The Speed of Sound by Thomas Dolby

Author:Thomas Dolby
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Flatiron Books

The album was full of joy, as well. I was amazed by the way Kathleen’s body and mind were transforming before my eyes as she grew into her role as a mother. And of course, I was in love with our delightful daughter.

My album was taking shape, but a couple of songs still needed a few guitar touches. Kathleen used to hang out with the actress Valerie Bertinelli, who was married to Eddie Van Halen. Eddie and I had met before at awards shows. He was possibly the best rock-and-roll guitarist on the planet, and I wondered if I could nab him to play a few notes on my album. Like me, he was an odd mixture of very shy and very arrogant. Kathleen called Val and she connected us. Eddie was interested, but he and his band were midway through their own album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, and he warned me that his bandmates—especially his older brother Alex—were not keen on him guesting for other people. But he said he could do a few hours’ recording over a weekend at his home studio in the hills above Coldwater Canyon.

I followed a winding drive to Eddie’s fifty-six-room Tudor mansion with my multitrack tapes. The studio was a little farther up the hill. Eddie’s engineer was the legendary Andy Johns, a towering Cockney, and he was apparently on a weekend bender of booze and drugs. Eddie himself was stone-cold sober. We sat in the control room surrounded by about a dozen electric guitars on stands, including his famous red-and-white-striped “Frankenstrat,” and chatted nervously.

Usually when you meet a fellow musician from any corner of the world you can break the ice by quoting a random line from This Is Spinal Tap. It is the universal currency. So when Eddie wanted to illustrate an idea for my song and reached for his as-yet-unplugged Frankenstrat, I said: “Shh! Listen to that sustain. You could go out for a bite to eat while that’s going on.”

I waited, but Eddie looked at me completely blankly. “Um, did you ever see that movie?” I asked. “This Is Spinal Tap? The mock-rockumentary?”

“Yeah, dude,” said Eddie. “We saw that piece of shit.”

“You weren’t so into it?”

“We didn’t think it was funny. It was like, someone followed us around with a camera, put it up on a screen, and everybody fell over laughing.”

Over the course of that weekend I understood. Eddie’s playing on my songs was out of this world, but every hour of his day was a scene from Spinal Tap. The studio was like a padded den for adolescent schoolboys. In the back room there was an automated hot dog vending machine, an electronic dartboard, and a row of four Grand Prix Racer arcade game machines, so the band could have races.

A little way into our session, it became apparent that Andy Johns was the worse for wear. Eddie could operate the twenty-four-track himself, so he told Johns to go home. “All right, you little Dutch git,” said Johns affectionately.

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