Dave Rowntree (Dorset, 1968) plays the drums and the timpani in UK pop quartet Blur since they formed in 1989. Other bands Rowntree played in are Idle Vice (un trio de jazz-punk avec Graham), Hazel Dean, The Carpets Easters From Hell and The Circus.



Dave is the oldest member of Blur, and the only one that is married. He won't reveal much about his private life. His parents made him play bagpipes but he fell in love with the drum kit at school. Dave's 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 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's father. Before he joined the other lads he worked as a computer engineer, after studying for a HND in Computer Science at Woolwich.



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 Carpets Eaters 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 to join Circus. Later, when Graham and Alex had joined the band, they changed their name to Seymour.



Nowadays Dave lives with his Canadian wife Paula and their cats. In his sparetime he listens to his fave band, the Prodigy, and flies around in his own aeroplane.



Besides Blur:

Dave has an own animation company Nanomation (founded in 1999), where he has done, for example, an animation for Beagle 2 project.



He has done some animations for The South Bank Show, The Eleven O'Clock Show and MTV. He also did a computer puzzle for the Internet company I-gig.



Dave has 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.