Gorillaz I Toronto Sun – October 2018

Damon Albarn says new Gorillaz tour might be its last until 2028

By Mark Daniell

Af​ter years of fronting a car​toon band, singer is happy liv​ing in the now

At 50, Brit​pop icon Da​mon Al​barn has lived through al​most ev​ery mu​si​cal fad.

But the one thing he hasn’t been able to see come to fruition is a full-blown holo​gram tour featuring the car​toon mem​bers of the Go​ril​laz — the an​i​mated/ vir​tual band the Blur mu​si​cian launched in 1998 with il​lus​tra​tor Jamie Hewlett — play​ing on​stage in all their glory.

“That’s some​thing we’ve been try​ing to do since Day 1,” Al​barn says. “But we still haven’t found a system that doesn’t com​pro​mise the mu​sic. That’s the dream — to be able to play on​stage with holograms. I just hope I’m a func​tion​ing or​gan​ism when it hap​pens.”



The car​toon quar​tet — 2D (lead vo​cals, key​boards), Mur​doc Nic​cals (bass gui​tar), Noo​dle (gui​tar, key​boards) and Rus​sel Hobbs (drums and per​cus​sion) — av​er​ages an al​bum ev​ery five years. But while tour​ing be​hind last year’s eclec​tic hip-hop-tinged Hu​manz — the band’s fifth disc with onstage musicians and a guest list that included Carly Si​mon, Mavis Sta​ples, Pusha T, Vince Sta​ples, Grace Jones and De La Soul — Al​barn found him​self im​me​di​ately sketch​ing out ideas for the next Gorillaz release.

If Humanz was a party record that found the characters of 2‑D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs reacting to the election of Donald Trump, the breezy The Now Now is the portrait of a band trying to have fun as the end-times loom.

Recorded in hotel rooms during the Humanz trek, it features mostly Albarn on vocals with Snoop Dogg, 75-year-old jazz guitarist George Benson and house music vet Jamie Principle as the only credited guests.

Gorillaz, who have been on tour throughout the summer in Europe, launch a string of arena dates in Toronto Monday night ahead of their first Demon Dayz Festival outside Los Angeles later this month.

“Coming back to America and Canada is important because it’s such an integral part of the energy of the band,” he says. “It’s nice to see family again and it’s also to say, ‘Thank you very much,’ before we go off to do other things.”

As soon as the Gorillaz tour wraps, he’ll release a new album from The Good, the Bad & the Queen, a band he formed with Afrobeat legend Tony Allen, Clash bassist Paul Simonon and Verve keyboardist Simon Tong. “The day we finish this Gorillaz tour, those that are involved in both bands fly back to England and we start rehearsing to go out on tour,” he says. “It’s literally like a relay race.”

Before the band touches down in Toronto, a jovial Albarn rang up from London to talk about the longevity of the Gorillaz and why now might be the right time to see the band live.

Did it surprise you that the Gorillaz came back so soon?

We always had the thought of doing a festival in the U.S. and then this amazing venue became available outside Los Angeles and it just sort of seemed to be a nice kind of The Now Now place to play.

With song titles like Hollywood, Kansas and Idaho, you recorded a lot of The Now Now in hotels. Why was that?

That’s something I’ve kind of gotten adept at doing. I’ve always found with touring that I have an inordinate amount of free time and I always like to keep working. I’ve also developed this sort of tradition where we stay at the tops of hotels and it’s kind of an economic way to keep recording all the time, in a weird way.

In addition to the Gorillaz, you have your own solo work, then there’s Blur, who came back in 2015 and the new The Good, the Bad & the Queen. How do you decide who gets what?

If I was going to come and do something again in North America and play festivals in Europe, I knew I wanted to have another instalment of the Gorillaz, so that it’s a new experience. The world you create when you release a new record that’s a really great thing and that’s what’s great about the Gorillaz. There’s always a sense that the band is changing. It isn’t always something dramatic, but the story being told inevitably changes because of the imagery. The two videos that we’ve made for The Now Now are very different and give a fresh take on the ideas of animation and reality. But we’ve come, in a sense, to the end of another chapter.

The Gorillaz have been around for 20 years, but when you were starting it with Jamie how big did you think it could be?

I never really pursued it as a career it just sort of kept going. It’s something that’s really reliant on the dynamic between Jamie and myself. It’s not like any other band. He has his own life and I have my own life and essentially those two currents don’t meet unless we want them to and that’s how the Gorillaz gets created and recreated.

Talk about the live show this time. Every time the Gorillaz tour, it’s a really unique experience in terms of the guests you have with you onstage.

I think you’re seeing a band that has been together now for nearly two years and we’re doing it really solidly. It has funk and it has people onstage who really know how to play well with each other. There are more moments where I’m singing completely without anyone else, but that’s because of the nature of the songs on this record.

In the toon storyline, Murdoc was imprisoned after being framed for drug smuggling and his replacement is Ace from the Powerpuff Girls’ band. Do I have that right?

Yeah, apparently. It’s a fast-paced story.

The Gorillaz has had its fair share of guest stars. Do you have a favourite?

There’s one that I want to pin down to come do a live show with us and that’s Grace Jones. We’ve got close on a couple of occasions, but still to this day we’ve been unsuccessful.

People like Bobby Womack and Carly Simon have worked with the Gorillaz. How do some of your older collaborators react to the cartoon aspect of the band?

I don’t know, really (laughs). I don’t have many discussions about the cartoons with the more senior people collaborating with the Gorillaz. I talk to the younger people we work with about the cartoons and it’s great. They love it. But I think if I was Bobby Womack and he had to listen to me going on about 2-D, he might get tired of listening to that. Actually, he did (laughs).

I know at one point there was talk of making a movie with the Gorillaz characters. Is that ever going to happen?

There’s always talk about it. When I switch on my Netflix and it’s on, I’ll believe it.

You regrouped with your Blur bandmates for 2015’s The Magic Whip. Any plans for an encore?

Well, there’s already quite a lot of Blur out there. I suppose it would have to be because something compelled us to do it again, whether it’s a global petition or we fancy doing it again.

When you look at your audience, why do you think the Gorillaz have been able to appeal to all these different generations of music fans?

I think it’s because we’ve sort of been like the Grateful Dead of cartoons (laughs).

When you think about artists that are still relevant from the ‘90s, you could probably count them on two hands and you’re one of those names. What was the key to your success?

I was always in this for a lifetime as long as it went.

We had to wait seven years between Plastic Beach and Humanz, and then you treated fans to Humanz and The Now Now almost back-to-back. How quickly will the Gorillaz come back after this tour ends?

Well, we’re going to have to even it out. Since there wasn’t much time between these recent two records it’s probably going to be another 10 years.

So we’ll see you back in 2028?

Mid-September 2028, so please come and see us now.