Дэвид Роунтри: от барабанщика Blur до политика и исследователя космоса

English drummer

David Alexander De Horne Rowntree (born 8 May 1964) is an English musician, politician, solicitor, composer and animator. He is the drummer for the rock band Blur and the Labour Party prospective parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Mid Sussex.

David Alexander De Horne Rowntree was born in Colchester, Essex, at Colchester Maternity Hospital on 8 May 1964, to musical parents – Susan, a viola player, and John, a sound engineer at the BBC. He has an older sister named Sara. He attended the Gilberd School in Colchester during the week, and the Landermere Music School, Thorpe le Soken, at weekends, where he studied percussion. He played percussion with his father in the Colchester Silver Band, a brass band. After leaving school he studied for a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Computer Science at Thames Polytechnic, and started his career as a computer programmer for Colchester Borough Council.

Rowntree played in bands with Graham Coxon while they were growing up in Colchester. He also knew Coxon's father, who taught jazz classes at Landermere. In 1989, Coxon introduced Rowntree to Damon Albarn, who was forming a band around Goldsmiths, University of London. Rowntree was asked to join and left his job to move to London. With the addition of Alex James, and after two name changes, the band settled on Blur and were signed to Food Records, which was distributed through EMI. EMI later acquired Food Records and Blur were absorbed into EMI.

In 1998 Rowntree's life long fascination with space led him to get involved in the Beagle 2 Mars mission. The previous year the European Space Agency (ESA) had announced its first planetary mission, an orbiter named the Mars Express. The Open University's Prof Colin Pillinger proposed it should carry a lander dedicated to looking for life and conducting scientific analyses. Rowntree and fellow band member Alex James became involved after taking a behind the scenes tour at Houston's NASA space centre. They were struck by how many of the people they met there were British and wondered why they had to go to America to do space research and work in the industry. When they got back to the UK, they came across Beagle 2 while looking for UK space projects and pledged to support it. At that time, the cost of the lander project was estimated at £25 million and did not have wide support. Rowntree says: "In the same way that Damien Hirst got the first artwork on Mars, we got the first music on Mars."

On 31 July 2018, Rowntree appeared in the video for Slaves' released single, "Chokehold", as a drummer auditioning for a part in the band.

Rowntree hosts The Dave Rowntree Podcast Show on Spotify with "researcher George". The first series was six episodes long, starting with an episode of Rowntree's "go to" music for challenging times released in November 2020.

In November 2021, Rowntree signed a deal with Cooking Vinyl for his first solo record. In a statement, Rowntree said, "As a kid I used to spend hours spinning the dial on my radio, dreaming of escape to all the places whose exotic stations I heard. I've tried to make an album like that – tuning through the spectrum, stopping at each song telling a story about a turning point in my life, then spinning the dial and moving on." His first solo single, "London Bridge", was released on 5 July 2022. Rowntree's first solo album, Radio Songs, was released on 20 January 2023.

Rowntree is a computer animator and owned an animation company called Nanomation for eleven years. Clients included advertising agencies and The 11 O'Clock Show. He also directed two series of the South Park esque animated show Empire Square, which made its TV debut on Channel 4 on 18 February 2005.

Rowntree has an interest in computer graphics and has contributed to three research papers on topics related to non photorealistic rendering. The papers look at translating video to animation using novel techniques to track and visualise movement.

Rowntree also works in film and TV soundtrack composition. He and Ian Arber composed the music and score for the 2018 Bros documentary Bros: After the Screaming Stops. He also worked on the BBC series The Capture, which premiered in 2019 and Netflix's science fiction series The One (March 2021).

Rowntree trained to become a solicitor when Blur took a hiatus in 2006. He worked in the criminal department of London law firm Kingsley Napley, a firm of solicitors based in Moorgate, London. In July 2017, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in law by Greenwich University, becoming an Honorary Doctor of Laws (HonLLD).

Rowntree has been a keen activist and supporter of the Labour Party since becoming a member in 2002, and has been chair of London's West End branch. In April 2007, he unsuccessfully contested the safe Conservative seat of Marylebone High Street on Westminster City Council. In July 2008, he fought the Labour held seat of Church Street, but was unsuccessful again. In February 2008, he was selected by the Cities of London and Westminster Constituency Labour Party to stand against the incumbent Conservative MP Mark Field at the 2010 general election; Rowntree was defeated at that election. In 2011, he sought selection as the Labour candidate for Norwich South, but lost to Clive Lewis, a journalist and former soldier, who went on to be elected as the constituency's MP. In the Norfolk County Council election on 4 May 2017, Rowntree was elected as county councillor for the University ward in Norwich. He stood down before the 2021 election, due to the COVID 19 pandemic: in a statement on his website, he said "It has been a joy and a privilege to represent the residents in University Ward, and I've made friendships here that will last a lifetime. I hope that when this is all over, I can get back involved somehow." In March 2024, Rowntree was selected as Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Mid Sussex in the next general election. Rowntree's campaign focuses on on housing and town centre regeneration.

Rowntree is a committed opponent of the death penalty and patron of Amicus, an organisation that provides legal representation to people on death row in the United States. In August 2014, Rowntree was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run up to September's referendum on that issue.

Rowntree has campaigned against prosecution of internet music filesharers. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group, a United Kingdom based digital rights NGO. When asked on Blur's website how he felt about their single "Out of Time" being leaked on the internet before its release, he replied "I'd rather it gushed". Rowntree is a founding director of the Featured Artists Coalition. In May 2016, he organised a celebrity "Star Boot Sale" to raise funds for mobile health clinics to help Syrian refugees and host Jordanians in need. Stars manning the stalls included Hot Chip, Melanie C, KT Tunstall and Badly Drawn Boy, with Phil Daniels as auctioneer for special lots, like Kylie Minogue's handbag.

Rowntree obtained a full pilot's licence in 1995. He has held a foundation licence for amateur radio in the UK since 2012, upgrading to a full licence in 2016. His callsign is M0IEG.

In 1994, Rowntree married Paola Marra, a Canadian woman. They divorced in the early 2000s. In 2007, he was dating Michelle de Vries. In the early 1990s, Rowntree was a heavy drinker. He stopped drinking alcohol in 1993 after a particularly heavy drinking session with members of the band Siouxsie and the Banshees. By 2007, Rowntree stated that he had stopped using drugs and was "active in the recovery community". He keeps a clip of the interview on his phone, to watch if he ever considers relapsing into drug use. Rowntree is a trustee on the board of Release, a charity that campaigns for evidence based drug policies founded on principles of public health.