"Love Is a Loaded Pistol"

For his first studio album release in decades, musical innovator Thomas Dolby has been composing music in the uniquely inspirational setting of a restored life-boat. Here he premieres a gorgeous, evocative song from that album -- about one night with a legend. He's backed by members of the modern string quartet Ethel.

I've been playing TED for nearly a decade,

and I've very rarely played

any new songs of my own.

And that was largely because there weren't any.

(Laughter)

So I've been busy with a couple of projects,

and one of them was this:

The Nutmeg.

A 1930s ship's lifeboat,

which I've been restoring in the garden

of my beach house in England.

And, so now,

when the polar ice caps melt,

my recording studio will rise up like an ark,

and I'll float off into the drowned world

like a character from a J.G. Ballard novel.

During the day,

the Nutmeg collects energy

from solar panels on the roof of the wheelhouse,

and from a 450 watt turbine

up the mast.

So that when it gets dark,

I've got plenty of power.

And I can light up the Nutmeg like a beacon.

And so I go in there until the early hours of the morning,

and I work on new songs.

I'd like to play to you guys,

if you're willing to be the first audience to hear it.

(Applause)

It's about Billie Holiday.

And it appears that,

some night in 1947

she left her physical space

and was missing all night,

until she reappeared in the morning.

But I know where she was.

She was with me on my lifeboat.

And she was hot.

(Music)

♫ Billie crept softly ♫

♫ into my waking arms ♫

♫ warm like a sip of sour mash ♫

♫ Strange fruit for ♫

♫ a sweet hunk of trash ♫

♫ Panic at the stage door ♫

♫ of Carnegie Hall ♫

♫ "Famous Jazz Singer Gone AWOL" ♫

♫ Must have left the building ♫

♫ body and soul ♫

♫ On a creaky ♫

♫ piano stool tonight ♫

♫ as the moon is my ♫

♫ only witness ♫

♫ She was breathing ♫

♫ in my ear ♫

♫ "This time it's love" ♫

♫ But love is a loaded pistol ♫

♫ By daybreak she's gone ♫

♫ Over the frozen river, home ♫

♫ Me and Johnny Walker ♫

♫ See in the new age ♫

♫ alone ♫

♫ Stay with me ♫

♫ again tonight ♫

♫ Billie, time, ♫

♫ time is a wily trickster ♫

♫ Still an echo ♫

♫ in my heart says, ♫

♫ "This time it's love" ♫

(Applause)