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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\u2019s giving horse wrangling a shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are horses arriving,\u201d he says, checking the time in his country house in Surrey. \u201cThey\u2019re my girlfriend\u2019s horses, but they\u2019ve been kept all over the country. They\u2019re now going to be kept in a field nearby. So it\u2019s all hands to the horses pump today.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s after he talks about his new book: No One You Know is a curated album of photos shot on his Olympus OM10 in Blur\u2019s bright-eyed early days in England, Japan and the Americas, before they forged the Britpop crown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my memory they were like holiday snaps,\u201d 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, \u201cthat was their charm. What came across most strongly was the energy, the enthusiasm, the joy in them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s weird how the 20-year-olds in those pictures \u2014\u201d Damon Albarn, Alex James, Graham Coxon \u2014 \u201cthey still look like that to me when I see them now,\u201d he says, even if many years tend to pass these days between Blur shows and albums. \u201cI\u2019m not nostalgic about the band because it\u2019s still my job. Now is the golden days for me. I wouldn\u2019t relive any parts of my youth at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Rowntree, left, with Damon Albarn and Alex James in Moscow in 2003.Credit: REUTERS<\/p>\n
Rowntree\u2019s 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. \u201cI\u2019m a child of an alcoholic family, so there was no sense of nurturing or valuing achievement,\u201d he says. \u201cMy mum was the brightest person I\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
His father \u201chad his own issues\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth my parents had been classical musicians, so they insisted that I play piano from a very early age \u2026 I absolutely hated it,\u201d he says. Fortunately for the future of British music, his cunning bagpipes trade-off was short-lived.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Rowntree\u2019s book is a curated album of photos shot on his Olympus OM10 in Blur\u2019s early days.<\/p>\n
His book tells the story of Blur forming around the flame of Albarn\u2019s songwriting. \u201cI passionately wanted to be a pop star but I didn\u2019t have a road map,\u201d Rowntree adds. \u201cI did what I found to be an incredibly productive thing: I found people that were good at it and hung around with them. I\u2019ve done that many times in life, and it works.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plan peaked in \u201995, 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can\u2019t fail to mess with your head. I got into all kinds of trouble. But I don\u2019t know many people who\u2019ve risen up through the ranks to become a successful musician that it hasn\u2019t messed with their heads. You have to figure out a healthy way of coping with it. There\u2019s plenty of unhealthy ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swapping drinking for flight training was a solid first move. Just as he\u2019d experienced with the drums as a teen, \u201csomething magical happened\u201d on his first take-off. \u201cAs you climb that first thousand feet, your entire perspective on the world changes. You see things from above rather than the side, and it\u2019s just, \u2018Wow, the world\u2019s a very different place than I imagined\u2019 \u2026 and for somebody who likes machines \u2026 the plane is the ultimate.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s since flown his single-engine four-seater all over the world. \u201cThese days I\u2019m a flying instructor too, so I help other people go through that journey\u2014\u201d which in turn reflects another trip of his own.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing 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\u2019re having on them.<\/p>\n
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Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Blur\u2019s lighting director Dave Byars and Alex James in a photo from No One You Know.Credit: Dave Rowntree<\/p>\n
\u201cI found I was really missing that in life, so getting involved with the Labour Party and getting on charity boards \u2026 that was because I wanted to start doing things one-on-one with people.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Blur slowed down in the 2000s, the drummer\u2019s day jobs shifted from his animation company, Nanomation, to various avenues of civil liberty and reform. His hunger for an \u201cEverest-sized challenge\u201d led to law studies, then public office. He qualified as a solicitor in 2012, focusing on cybercrime and access to justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still connected to those things. I\u2019m still active in the Labour Party. I still do legal stuff of various descriptions. I\u2019m also quite active in the political end of the music industry, campaign for artists\u2019 rights,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the smallest things I find incredibly satisfying. If you\u2019re a good councillor, you spend your weekends knocking on residents\u2019 doors, finding out where the problems are and seeing what you can do to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO DAVE ROWNTREEWorst habit? I really am a bit lazy.Greatest fear? Spiders. It\u2019s just the shape they are.The line that has stayed with you? \u201dFrankly, my dear, I don\u2019t give a damn.\u201d Not as a positive thing, as a negative thing to kick against.Biggest regret? Giving up the piano.Favourite book? G\u00f6del, 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\u2019s my favourite songwriter.If you could time travel, where would you go? The future. There\u2019s nothing about the past that seems very appealing to me.<\/p>\n
Lately, he\u2019s been turning up for more music, scoring a handful of films and releasing his first solo album, Radio Songs, in 2023. \u201cThere was a bit of anxiety there,\u201d he confesses, \u201clying awake at night, thinking oh my god, what if this is all a dreadful mistake? What if everybody\u2019s just pointing at me, laughing, going \u2018What the hell is this rubbish?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s concerned about the kleptocracy that is music streaming and the unchecked growth of AI: \u201cyet another way to make terrible music\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlur will be fine, you\u2019ll be absolutely relieved to hear. But for the next generation of Blurs it\u2019s very, very difficult indeed,\u201d he says. \u201cThere 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\u2019s what stardom seems to be reduced to these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not that he\u2019s had much experience with that. \u201cI\u2019ve 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\u2019ve always been very happy to sit at the back and just make music.\u201d<\/p>\n
But is there anything besides the bagpipes, one can\u2019t help wondering, that he hasn\u2019t conquered to his satisfaction?<\/p>\n
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\u201cOh, I haven\u2019t achieved anything to my satisfaction yet,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I\u2019m doing an Open University astronomy degree at the moment. I\u2019ve got about five or six years left. That\u2019s something I\u2019ve been meaning to do for many, many years.<\/p>\n
\u201cTime is one thing that there\u2019s never enough of. But I\u2019ve got a lovely telescope and I take photographs of the heavens through it, and I study what I\u2019m looking at in the evenings. It\u2019s absolutely fascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dave Rowntree appears at BIGSOUND Brisbane September 2-5. No One You Know is out September 9 (Hero Press, UK).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size Dave Rowntree will always be the drummer from Blur, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-96915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}