Morning,
Ready for another week? If you’re in London, it’s going to be hot. Roasting. Boiling. Baking. Sweltering. Like a sauna. Furnace. You’ll be able to fry an egg on your stomach.
So where better to end this week of sweat than in the cool confines of the air-conditioned Social, just off Oxford Circus, on Friday evening at 6:00pm. Ted’s having the launch for his book Paper Cuts there with some stellar guests. We’re a dozen tickets away from selling out, but we’ve kept three pairs aside as a gift for our New Cue readers. Just drop us an email here with the heading Paper Cuts and we’ll happily gift you a pair. Ohh, who wouldn't lap this up? It's ridiculous. Tremendous. Fantastic. Fan-dabby-dozy-tastic…
Anyway, enough of the future, back to the present. In today’s edition we’ve got an interview with Blur drummer Dave Rowntree about his first ever solo single and the possibility of future Blur action. Sounds good doesn’t it? Read on.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Dave Rowntree
When he’s not playing drums in Blur - who, let’s be honest, haven’t been the most active of groups in recent years – Dave Rowntree has an extra-curricular C.V. that makes Damon Albarn look work-shy.
Alongside composing scores for TV and film (including for unintentionally hilarious Bros documentary After The Screaming Stops), he’s a trained solicitor, a DJ and podcast host, a flying instructor, runs his own animation company and between 2017 and 2021 sat as a Labour councillor for Norfolk County Council.
For all those years though, Rowntree has hidden his inner Phil Collins under a bushel and resisted the urge to have his own musical career… until now! Chris called up Dave exactly one hour before the release of his first ever solo single, London Bridge. You can have a listen below. It’s worth the wait, sort of Blur by way of a really deadpan Baxter Dury…
Hello Dave.
Hey Chris, how you doing?
Not too bad thanks, whereabouts are you?
I'm abroad visiting my relatives in Spain.
Nice. Did you managed to get there okay without your flight being canceled?
No, it was a disaster. All the things you read about in the papers happen to everybody.
Hopefully you’ll be able to get back OK
Me too. Well, mind you…
There are worst places to be stuck. Well, thank you for taking 20 minutes out of your holiday to talk to us. In exactly one hour your debut single London Bridge will be released out into the world. Feeling nervous?
Not really. I quite like the single so I’m keen for people to hear it!
This is your debut solo single. What took you so long?
I’ve been kind of busy, really. I've been writing songs for a long time and it was lockdown that gave me permission to start working on it all and put it in some kind of order. I've been learning my craft out of the public gaze. It’s a lockdown album really, like so many of these things are now. I was working on a couple of films as I do for my day job and they came to an end and I just had time stretching out in front of me, so I decided to collect some songs together, record them and see where it took me.
Having an empty diary must have been a first. It’s not like when Blur aren’t active you’re sat around twiddling your thumbs.
No. I do live an interesting life. I like to be constantly pushing the boundaries and doing different things. I really enjoy learning about stuff, so most of the things I do involve learning in one way or another. I've had a multifaceted career. My C.V. is weird. Thank God you no longer have to write your occupation on your passport. What would I write? I’d need a page.
Drummer/politician/flying instructor/composer/animator/solicitor/songwriter… have I left anything out?
It’s a good starting point. We shall see where life takes us.
You joined Blur over 30 years ago, have you always harboured a desire to be a songwriter?
I've always written songs. I've been playing instruments since I was ten or eleven and I’d always written songs right from the start. I haven’t written any Blur songs, but that’s not to say I haven’t written a lot of songs. It was deciding to do something with them. That's quite a mental barrier. When you start to make a record yourself you have to start setting aside years of space for it, making videos, playing live and all that kind of stuff. You have to really clear out the diary which is quite a commitment. From my experience of Blur, doing the music is the easy bit, all of the other things take all of the time and lose you all of your hair.
When it comes to writing your own songs and getting them together, is there anything you’ve picked up from watching Damon at work all of these years?
I tried to emulate his songwriting technique at one point. Damon writes the chords and the tune first and then he puts words to it. I’d always struggled to do that and ended up doing it the other way round which seemed the more natural thing to do, but when I started working with Damon and I saw how he was doing it I thought, ‘Oh maybe that’s the trick!’.
I spoke to you a few years ago and you were talking about the sheer amount of time Damon spends writing songs. That it was literally all he does.
Yes. That's why he's brilliant at it. That's what he does. When everybody else is out having an evening at the theatre or whatever people do for their hobbies and relaxation, Damon is at home writing songs. You have to write ten rubbish songs for each good one you write and Damon’s got thousands and thousands of songs from which he can pick hundreds and hundreds of great ones. He always says he has eighteen months of songs in reserve. You have to write quite a few songs to have eighteen months’ worth in reserve! It’s probably why he’s always got four or five projects on the go.
Have the other guys in Blur heard your album?
Oh yeah, I’ve played it to all of them. Damon gave me some very helpful feedback, which is nice. So I credited him on the record.
When was the last time the members of Blur got together?
We all turn up to each other's things. I turned up to a Gorillaz show not that long ago. I see Alex fairly frequently. I’m looking forward to [Alex James’ foodie and music event] Feastival this year. We usually all turn up to that. We’re pretty supportive of each other, really.
Are their plans to make any music together or play some shows?
There's aspiration. There's been aspiration for quite a while but unfortunately nothing to announce. It’s a peculiar time. It will be nice is what I'll say. It'll be nice but, again, nothing to announce unfortunately.
Watch this space?
It’s always watch this space [with Blur]. We do like playing together, but it's just… what can I say? If I had something to announce to you, believe me I would announce it to you. I’m not in the business of keeping secrets but certainly not this year. The last two years have been crazy. We've been thinking about it for a while but making those kind of things a reality is quite difficult at the moment. But I’d like to. I can exclusively reveal to you that I would very much like to play live with Blur and on my own. Those are the things that make me happy. That’s an exclusive – you got that straight from the horse’s mouth.
What can we expect from the rest of your album?
It’s all quite different to be honest. It’s very electronic. There's very few drum kits on it, and very few drums full stop. It’s all songs apart from a few instrumental tracks but it’s basically song-based. Songs are what I’m interested in. I’m a sucker for a good tune so that’s what I’m trying to write.
When will it be out?
We’re in the euphemistic finishing touches stage so I’ll give you more information about that shortly. It's a funny time to release bits of plastic, there’s a six month waiting list to make them at the record pressing plant so it's very difficult to predict at the moment, but the finishing touches are happening so as soon as I'm able to give you a definitive date I will.
Thanks for talking to us Dave, enjoy the rest of your holiday
Thank you. I’m actually going home now but I can reveal that I’ve had a very nice time in Spain. That’s another exclusive.
CC