Posted on 10/15/2018 11:09:11 AM PDT by billorites
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter has earned eight platinum records in a music career that started in the 1960s, and he has received numerous security clearances and contracting jobs since the 1980s as a self-taught expert on missile-defense and counterterrorism.
Baxter was one of many luminaries at the White House on Thursday to watch President Donald Trump sign the Music Modernization Act, which reforms copyright laws.
Unlike every other musician in the room, including Kid Rock, Baxter has built a successful second career as a defense consultant.
Baxter dropped out of college in Boston in 1969 to join a short-lived psychedelic-rock band. After that, he moved to California and become one of the original six members of Steely Dan, which he left in 1974 to join the Doobie Brothers, which he left in 1979.
Baxter has said he "fell into his second profession almost by accident."
While living in California in the 1970s, Baxter helped a neighbor dig out their house after a mudslide.
"Afterward, he invited me into his study and I saw all these pictures of airplanes and missiles on the wall — it turned out he was one of the guys who had invented the Sidewinder missile," Baxter said in a 2013 interview. "As a gift for helping him clean out his house he gave me a subscription to Aviation Week and to Jane's Defense. It was amazing."
Baxter found the technical aspects of music and of defense, particularly missile defense, coincided.
"Technology is really neutral. It's just a question of application," he told MTV in 2001. "For instance, if TRW came up with a new data compression algorithms for their spy satellites, I could use that same information and apply it for a musical instrument or a hard disc recording unit. So it was just a natural progression."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Amazing.....................
He's a pretty good guitar player, too :-)
No time for losers:
- Comet put on list of potential Earth impactors
- Queen's Brian May Comes Out For The Protection of Comets from Vandalism
- Drudge Report Radio ... July 3, 2005 [LISTEN LIVE]
- Queen Guitarist Brian May Makes Excuses for London Bombing on Official Web Site
- Astronauts push for strategies, spacecraft to prevent cosmic collision
- Brian May named university chancellor
- NASA Releases Images of Man-Made Crater on Comet
“He’s a pretty good guitar player, too :-) “
Only because his dad helped him build it.
Wow, guess he’s not going to be asked to the Steely Dan tour! What a musical background.
One of the best pedal steel guitarists in the business, just listen to his solo on “Pearl of the Quarter”.
So were the Skunk Works named after him or is it the other way around?
Very cool story.
Thanks.
Frank Zappa became a dental floss tycoon ...
Apparently some rockers are smarter than people think. Dexter Holland of The Offspring attended Pacifica High School in Garden Grove, California, where he graduated as class valedictorian in 1984. During high school, Holland was the best student in mathematics in his year, then attended the University of Southern California, where he earned a B.S. degree in biology and an M.S. degree in molecular biology, and commenced a Ph.D. in molecular biology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Holland
I thought Kid Rock had his own signature line of doublewide moble homes.....guess I just dreamt that.
Peter Tork held a doctorate in something if I recall. I want to say Physics.
James Young of Styx holds a degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. These guys are a trip.
I assume he’s reeling in the years.
That was his father.
Didn’t Tork’s mother invent Velcro or something like that???
Hey now. I’ve been playing since ‘62, worked on nuke subs, worked on the shuttle, worked on experimental nave vessels and nobody gives me a pat on the back. LOL! Lucky for me I don’t require that. Oh, and still doing jams in town.
Tom Stoltz of Boston has a Bachelors and Master from MIT in Mechanical Engineering. It only took him a year to earn the masters. He invented the Rockman portable amp.
If I recall, he also played every instrument on the debut album in the studio.
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