Dave Rowbotham (1958 – 8 November 1991) was an English rock musician who played guitar and bass with various

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...

bands in the 1970s and the 1980s, and as a studio musician.

Biography

Born in Didsbury, Manchester, he went to school at Elm Grove Primary School and then Parrswood High School. He left school to train as an electrician and in 1970 he started playing rhythm guitar with his pals in a four piece rock cover band called Flashback. He later adopted the

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

lifestyle. During the punk era, he, alongside drummer Chris Joyce, played in a band called Fast Breeder and was managed by

Alan Erasmus Alan Erasmus is a British actor best known for his involvement in the Manchester music scene starting in the 1970s. He co-founded Factory Records with Tony Wilson, which signed Joy Division and the Happy Mondays. He also co-founded The Haçiend ...

, who later co-founded

Factory Records Factory Records was a Manchester-based British independent record label founded in 1978 by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus. The label featured several important acts on its roster, including Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, the Durutt ...

with

Tony Wilson Anthony Howard Wilson (20 February 1950 – 10 August 2007) was a British record label owner, radio and television presenter, nightclub manager, impresario and a journalist for Granada Television, the BBC and Channel 4. As a co-founder ...

. In 1978, the pair, alongside

Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias were an English comedy rock band, formed in Manchester, England in 1973. Their story is told in CP Lee's book ''When We Were Thin'' (published 2007 by Hotun Press). The name of the band is a corruption of the La ...

bassist Tony Bowers, singer Phil Rainford (replaced after months by Colin Sharp), and former Nosebleeds guitarist Vini Reilly, founded the

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-r ...

band The Durutti Column. However, the five-piece line-up did not last long, and after releasing '' A Factory Sample'', a compilation by various artists which contained two of their songs, Rowbotham, alongside Sharp, Bowers, and Joyce, left Reilly. Rowbotham and the latter two formed The Mothmen. During the early days of The Mothmen, he also re-joined Reilly in

Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls The Invisible Girls were a British rock band, formed in Salford, Greater Manchester in 1978, to provide a musical backdrop to the recorded output of Salford punk poet John Cooper Clarke. The band's nucleus was Joy Division and New Order produc ...

, with then ex- Penetration vocalist Pauline Murray, playing on their eponymous album. With The Mothmen, he released two albums, ''Pay Attention'' (On-U Sound, 1981) and ''One Black Dot'' (1982). By this time, he had also formed

Motivation Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...

, along with ex- Buzzcocks bassist

Steve Garvey Steven Patrick Garvey (born December 22, 1948) is an American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres from 1969 to 1987. Garvey was the National ...

. By 1981 or early 1982, shortly before the release of ''One Black Dot'', he left The Mothmen. After that and Motivation, he played on sessions for

. On 2 November 1991, Rowbotham's girlfriend found him dead in his flat on Grangethorpe Drive in Burnage. He was lying on the living room floor in a pool of blood, and had been murdered with a plasterer's hammer. As of March 2018, no one has yet been convicted of his murder. In his memory, the Madchester band Happy Mondays wrote a song called "Cowboy Dave", released on the album '' Yes Please!'', in 1992.

References

External links

A bit information about Motivation, another Rowbotham band
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowbotham, Dave 1958 births 1991 deaths 1991 murders in the United Kingdom English rock bass guitarists Male bass guitarists English male guitarists Musicians from Manchester People from Didsbury The Durutti Column members British post-punk musicians 20th-century English musicians 20th-century English bass guitarists English murder victims 20th-century British male musicians The Invisible Girls members