English Musician, Who Was in Two Iconic Rock and Roll Bands, Turns 44 Today

David Jonathan Hammond, known as Didz Hammond, is an iconic backup vocalist and bassist who was a part of two successful bands, The Cooper Temple Clause and Dirty Pretty Things. In 2002, he was named one of the coolest people in the world by the popular British music magazine, NME.

When asked why he chose to play the bass out of all the instruments, Hammond told The Londonist, “The bass is like the guitar but with only four strings, so it was like the guitar but easier – which it is to some extent. There’s something iconic to the guitar. You get that almost as much with the drums. But you certainly don’t get that with the bass! It was literally like: ‘Well, this is easier and I can stand up there and be in the music rather than just being the listener.’ We used to swap instruments quite a lot in The Coopers and, arguably, I was the fourth or fifth best bass player in the band.”

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When the band broke up in 2007, two years after Hammond had already departed, he told NME, “I’m a bit gutted about it, but I just think it’s more of a time for celebration. There’s a lot of good bands around now that have taken up the gauntlet that we had initially anyway, so all is not lost, bands come and go, and hopefully some of them, like the Coopers, will inspire a lot of people and hopefully change people’s lives. So you know, I’m proud to have been a part of it.”

Hammond joined Dirty Pretty Things in 2005. When speaking about the differences between the two iconic bands that he’s played in, he said, “In Dirty Pretty Things, I had a lot of space to play melodically and complement the actual song. There was less room for that in the Coopers. It was something I lapped up. It was a real learning curve for me.”

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Some of the biggest songs from The Cooper Temple Clause include “Promises, Promises,” “Waiting Game,” and “Who Needs Enemies?” Some of the biggest songs from Dirty Pretty Things include “Deadwood” and “Bang Bang You’re Dead,” which peaked at No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart.