AnnieRowntree

From Blur to Blair[2007.4.13]

原文地址 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/apr/13/pop.labour

Somewhere in London's Marylebone High Street there must have been a glitch in the space-time continuum. "Blur drummer Dave Rowntree joins Labour and stands for election" sounds like a headline from 1997. But it's 10 years on, Britpop is dead, New Labour is dying and the decision by Blur's usually sensible stick-man to seek a seat on Westminster council in the May elections seems shockingly out of time. It is even more baffling when Blur's frontman, Damon Albarn, whom Rowntree likens to a brother, embodies many people's personal journey away from New Labour. Initially enchanted by the promise of rock-loving Tony Blair, Albarn then helped lead the march against the Iraq war and scathingly snubbed an invitation to Downing Street with the note: "I am no longer a New Labour supporter. I am now a communist. Enjoy the schmooze, comrade."

Rowntree's journey into Labour's arms is as personal as Albarn's rejection of the party. It is also, characteristically for the 42-year-old drummer, contrary to the prevailing mood. It began with Talking Heads and involves cats, as this likable, unlikely prospective politician explains. "The kind of behaviour humans find endearing in cats is the kitteny behaviour - rubbing up against you and making little chirping noises. In the wild, adult cats lose all this but domestication keeps them in that kitteny mode. A similar thing happens in a band. People look after you. If you're on tour, somebody tells you when to get up, when to go to bed and finds out what you want for lunch and makes it magically appear in front of you. It's weird, because you don't grow up. You end up being a middle-aged teenager."

"Do you know that Talking Heads Song, Once In A lifetime? [Sample lyric: "And you may ask yourself: Well, how did I get here?"] That happened to me. I just woke up and thought, 'Fucking hell, where am I?' I was living in a big house in Hampstead with two cars and an aeroplane. I was married to this woman I hardly knew because I married her, went on tour and never really came home. I didn't know really what I believed, other than I liked cats."

Rowntree got divorced, shed possessions (except his aeroplane and the cats: he now has "joint custody" of the latter with his ex-wife) and, while the other members of Blur all moved to very big houses in the country, he relocated to central London. "I suppose some people call it a mid-life crisis, but I just call it growing up," he says. Feeling he had been living not "as a socialist but as a middle-aged baby", he quietly joined the Labour party around the time Albarn began making passionate public speeches against the impending Iraq war.

The contrast with Albarn is fascinating and, at first glance, bodes ill for anyone hopeful that Blur will ever share a recording studio again. But Rowntree says Albarn is enthusiastic. "He's very excited. He's a political activist. He loves to see other people getting stuck in," says Rowntree. "Damon is a pacifist. He has very deeply held views. His politics flow from that and you've got to respect him for that." The drummer doesn't want to talk about whether he agrees with Albarn on Iraq because he's standing in a local election. He sounds, for the first time, a bit like a politician. Then he changes his mind. "I want to give you an answer. I'm not a pacifist. I do think some things are worth fighting for."

Rowntree's position on Iraq is equally personal. His girlfriend, Michelle de Vries, is the daughter of Daphne Parish, the nurse who was arrested by Saddam Hussein with the Observer journalist, Farzad Bazoft, on the cusp of the first Gulf war. Bazoft was executed; Parish was freed. "My girlfriend flew round the Middle East and got her mother released. She'd met all the people involved - Saddam and the psychopaths Uday and Qusay [Saddam's sons]. In the war, I was getting a very different view of what was going on in Iraq from a lot of people."

Rowntree is standing in the Marylebone High Street ward in what is a local byelection for Westminster council on May 3. The council is controlled by the Tories and probably always will be. Rowntree says he will be pleased to finish second. At best, he would be elected as part of a small Labour opposition in the chamber. "Westminster is a constant reminder of what happens when the Tories get into power," he says. "The spirit of Shirley Porter lives on here. Anyone who wants reminding of what the bad old days were like: go along to a Westminster council meeting. You see these arrogant, puffed-up people shouting other people down. It's ghastly."

To the cynical, Rowntree's candidacy looks like Labour hoping desperately to revive itself by snagging a new celebrity. He's an aeroplane-owning drummer who also runs an animation company and supported the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to Mars, so there is enough material if the Tories want to paint him as a dilettante. He recognises that we live in a "celebrity-fatigued age". People assume either "we're idiots being exploited for our celebrity status by cruel taskmasters pulling the strings behind the scenes", or else "I've got a new album out and this is a weird way of garnering some publicity".

Rowntree does not shirk from the S-word and says he has always been a socialist. He says he signed up for Labour's "core values" and still believes Labour "is a party about people" - better than the Tories at protecting the welfare state and better at putting ordinary people's interests first, ahead of big business. He is, however, studiedly moderate: against unilateral nuclear disarmament because it would make Labour unelectable. And, despite several rants about Margaret Thatcher, he would like politics to be less confrontational and more collaborative.

There is enough of the geek about Rowntree to believe him when he insists he really does want to help residents tackle vital local issues such as wobbly pavements. "Local politics and local issues sound a bit pants when you say them in a national context," he says. He is particularly het up about MacIntosh House, a sheltered-housing project in the borough that the council wants to close and, he says, sell the lease back to developers for £1.4m. "There are some old people living in a house who don't want to leave and the Tories are going to kick 'em out."

Rowntree has never met Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. "They don't tend to hang around with the council candidates," he says. Unlike Albarn, he was never invited to Downing Street. "I was firmly asleep during all of that," he says. Blair, he reckons, is a bit like Blur. The band made some "crap decisions" but could always cut it live. Several times, most notably at Glastonbury in 1994, they put on live shows that he believes saved their career. "Blair has always done that as well. He can turn up to a party conference where everyone hates him and leaves them on their feet, sobbing, begging him not to go."

Rowntree's political engagement has developed quietly. He has donated money ("I'm not a big ticket donor. I'm not Lord Rowntree as yet" - he's not quite on message, then) and has several MP friends (he will not name them because "that will mark them down as Rowntreeites"). But his career is characterised by these counterintuitive turns. He lobbied ministers over music copyright issues, but while the rest of the record industry was trying to stop illegal downloads he supported consumers' rights to download music freely. "Lost of course," he says cheerfully. And now he is standing for Labour in a hopeless seat at a hopeless time. "It's important sometimes to let people know there are people with a contrary opinion," he says.

With Rowntree's politics, Alex James living on a farm and Albarn embarking on other musical projects, it is surprising that Blur are still together. "It's a love-hate relationship," says Rowntree, who describes them, and former guitarist Graham Coxon, as "like brothers" who get in touch at important times. "If ever there was good training for a career in politics then it's being in a band. It teaches you what people are like and how to get on with them. All these bands you hear splitting up over musical differences, it's bollocks. It's personal differences. It's people who snore on the tour bus. After 10 years on the tour bus, you want to kill them." Who snores in Blur? "Me, unfortunately."

They have been talking about recording new material "for four or five years" and will meet up for a week later this year. Rowntree does not sound hopeful. "One week. It's a very small thing. It'll either be small in the sense of being a seed or small in the sense of being a full-stop."

As befits one of Britpop's more grounded characters, Rowntree does not take anything too seriously. But politically he is a pragmatist who calls himself not New or old Labour but "realistic Labour". "I can stand there with a placard saying 'Save my school' or I can try to get elected to the board of governors and do something about it," he says. "One is the token activist stance, which makes you feel better and achieves nothing, and the other is the one that makes you feel a lot worse but actually achieves something." Is he contrasting his own position with Albarn's? "Damon gets involved. He has the ear of more people than you might think." He chuckles again and goes off to look at some wobbly pavements.