My friend Derek Hood, who has died aged 56 from cancer, managed to succeed in two very different fields of creativity – rock drumming and design-based fine bookbinding.
Behind the drum kit, playing in bands such as All About Eve and the Auteurs, he was a solid, inventive presence who, being a songwriter himself, always played with an innate sense of musicality. In his book design studio in Bath, he worked on commissions for collectors and institutions around the world. His books were exhibited in the V&A, the British Library and the bibliophile Grolier club in New York.
Derek was born in St Andrews, Fife, to Mae (nee McCulloch) and Tom Hood. He went to school at Madras college, leaving at 16, and was encouraged to join the successful family-run DIY store business in St Andrews, along with his elder brothers and younger sister.
Punk rock, and the Clash in particular, had fired Derek’s musical imagination, however. By then a drummer in a local band, he instead pursued a rebellious path of resistance, opting to work as an assistant school janitor.
At first somewhat reluctantly, he went on to study printing and bookbinding at Napier University in Edinburgh, before working as a fine binder at the library of the University of St Andrews, where his keen artist’s eye and craftsman’s obsession with detail came to the fore.
After Derek moved to London in 1994, his drumming skills pulled him back into music, and he played and recorded with such diverse bands as Baader Meinhof, Grand Drive and Babybird. Of his musical talent, Julianne Regan of All About Eve remembers that – as captured on the group’s 2001 album Live and Electric at the Union Chapel – “Del was able to balance living in the moment of flow, with maintaining a considerate awareness of the aesthetic of the overall sound, and of the experience of his bandmates.”
In his later years as a bookbinder, Derek was regularly invited by the organisers of the Booker prize to create one of the bespoke, one-off editions commissioned for each of the six shortlisted titles, which were then gifted to the authors. The 2020 winner, Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain, took to social media to praise Derek’s “beautiful, hand-bound special edition… a terrific job”.
Those close to Derek will remember him for his infectiously buoyant personality, freewheeling and surreal humour and sense of empathy. He is survived by his wife, Wendy (nee Jeacock), whom he married in 1999, and their children, Dylan and Cecily.
