p>\n For these shows, he\u2019s leaning into the colder side of the decade, as he\u2019ll be quoting about 40 songs that he admired or influenced him, as well as material that he was involved with as a session musician and producer.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a little bit of Foreigner in there, a bit of Prefab Sprout, different artists that I worked with in one capacity or another,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I use melodies and themes from those songs as sort of orchestral motifs that I develop over the course of the symphony. And I sort of tell my story, many of the stories which you’ll find in my book, The Speed of Sound<\/em><\/a>. It’s a very personal retrospective of the decade and sort of putting it to bed.”<\/p>\n Although he tends to perform solo, Dolby will be accompanied by bassist Gail Ann Dorsey and guitarist Andrew Lipke on the tour. \u201cI share the lead vocals with the two of them in this show. Obviously, Gail is doing various female vocals, and Andrew has a higher register than me. They\u2019re both great singers, but they\u2019re great musicians as well. And I\u2019ll be joined in this leg by Mat Hector on the drums, who played with Iggy Pop for years and Thom Yorke and various others.”<\/p>\n