 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 programmer 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 failed due to malnutrition. For a couple of months, he also lived in London as a punk
with a mohawk and
played at various squat gigs. After that, he moved to France and made a meagre living busking and
playing in small-time clubs.
In autumn 1988, Damon Albarn asked Dave to
join the band Circus. Later, when Graham and Alex James had joined the
band, they changed their name to Seymour.
Dave has divorced with his Canadian wife
Paula and is currently in relationship with Michelle De Vries. In his spare time, he flies around in his aeroplane and
plays with computers. Thanks to Dave and his techie pal Ant Cauchi, Blur were
one of the first bands in the world to have a website as early as 1995.
Besides Blur
Animation
Dave has an own computer 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.
Law and politics
In 2009, Dave graduated as a lawyer from BPP Law School
in Waterloo. As of 2011, he is training to be a solicitor from the same
school. Dave is also a Labour Party activist and stood as the party's
candidate in 2007, 2008 and 2010.
The Ailerons (2005-)
Dave is the drummer in the band called The Ailerons,
which features a
long-time Blur concert musician Mike Smith, among other. The
band have been largely inactive since 2007 due to members' other
commitments.
Miscellaneous
- 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.
- Dave is one of the founders of the
digital development label, Transistor Project, and a committee in
The Featured Artists' Coalition (FAC).
For more details about Dave's
musical appearances outside Blur, see
Dave Rowntree Discography.
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