Mike Thorne (Physics, 1966)

Music producer

Neil wasn’t just a brilliant Physics tutor, he took his sub-title ‘moral tutor’ very seriously, and encouraged living thinking, far beyond rote learning. In my 1965 interview, he asked if I had studied combinations and permutations. My heart sank: ‘no’. ‘Good’ he said, and then guided me to work out formulae from first principles. Thinking like that landed me on Catte Street, when cars drove at 30mph and screeched on down New College Lane. Neil’s provocation didn’t end with an interview.

My resumé includes cleaning toilets, editing an international professional audio magazine (Studio Sound) and writing extensively on classical music (The Guardian, classical concerts, Hi-Fi News, contemporary classical LPs, and more) and pop (too many). Film scores include Memoirs Of A Survivor, after Doris Lessing. Production includes pop and classical recordings (Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy, the Communards’ Don’t Leave Me This Way, Soft Cell’s Tainted Love, and for Carmel, Laurie Anderson, John Cale, Roger Daltrey, Wire, and the Sex Pistols, a definitive version of Ives’ Universe Symphony). My own musical efforts (Sprawl and The Contessa’s Party) provoked my online label (stereosociety.com). You can’t really retire from what I do. Classical piano is my amateur joy, I’m still apologetic for breaking a string on the ancient grand in the basement of OB1 and glad that hammering out Bartók at 1am in the chapel didn’t disturb anyone.

By admitting this naïve, Sunderland 17-year-old from a town suffering from declining ship-building and coal-mining, Neil did me an enormous favour. As our radical 60s progressed, we revised our rules. His iconoclasm was an example to us. We thought for ourselves, confidently. After being lumped together in Sunderland from age 11 as physics nerds and by the alphabet, Dick Temple (Hertford alumnus, 1966) and I graduated ten years later – in Natural Philosophy. We all continue.