 avid Alexander De Horne Rowntree is the oldest member of Blur.
His musical ear comes from both his dad, who had commuted
for 40 years to his job as a BBC sound engineer, and his
mother, who had played in the London Orchestra. The
parents made him play bagpipes, but he fell in love with
the drum kit at school.
The young Dave had been taught to play drums
the hard way - by a gargantuan Scotsman who taped a
sixpence to the drum skin and smacked the pupil across
the back of the head if his stick ever missed the target.
By a coincidence, Dave had also attended some of the
Saturday morning jazz classes run by Graham Coxon's father.
Before he joined the other lads he worked as a computer
engineer, after studying for a HND in Computer Science at
Thames Polytechnic.
Dave had also played with Graham in various
shabby groups in Colchester, the most worthy of which was
Idle Vice. Other bands that he played in were The Curious
Band and Hazel Dean And The Carp Enters From Hell. Just
like Graham, he became a protest vegetarian for a while
but he failed because of malnutrition. For three months
he also lived in London as a squat punk with a mohawk and
played at various squat gigs, after which he moved
wholesale to France and made a meagre living busking and
playing in small-time clubs.
In autumn 1988, Dave was asked by Damon Albarn to
join Circus. Later, when Graham and Alex James had joined the
band, they changed their name to Seymour.
Little is known about Dave's private life, but he is
known to live alone in London. Apparently, he has divorced with his Canadian wife
Paula. In his sparetime he flies around in his aeroplane and
plays with computers. Thanks to Dave and his pal Ant Cauchi, Blur were
one of the first bands in the world to have a website as early as 1995.
Besides Blur
The Ailerons (2005-)
Dave is the drummer in the band called The Ailerons. The band was formed in 2005 and features a
long-time Blur concert musician Mike Smith, among other.
Animation
Dave is really into making
computer animations. He has an own animation company Nanomation (founded in
1999), where he has done, for example, an animation for Beagle 2
project. He has also done some works for MTV, The South Bank
Show and The 11 O'Clock Show.
The world's first
interactive animation series Empire Sq
is directed by Dave. The BAFTA nominated series
made their TV debut in 2005
and has been released on DVD afterwards.
Miscellaneous
- Dave stood as the Labour Party
candidate in 2007 and 2008.
- He is one of the founders of the digital development label Transistor Project.
- Played drums for Fat Les
and on a Gary Numan tribute album on a track called "We Have
A Technical". He also played drums in Graham's band in the summer of
2000.
For more details about Dave's
musical appearances outside Blur, see
Dave Rowntree Discography.
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