Biography

Once sued by Dolby Laboratories, the company that holds the patent on the Dolby noise reduction system. He won.

Professor of Music & Film at John Hopkins University.

Helped create the polyphonic technology that brought ringtones to the world.

An avid windsurfer; divides his time between his homes near San Francisco and England's East coast--both good windsurfing locations.

During high school Shane MacGowan of The Pogues was his classmate in English Literature.

[on why he didn't produce more records, in a 2005 interview with The Onion A.V. Club] Producing means months in the studio with a fair amount of responsibility. There's the budget, the deadline, the drummer's drug problem, whatever. You have to be a grown-up, really. When you're the artist, you're allowed to be a crazy kid, and everyone around you supports that behavior, because they know that's where the excitement starts. So they allow you to be irresponsible. I tend to ping-pong between the child and the adult, and I don't think I could've spent all my time in the back seat. Also, I'm something of an exhibitionist. I need to express myself and have my own name attached to it, rather than somebody else's. In balance, you know? In good measure.

[in a 2005 interview with The Onion A.V. Club] People would like to believe that Morrissey lived in a housing project on the outskirts of Manchester, and that he got up every day, dressed in rags, and wrote a couple of heartbreaking songs before his tea brewed. But by the time most people had heard of Morrissey, he was already a millionaire. I've got nothing against him. I think that's great. But it's an unfair requirement to make of musicians to expect them to have no shoes on their feet, or it's not "authentic." That's not reasonable.

[on finding the right performance venue] My least favorite is when it's in the sit-down, table-type venues and there are waitresses busing tables and people pouring beer. My favorite is the old movie theatres that we've done a few of. They have a history about them. People can settle into a comfortable chair, they've had their panini and a glass of wine, and they're prepared to give you their attention for an hour-and-a-half. That works well for me.

[on a 15 year sabbatical away from performance] Initially I got a grant to investigate interactive music, and how music should play in video games and in virtual reality and in location-based entertainment, and eventually the Internet. And over the course of the '90s we made some very innovative music applications - not unlike the apps you can download today. They enabled non-musicians to play music by moving blobs around or or clicking on different buttons to create their own mixes.The core technology was a synthesizer called Beatnik.

[on Peter Gabriel] Peter approaches business the way he approaches his music: it's not digital, it's organic. I am impressed that he's achieved so much in the business world.