With Gorillaz, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett have reconfigured the pop landscape...
But the experiment has barely begun, says Mark Edwards
Just after he found fame with the sitcom Mork & Mindy, Robin Williams released an album of his stand-up comedy called 'Reality... What a Concept'. It's a phrase that comes back at me as Damon Albarn explains the upcoming Gorillaz shows at the Manchester Opera House. You could argue that they're not really Gorillaz shows at all, since the cartoon band of that name won't be playing. Or you could argue they're the most real Gorillaz shows you'll ever see, precisely because there won't be the pretence of a cartoon band playing. On five consecutive nights from November 1, to promote the Manchester International Festival, Albarn and the real musicians who made the album Demon Days will play it, in its entirety. The band will be visible only in silhouette, but the album's guest stars - including Shaun Ryder, De La Soul, Roots Manuva and Martina Topley-Bird - will all really appear.
To make things even more stranger, two puppets of 'band members' Murdoc and 2D will be sitting in a box - in a homage to the grumpy-old-men Muppet characters Statler and Waldorf - making sarcastic comments about the "other" band attempting to play "their" music. And, for a further touch of unreal reality on one of the nights when Gorillaz (the human beings) play Manchester, Gorillaz (the cartoons) will be performing in Portugal at the EMA awards, where the band are up for five prizes. On that night only, the Murdoc and 2D puppets won't be in their opera-house box. How could they be? They'll be in Portugal! "It's a tiny detail nobody will notice", says Jamie Hewlet, the co-creator of Gorillaz, "but it's fun."
Of course it is. Albarn and Hewlett have broken all the rules of the music industry. They have created the most manufactured band of all time, but one that's credible and cool. They've put together an adventurous, innovative, cross-cultural, genre-hopping sound, the kind that normally finds only a cult audience, and sold millions. They've found a large audience of kids, yet can attract cutting-edge stars such as Roots Manuva to collaborate with them. So, having broken all the rules of the real world, they delight in sticking very firmly indeed to the made-up rules of their own.
The real world however, is gradually catching up with Hewlett and Albarn's imagination. Thanks to advances in technology, the EMA show will see a new-look Gorillaz. No longer two-dimensional cartoons, Murdoc, 2D, the drummer, Russel, and the guitarist, Noodle, will appear as three-dimensional animations. Hewlett, the man behind all the Gorillaz visuals, is understandably excited. "We're going to have the animated characters on stage. I supose they're like super-holograms. It's what we've dreamt about doing since we began Gorillaz. It's looking incredible. Mind you, for the effect to work, everyone has their places where they're allowed to go and where they're not. If you ran behind them, shining a torch on them, it would probably all go horribly wrong." Fair enough, but if you ran around on stage shining a torch at Shaun Ryder, things probably wouldn't go that well either.
The new 3-D animation technique is being developed for the Gorillaz tour scheduled for 2007 - it will take that long to create all the visuals. "Then the idea is that it goes off touring by itself", says Hewlett. "We can personalise it for different countries, different cities, and we'll create a story of what's happening ad they go around the world. We can write the tour from hell - fights, musical differences, people walkng out. Then, there could be a film of that tour... But basically, we're going to have to stop having ideas, otherwise it's never going to end."
This is the one hindrance in the Gorilaz partnership. once Albarn makes a Gorilaz album, he can, for the most part, get on with other projects (he's working on a musical with the National Theatre, an opera with Beijing Opera and a solo album, and is making noises about starting the new Blur CD). Hewlett has more the more labour-intensive job of delivering the visuals for performances such as the EMAs and any spin-offs that occur in the pair.
That aside, there is a well-balanced working relationship. "It's the greatest band I've ever been in just in the sense that it's so balanced and harmonious," says Albarn, as we chat in a cafe over the road from Honest Jon's, the Notting Hill record shop. "Everyone can concentrate on the bit they love the most. We can't step on each other's toes because we don't work in the same environment. I know what everything Jamie will do, I'll like. It may not be exactly what I would have done, but the trust is there". The pair share a world-view: Albarn's dark lyrics chime perfectly with a man who came to fame drawing the post-apocalyptic comic strip Tank Girl. And, at the centre of a high-tech empire, both work in an endearingly old-fashioned way. Albarn's music begins life on cheap four-track cassette machines, played on an acoustic guitar. Hewlett draws in pencil, on paper, at a desk liberally scattered with books of Ronald Searle cartoons. Searle, the creator of St.Trinian's, seems an unlikely influence until you remember that he honed his talent drawing fellow prisoners in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
Searle would surely approve of the anti-war sentiments in the next Gorillaz single, Dirty Harry, out next month, Hewlett shows me a rough cut of the Dirty Harry video, including live action of a military vehicle rumbling through the desert. Oddly, it sports a grey cross. "I wanted the Red Cross, to show the characters were doing some good out there," Hewlett explains, "but the Red Cross weren't happy. So a poor guy had to go through every frame changing it to a freen cross. Then I think we got a call from a pharamaceutical company, threatening to sue us, so he had to change it again, to a grey cross. I think we're all right now." These aren't the only compromises Hewlett has to make: "We have quite a good relationship with MTV - you have to have a good relationship with MTV if you want your records played in America. We wanted Dirty Harry to be the first single off the album. MTV said, "We love the song, but it's a bit risky for the first single." So we put it back to the third." Hewlett is clearly slightly uneasy about this relationship, but also a pragmatist: "There's no point in doing all the hard work if nobody ever sees it. And they have been good to us. They let us do an MTV Cribs" - the series in which wealthy stars show viewers round their tasteless, blinged-up homes. The Gorillaz take is due to be aired in late November. Again, Hewlett shows me a rough cut. It is a ruthless, hilarious mickey-take of the series and the pretension of its usual guests. Murdoc spends much of it in the bathroom, urinating long and loud; Noodle won't let the cameras into her room. "It's a hateful, hateful programme," says Hewlett. "It's the perfect thing to poke fun at." I double check that both of those hatefuls are no the record. He thinks for a quick second. "Yes, because it is bloody hateful".
While Murdoc's ego runs wild in MTV Cribs, Albarn's remains in check in the Gorillaz project. You might have expected the front man in him to want to get back in the spotlight at the Manchester gigs. BUt he's not ready to be unmasked. "I think the problem is that I find it difficult to sing and play at the same time. Graham has always been able to do it" he says, referring to Blur's demure guitarist, Graham Coxon. "I just can't. I can't put them together. By being at the back, I can actually manage it - headphones on, head down, really concentrating. But I can't do that and worry about connecting with the audience.
"Also, I got sick to death of the ritual of performing," he says. "I never really liked the last Blur tour. I hated playing the old material. I just found that really depressing without Graham," he adds. "It was a painful experience to play songs that belonged to a band where one member was missing. It was easy to do stuff from Think Tank, but they were the only bits I looked forward to.
"I think Demon Days can work live as a piece. Lots of records can. Some are just a series of songs, but when you've gone to a lot of effort to create the ebb and flow, it's a shame to split it up with, 'Here's a hit from five years ago.' Artists can evolve; why don't musicians? They feel they have to play the old songs, and that stultifies music. I've seen so many of my contemporaries who, to make the big shows work, have to load them with the past, so they never really move forward." With these thoughts, Albarn has done the hardest part of my job for me. I don't have to ask if he misses Coxon, or try to extract a comment about his old sparring partners, Oasis. But, perhaps, realising he's come perilously close to reopening that old debate, he changes tack. "Having said that, I'm just finishing another record, which I will play live next year" - the solo album. Will that be out soon? "As soon as the Gorillaz record stops selling, that one will come out," he says. Could be a while, then.
Just after he found fame with the sitcom Mork & Mindy, Robin Williams released an album of his stand-up comedy called 'Reality... What a Concept'. It's a phrase that comes back at me as Damon Albarn explains the upcoming Gorillaz shows at the Manchester Opera House. You could argue that they're not really Gorillaz shows at all, since the cartoon band of that name won't be playing. Or you could argue they're the most real Gorillaz shows you'll ever see, precisely because there won't be the pretence of a cartoon band playing. On five consecutive nights from November 1, to promote the Manchester International Festival, Albarn and the real musicians who made the album Demon Days will play it, in its entirety. The band will be visible only in silhouette, but the album's guest stars - including Shaun Ryder, De La Soul, Roots Manuva and Martina Topley-Bird - will all really appear.
To make things even more stranger, two puppets of 'band members' Murdoc and 2D will be sitting in a box - in a homage to the grumpy-old-men Muppet characters Statler and Waldorf - making sarcastic comments about the "other" band attempting to play "their" music. And, for a further touch of unreal reality on one of the nights when Gorillaz (the human beings) play Manchester, Gorillaz (the cartoons) will be performing in Portugal at the EMA awards, where the band are up for five prizes. On that night only, the Murdoc and 2D puppets won't be in their opera-house box. How could they be? They'll be in Portugal! "It's a tiny detail nobody will notice", says Jamie Hewlet, the co-creator of Gorillaz, "but it's fun."
Of course it is. Albarn and Hewlett have broken all the rules of the music industry. They have created the most manufactured band of all time, but one that's credible and cool. They've put together an adventurous, innovative, cross-cultural, genre-hopping sound, the kind that normally finds only a cult audience, and sold millions. They've found a large audience of kids, yet can attract cutting-edge stars such as Roots Manuva to collaborate with them. So, having broken all the rules of the real world, they delight in sticking very firmly indeed to the made-up rules of their own.
The real world however, is gradually catching up with Hewlett and Albarn's imagination. Thanks to advances in technology, the EMA show will see a new-look Gorillaz. No longer two-dimensional cartoons, Murdoc, 2D, the drummer, Russel, and the guitarist, Noodle, will appear as three-dimensional animations. Hewlett, the man behind all the Gorillaz visuals, is understandably excited. "We're going to have the animated characters on stage. I supose they're like super-holograms. It's what we've dreamt about doing since we began Gorillaz. It's looking incredible. Mind you, for the effect to work, everyone has their places where they're allowed to go and where they're not. If you ran behind them, shining a torch on them, it would probably all go horribly wrong." Fair enough, but if you ran around on stage shining a torch at Shaun Ryder, things probably wouldn't go that well either.
The new 3-D animation technique is being developed for the Gorillaz tour scheduled for 2007 - it will take that long to create all the visuals. "Then the idea is that it goes off touring by itself", says Hewlett. "We can personalise it for different countries, different cities, and we'll create a story of what's happening ad they go around the world. We can write the tour from hell - fights, musical differences, people walkng out. Then, there could be a film of that tour... But basically, we're going to have to stop having ideas, otherwise it's never going to end."
This is the one hindrance in the Gorilaz partnership. once Albarn makes a Gorilaz album, he can, for the most part, get on with other projects (he's working on a musical with the National Theatre, an opera with Beijing Opera and a solo album, and is making noises about starting the new Blur CD). Hewlett has more the more labour-intensive job of delivering the visuals for performances such as the EMAs and any spin-offs that occur in the pair.
That aside, there is a well-balanced working relationship. "It's the greatest band I've ever been in just in the sense that it's so balanced and harmonious," says Albarn, as we chat in a cafe over the road from Honest Jon's, the Notting Hill record shop. "Everyone can concentrate on the bit they love the most. We can't step on each other's toes because we don't work in the same environment. I know what everything Jamie will do, I'll like. It may not be exactly what I would have done, but the trust is there". The pair share a world-view: Albarn's dark lyrics chime perfectly with a man who came to fame drawing the post-apocalyptic comic strip Tank Girl. And, at the centre of a high-tech empire, both work in an endearingly old-fashioned way. Albarn's music begins life on cheap four-track cassette machines, played on an acoustic guitar. Hewlett draws in pencil, on paper, at a desk liberally scattered with books of Ronald Searle cartoons. Searle, the creator of St.Trinian's, seems an unlikely influence until you remember that he honed his talent drawing fellow prisoners in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
Searle would surely approve of the anti-war sentiments in the next Gorillaz single, Dirty Harry, out next month, Hewlett shows me a rough cut of the Dirty Harry video, including live action of a military vehicle rumbling through the desert. Oddly, it sports a grey cross. "I wanted the Red Cross, to show the characters were doing some good out there," Hewlett explains, "but the Red Cross weren't happy. So a poor guy had to go through every frame changing it to a freen cross. Then I think we got a call from a pharamaceutical company, threatening to sue us, so he had to change it again, to a grey cross. I think we're all right now." These aren't the only compromises Hewlett has to make: "We have quite a good relationship with MTV - you have to have a good relationship with MTV if you want your records played in America. We wanted Dirty Harry to be the first single off the album. MTV said, "We love the song, but it's a bit risky for the first single." So we put it back to the third." Hewlett is clearly slightly uneasy about this relationship, but also a pragmatist: "There's no point in doing all the hard work if nobody ever sees it. And they have been good to us. They let us do an MTV Cribs" - the series in which wealthy stars show viewers round their tasteless, blinged-up homes. The Gorillaz take is due to be aired in late November. Again, Hewlett shows me a rough cut. It is a ruthless, hilarious mickey-take of the series and the pretension of its usual guests. Murdoc spends much of it in the bathroom, urinating long and loud; Noodle won't let the cameras into her room. "It's a hateful, hateful programme," says Hewlett. "It's the perfect thing to poke fun at." I double check that both of those hatefuls are no the record. He thinks for a quick second. "Yes, because it is bloody hateful".
While Murdoc's ego runs wild in MTV Cribs, Albarn's remains in check in the Gorillaz project. You might have expected the front man in him to want to get back in the spotlight at the Manchester gigs. BUt he's not ready to be unmasked. "I think the problem is that I find it difficult to sing and play at the same time. Graham has always been able to do it" he says, referring to Blur's demure guitarist, Graham Coxon. "I just can't. I can't put them together. By being at the back, I can actually manage it - headphones on, head down, really concentrating. But I can't do that and worry about connecting with the audience.
"Also, I got sick to death of the ritual of performing," he says. "I never really liked the last Blur tour. I hated playing the old material. I just found that really depressing without Graham," he adds. "It was a painful experience to play songs that belonged to a band where one member was missing. It was easy to do stuff from Think Tank, but they were the only bits I looked forward to.
"I think Demon Days can work live as a piece. Lots of records can. Some are just a series of songs, but when you've gone to a lot of effort to create the ebb and flow, it's a shame to split it up with, 'Here's a hit from five years ago.' Artists can evolve; why don't musicians? They feel they have to play the old songs, and that stultifies music. I've seen so many of my contemporaries who, to make the big shows work, have to load them with the past, so they never really move forward." With these thoughts, Albarn has done the hardest part of my job for me. I don't have to ask if he misses Coxon, or try to extract a comment about his old sparring partners, Oasis. But, perhaps, realising he's come perilously close to reopening that old debate, he changes tack. "Having said that, I'm just finishing another record, which I will play live next year" - the solo album. Will that be out soon? "As soon as the Gorillaz record stops selling, that one will come out," he says. Could be a while, then.