New Interview with Dave!
I’ve always had a bunch of careers running in parallel. There was a time when I was an animator and a musician. I used to do animation for fun. There’s an awful lot of sitting around involved in being in a band and you find things to do to fill the time. I used to take my laptop around on tour and as the band wound down the animation picked up. A lot of people have asked if I did the milk carton animation for the Coffee and TV music video but in fact the milk carton wasn’t animated – it was a man in a milk carton suit.
I did a few things for Channel 4 but animation had a natural life-span as it turned out, and it was something that was far more fun to do on an ad hoc, small project basis.
About that time a friend of mine who is a partner at East End law firm Edward Fail Bradshaw & Waterson had just had a case come in with a lot of electronic evidence. She knew I was technical and asked if I’d go in and make sense of it for them. I turned up there intending to work one day a week and never really left. One of the paralegals left and I started working full time. I took the police station qualification and worked there for a year.
I ended up clerking the trial I’d prepared the electronic evidence for at the Old Bailey. It was a four-handed murder case and, even given some of the highs and lows of my music career, it was one of the best times of my life.
Criminal world
For everybody who loves criminal law, the first trial they attend is a magical experience. And this was a crazy trial, like you see on TV. Witnesses would break down on the stand while recounting their stories. It was a dream. And we won the case, so that was fantastic. I knew I had to do it for a living.
I ended up training at Kingsley Napley because it’s on the edge of the City. I thought I’d give other types of law a go because I wondered if all law was that fascinating. I surprised myself – there was something in it all. With all the departments I sat in I could see how you could do that for the rest of your life.
Right at the beginning of Blur, in around 1990, our then manager took all our assets and put them in his wife’s name. We were bankrupt. Our manager had – I’m embarrassed even now, decades later, to admit it – turned up on a Friday night with chequebooks and got us to sign blank cheques.
Up to then I’d taken a back seat when it came to the business side of things, but I started turning up to all those meetings and asking questions. We then came to an agreement whereby nobody in the band would sign a document unless it had my signature on it.
That was why I got to know lawyers and how I got to work at Edwards Fail.
I’m coming to the end of my first year of qualification now, so I’m just coming to the point where things I started are finishing. I’ve had a couple of good results so far. When you see a case through you get quite close to the client and see them through a time of crisis, so it’s incredibly satisfying. I’m just starting to see the fruits of my labour.
I can never seem to do things in moderation; I don’t know why, but I throw myself into stuff.
Action station
I so enjoyed the police station – it’s a time when you can make the maximum difference to a case. It’s exciting – when it goes badly it is the worst of all times and when it goes well you come out feeling you have really achieved something. Having done music and law, I don’t think I could be as fulfilled as I am now if I had to go back to doing only one. They exercise different muscles.
The band have long since given up being surprised at what I do. I’ve spoken to Damon [Albarn, Blur lead singer] about it a couple of times and I think he likes the fact I didn’t go to the City; that I’ve got stuck in trying to help people. I know he’s very proud of what I’ve done.
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