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Dave Rowntree will always be the drummer from Blur, but his side hustles are next level. Light aircraft pilot. Computer animation artist. Criminal defence lawyer. Norfolk County councillor. Labour Party candidate for Westminster. Today, he’s giving horse wrangling a shot.
“There are horses arriving,” he says, checking the time in his country house in Surrey. “They’re my girlfriend’s horses, but they’ve been kept all over the country. They’re now going to be kept in a field nearby. So it’s all hands to the horses pump today.”
That’s after he talks about his new book: No One You Know is a curated album of photos shot on his Olympus OM10 in Blur’s bright-eyed early days in England, Japan and the Americas, before they forged the Britpop crown.
“In my memory they were like holiday snaps,” he says of the candid photos of band, fans and crew; tour bus and backstage moments unearthed in a box during lockdown. As it turns out, “that was their charm. What came across most strongly was the energy, the enthusiasm, the joy in them.
“It’s weird how the 20-year-olds in those pictures —” Damon Albarn, Alex James, Graham Coxon — “they still look like that to me when I see them now,” he says, even if many years tend to pass these days between Blur shows and albums. “I’m not nostalgic about the band because it’s still my job. Now is the golden days for me. I wouldn’t relive any parts of my youth at all.”
Rowntree, left, with Damon Albarn and Alex James in Moscow in 2003.Credit: REUTERS
Rowntree’s dogged forward outlook is perhaps implied by the above list of leapfrogging careers. What might look like serial over-achievement can be traced, in a sense, to a less-than-ideal upbringing. “I’m a child of an alcoholic family, so there was no sense of nurturing or valuing achievement,” he says. “My mum was the brightest person I’ve ever met by a long, long way. Had she not had her demons, she would have ended up running a country or MI5 or something.”
His father “had his own issues”, but he left an historic footprint. A BBC recording engineer for more than 40 years, John Rowntree captured early radio sessions by the Beatles. Later he performed in the same band as his percussionist son, the Colchester Silver Band.
“Both my parents had been classical musicians, so they insisted that I play piano from a very early age … I absolutely hated it,” he says. Fortunately for the future of British music, his cunning bagpipes trade-off was short-lived.
“I fairly quickly switched to the drums, which I thought was the second most obnoxious instrument known to man, and immediately I got utterly obsessed in a way that I tend to.”
Rowntree’s book is a curated album of photos shot on his Olympus OM10 in Blur’s early days.
His book tells the story of Blur forming around the flame of Albarn’s songwriting. “I passionately wanted to be a pop star but I didn’t have a road map,” Rowntree adds. “I did what I found to be an incredibly productive thing: I found people that were good at it and hung around with them. I’ve done that many times in life, and it works.”
The plan peaked in ’95, when that now fabled media stunt with Oasis made both bands household names. Exactly 30 years ago, on the weekend of their hyped singles chart battle, Rowntree flew himself to France to escape the circus.
“It can’t fail to mess with your head. I got into all kinds of trouble. But I don’t know many people who’ve risen up through the ranks to become a successful musician that it hasn’t messed with their heads. You have to figure out a healthy way of coping with it. There’s plenty of unhealthy ways.”
Swapping drinking for flight training was a solid first move. Just as he’d experienced with the drums as a teen, “something magical happened” on his first take-off. “As you climb that first thousand feet, your entire perspective on the world changes. You see things from above rather than the side, and it’s just, ‘Wow, the world’s a very different place than I imagined’ … and for somebody who likes machines … the plane is the ultimate.”
He’s since flown his single-engine four-seater all over the world. “These days I’m a flying instructor too, so I help other people go through that journey—” which in turn reflects another trip of his own.
“Being in a big band, the audience interaction gets less and less personal over time. There are lots of compensations for that, but what you get less of is looking people in the eye and seeing the impact you’re having on them.
Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Blur’s lighting director Dave Byars and Alex James in a photo from No One You Know.Credit: Dave Rowntree
“I found I was really missing that in life, so getting involved with the Labour Party and getting on charity boards … that was because I wanted to start doing things one-on-one with people.”
As Blur slowed down in the 2000s, the drummer’s day jobs shifted from his animation company, Nanomation, to various avenues of civil liberty and reform. His hunger for an “Everest-sized challenge” led to law studies, then public office. He qualified as a solicitor in 2012, focusing on cybercrime and access to justice.
“I’m still connected to those things. I’m still active in the Labour Party. I still do legal stuff of various descriptions. I’m also quite active in the political end of the music industry, campaign for artists’ rights,” he explains.
“It’s the smallest things I find incredibly satisfying. If you’re a good councillor, you spend your weekends knocking on residents’ doors, finding out where the problems are and seeing what you can do to help.
“It’s a cool thing because for some people, Dave Rowntree from Blur knocking on their door was quite a surprise. Similarly, as a criminal lawyer visiting people in prisons and police cells, for some people, Dave from Blur turning up was quite an exciting event. The first time.”
TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO DAVE ROWNTREEWorst habit? I really am a bit lazy.Greatest fear? Spiders. It’s just the shape they are.The line that has stayed with you? ”Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Not as a positive thing, as a negative thing to kick against.Biggest regret? Giving up the piano.Favourite book? Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter I found life-changing.The artwork or song you wish was yours? Anything by George Harrison. After Damon (Albarn), he’s my favourite songwriter.If you could time travel, where would you go? The future. There’s nothing about the past that seems very appealing to me.
Lately, he’s been turning up for more music, scoring a handful of films and releasing his first solo album, Radio Songs, in 2023. “There was a bit of anxiety there,” he confesses, “lying awake at night, thinking oh my god, what if this is all a dreadful mistake? What if everybody’s just pointing at me, laughing, going ‘What the hell is this rubbish?’”
The response, as it happened, was much more positive. Rowntree will visit Brisbane in September to speak at the BIGSOUND music business conference. Among other issues, he’s concerned about the kleptocracy that is music streaming and the unchecked growth of AI: “yet another way to make terrible music”.
“Blur will be fine, you’ll be absolutely relieved to hear. But for the next generation of Blurs it’s very, very difficult indeed,” he says. “There are, I think, green shoots poking through: consumers getting fed up with the current situation where music seems to be a sort of giveaway to a rather poor talent contest. That’s what stardom seems to be reduced to these days.”
Not that he’s had much experience with that. “I’ve always been pretty satisfied with my lot as a drummer. You see many drummers that are desperate to be the frontman and act up as a result. It never seems to end well for them. I’ve always been very happy to sit at the back and just make music.”
But is there anything besides the bagpipes, one can’t help wondering, that he hasn’t conquered to his satisfaction?
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“Oh, I haven’t achieved anything to my satisfaction yet,” he says, “but I’m doing an Open University astronomy degree at the moment. I’ve got about five or six years left. That’s something I’ve been meaning to do for many, many years.
“Time is one thing that there’s never enough of. But I’ve got a lovely telescope and I take photographs of the heavens through it, and I study what I’m looking at in the evenings. It’s absolutely fascinating.”
Dave Rowntree appears at BIGSOUND Brisbane September 2-5. No One You Know is out September 9 (Hero Press, UK).