Magnus Pyke: Blinded with Science?While composing his 1983 hit "She Blinded Me With Science," Thomas Dolby enlisted Magnus Pyke to contribute the song's speaking parts. A celebrity scientist in the UK, Pyke was a very stubborn and awkward character who agreed to work with Dolby only after considerable cajoling.
"When he was working with me in the studio," Dolby later recalled, "I would say, 'Dr. Pyke, when I wave my hand you say: "She blinded me with science!"' And on the first few he did; he said, 'She blinded me with science?' And I said, 'That's great, but it's not really a question; it's like an exclamation.' And he goes, 'Yes, but as a known scientist it would be a bit surprising if a girl blinded me with science.' The tape was rolling and that's what leads in the 12-inch. Every time he went to the U.S. afterwards people would come up behind him and yell, 'Science!' And it drove him absolutely bonkers."
[Pyke was such a stickler that he refused to wear a white doctor's coat in the song's video. The fine for impersonating a doctor, he explained, was several thousand pounds.]
[Trivia: Thomas Robertson (whose love of music and technology led him to build his own synthesizers as a young adult) was nicknamed Dolby at college (where he studied meteorology).]
Dolby, Thomas Morgan [born Thomas Morgan Robertson] (1958- ) British musician [noted for various recordings]
[Sources: http://mixonline.com; VH1 - "Pop Up Video"]More Thomas Dolby anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
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