DAVE ROWNTREE ON CAPTURING BLUR’S EARLY DAYS
There’s no denying Britpop is having another moment – and we’re very much here for it. Enter Dave Rowntree, Blur drummer turned animator, lawyer, politician, and now photographer, whose debut photobook No One You Know: Early Blur Photos has landed in our hands at The StandardX.
Shot on a battered Olympus OM-10 during the band’s early days, the book captures Blur at their most unfiltered: tour buses, hotel hallways, backstage beers. We caught up with Dave on the Australian leg of the launch to talk about why he picked up the camera in the first place, and how it feels to revisit those early moments when the band was on the cusp of greatness.
When you started photographing Blur in the early days, did you see yourself as documenting a cultural moment – or was it more instinctive?
I had no idea it was going to turn out to be a cultural moment. We’d just signed our first record deal and were doing a host of exciting things for the first time – the first studio session with a proper producer; first Japanese and US gigs; first tour bus etc. We were a tiny band playing what was then quite unfashionable music. There were no guarantees we were going to get to do these things a second time. I wanted to remember them.
Looking back, do any of the photos surprise you – photos you’d forgotten about or moments you now see in a new light?
It’s the energy, excitement and enthusiasm that took me by surprise when I rediscovered the photos, after having lost them decades earlier. The life we’d just been thrown into would eventually become routine, but at the time I was taking the pictures it was all brand new.
How did you approach curating the images for No One You Know? How did you decide what to leave out?
I imagined that writing the book’s introduction would be the hard part, and selecting and arranging the photos would be the easy part, but the opposite turned out to be true. I didn’t want to make a scrapbook – I wanted the book to take the reader on a journey, so the book had to be about something – but what? It took about 3 months of agonising selecting and shuffling to find out.
Do you have a favorite image you’ve ever taken?
My favourite image in the book is of Graham and Damon in the car in front of me on a rollercoaster in Pennsylvania. I like the framing and the nervous excitement on my friends’ faces, but also that the picture is a metaphor for our career at that point. We’ve just realised there’s a huge climb ahead of us, but we’re definitely on the way up.
Who’s the easiest bandmate to photograph?
Graham, by a long way. Damon doesn’t have the patience to be photographed, and Alex likes his privacy. I’m probably the hardest to photograph; I’m much more comfortable on the other side of the camera.
Give us a memory of touring in Australia.
My earliest memories of Australia are of coming here for my honeymoon in 1994. We flew into Cairns and spent a week on Lizard Island learning to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Then we hired a car and drove south down the coast road, stopping at all the countless animal sanctuaries along the way. Finally, we caught the ferry across to Tasmania and spent a week at a wildlife lodge at Cradle Mountain. I’ve loved Australia ever since.
What bits of culture – music, movies, art, tv – are you most excited about at the moment?
I’m going to the Big Sound festival in Brisbane whilst I’m here [in Australia]. I’m excited to see some up-and-coming Australian bands, especially singer-songwriter Seb Szabo, and the indie band Loose Content. I also met the band Blusher at one of my book events, and I’m hoping to see them when they tour the UK next month.
