Born: December 25,1971 Hometown: London, England
Dido was five when she stole her first recorder. This didn't lead to prison, but rather to her entrance one year later to the Guildhall School of Music in London. A bit of a child prodigy, by the time she was 10 she played piano, violin, and the aforementioned recorder.
Her teenage years were an interesting mixture of stealing her brother's record collection (from The Clash to Gregory Isaac's to Duran Duran) and touring the UK with her classical music ensemble and then, at 16, she finally fell in love... with Ella Fitzgerald.
So began a passion that eventually led Dido from listener to participator. She started singing with various bands in and around London, and despite the fact that her brother, Rollo, told her not to give up her day job, she eventually appeared on the debut album of a band that Rollo formed in 1995.
This band was faithless, and they went on to sell in excess of five million records. Over the next two years, Dido toured with faithless (a very different experience from her classical days) and, whenever she was back in London, also recorded demos of her own songs.
On Faithless's current release, Sunday 8pm, Dido appears on two songs, one of which incorporates her own "My Lover's Gone." Arista records heard these demos at the beginning of 1997, and Dido was invited to the Dorchester hotel in London to meet Clive Davis. the meeting was successful (Clive even helped out with some of the backing vocals as Dido sung to him).
