by Martin Roach
Damon had clearly caught the soundtrack bug from the prolific Nyman: “He was the man who taught me, ‘never waste a note …’ I’ve got that pinned up in the next room actually,” Damon told music365.com of his work with Nyman. “I work everyday and I’ve got so many things going on. It’s not nine-to-five, but I work every single day making music in whatever form, and I’ve really just started to understand what it means to not waste a note.” Ever the workhorse, Damon put his fame into good use, travelling to the Cannes film festival to help promote the film.
Clearly fired up, Damon was quick to get another OST under his belt, though this experience wasn’t to prove quite as rewarding as his work on Ravenous. In the throes of moving house and with a baby due at any time, Damon threw himself into writing his first solo OST for Ordinary Decent Criminal, a crime drama based in Dublin starring Kevin Spacey. The film, inspired by events in the life of Irish gangland figure Martin Cahill who was shot and killed by the IRA in 1995, suffered greatly on release because of its similarity to John Boorman’s movie The General. What does mark it out as different from Boorman’s piece is its soundtrack which seems – on the surface at least – to be at odds with the subject matter. “My girlfriend has family in Cuba,” he told music365.com, “and if I’d had the time and money, I’d have done the soundtrack out there. I wanted to give the film that Catholic Latin quality which I thought was a great thing to couple up with Dublin, which seems a much warmer place than anywhere in the British Isles, there’s a very Spanish feel there. I thought it was a nicer thing to play with than getting an Irish band and going that route.”
Damon’s perfectionism and his willingness for the Latino-themed soundtrack to succeed was captured by the cameras of ITV arts programme The South Bank Show, loudly taking one musician to task for not playing the piece the Albarn way. “It’s great working with other musicians, it’s just really terrifying when they just don’t understand what it is you’re trying to get,” was his explanation of such an approach to Muse.com. “Then you really wish you were with people you’ve worked with for years. It kind of balances out. It’s the same with the band. I have the same kinds of arguments with them, really, when they’re not doing what I want them to do. Except we’ve known each other a lot longer. They’re less likely to listen to me.” The compilers of the Ordinary Decent Criminal OST also didn’t quite see things Damon’s way either, adding tracks by the likes of Bis, Shack and Bryan Ferry to the album that don’t actually appear in the final cut of the film. “What I really wanted to do was take all the original music I’d composed for the film, spend another month on it and make it into a cohesive score. I don’t see any point in putting a record out to a film unless you do that. Something like Get Carter or Taxi Driver – all those wonderful scores have become popular as records and keep selling. With those albums you can go into a world for however long it is that record lasts.”
Despite this unease, Damon again put his back into promoting the film, making regular trips to Dublin just as Suzi gave birth to baby Missy (named after rapper Missy Elliot). Damon embraced his new role of father as wholeheartedly as every other opportunity that had come his way in life so far. “You’re just witnessing a life force, aren’t you?” he said to Esquire. “She looks like an Eskimo. She looks more like Björk than either me or Suzi. Not that either of us look like Bjork … it’s a slightly bizarre thing for men really, especially if they want to be involved in the whole process; all I could do was be a comforter. It’s great, though.”
In a post-Britpop world, British musicians had replaced movie stars as the main focus of attention for the media and therefore, by default, the public (possibly because Britain didn’t have enough genuine movie stars to go around?). So unsurprisingly, Damon and Suzi were quickly swamped with offers from celebrity magazines for the exclusive rights to pictures of them with baby Missy in their ‘beautiful new home.’ These offers were all firmly turned down. Not only did they not need the money – ‘Song 2’ alone is understood to have generated £2 million of revenue by 1999 – but Damon had been appalled to see Noel and Liam Gallagher in the pages of the celebrity glossies. “The Gallaghers have totally fucked themselves over by doing celebrity magazines. It seems to me that as soon as you appear in one, it’s over, really. Idiots! It’s the most stupid thing Liam and Noel have ever done. I feel really sorry for them. They just haven’t handled their fame and money very well, have they?”
The rest of Blur meanwhile, were handling their fame and money in their own singular and very different ways. The most visible success had belonged, rather bizarrely, to Alex James. He’d scored a No.1 with Fat Les the previous summer with the glorified footy chant ‘Vindaloo’, accompanied by artist and ‘Country House’ director Damien Hirst and comedian, ‘Country House’ video star and professional rock ’n’ roll sidekick, Keith Allen. There was worse to come with the follow-up single ‘Naughty Christmas (Goblin in the Office)’. “Obviously the records are shit,” James admitted to US journalist Rob Tannenbaum with admirable honestly and remarkable accuracy. “But you wouldn’t get Radiohead making a Christmas record, would you? If I want to make stupid records with a bunch of idiots from The Groucho then fuck off, I will.” On a higher level, he’d also become involved in the BEAGLE project to launch a 27 kilo Mars probe that would land on the planet’s surface, unfold and commence drilling into the surface. All the while accompanied by a specially composed Blur tune. Both James and Rowntree were involved in BEAGLE, raising cash and the project’s profile. In May 2003, BEAGLE hitchhiked a ride from a European Space Agency rocket bound for Mars, but sadly never made it. As well as his BEAGLE interests, Dave Rowntree had advanced his training and abilities as a commercial pilot – a bug he would infect Alex with – and taught himself computer animation. Graham Coxon was winning friends and admirers with his solo work, a sonic cross between Nick Drake and Iron Maiden. He was also about to become a dad – to baby Pepper – with girlfriend Anna. Blur were still a band, but were splintering with each passing day.
With plenty to occupy them but no touring commitments, Blur was effectively on hold. “Blur exists if everyone wants to make music together,” Damon stated. “That’s not something you can predict. I certainly don’t keep tabs on everyone’s life like maybe I would’ve done when we started out ten years ago. We all need our own identities.”
In terms of defining his identity, Damon Albarn began to look further afield. In 2000, he flew to the African nation of Mali as ambassador for Oxfam, to see first hand the work that the charity were doing in the area. Under the heading ‘On The Line’, the project’s aim was to highlight countries and communities on the Meridian line and encourage exchanges with the West. Initially uncomfortable about mixing the roles of musician and charity ambassador, Damon decided to stick with making connections via music, and came armed with a humble melodica – a cross between a harmonica and a mini keyboard that’s been used to good effect by everyone from reggae artist Augustus Pablo to Ian Curtis of Joy Division. “I just listened and talked and occasionally joined in with my melodica,” he told BBC Online. “I played it on the last few albums I’ve made and it’s just become my instrument of choice. In the context of Mali music, it worked really well. It’s a very simple instrument and it sonically fits in, for some reason.” Damon returned to London with forty hours of material but was in no rush to release the results; this was something that clearly had to be treated with care and respect. “You can become very insular in a band when you’re only playing with the same people,” Albarn explained to Mojo magazine. “It’s not healthy. You have to see how wide the world is. You certainly get a feeling of how wide it is when you’re in Mali.” Tapes went back and forth from London to Africa with key musicians given carte blanche to add instruments and sounds as they saw fit. The final recordings, featuring over a dozen Malian musicians including kora players Afel Bocoum and Toumani Diabate were eventually released two years later under the title Mali Music on the Honest Jon’s label, inspired by a West Lo
ndon record shop with a vibe similar to the classic Rough Trade set up. Pop stars dabbling in World Music has a high crash rate – it runs on a scale similar to that of pop stars trying their hand at acting – but again fortune was on Damon’s side and he produced a simple, unpatronising set that was well received, though clearly didn’t break the tills in terms of sales, a shame as the proceeds went to Oxfam. World Music’s image was traditionally seen as a turn-off to record buyers.
To maintain the international vibe, Damon turned his hand to another soundtrack, working with Einar Örn Benediktsson of the Sugarcubes on the music for Icelandic film 101 Reykjavik, directed by his Kaffibarrin colleague Baltasar Kormakur. The film soundtrack – finally released in 2001 – was also never going to be a massive seller, but it all bolstered Damon’s growing solo/non-Blur reputation. One album that was genetically programmed to be a huge winner was Blur’s first Best Of … collection. Focus groups were used to work out what the running order should be, when it should be released and even what people’s perceptions of the band were. Alex James: “I’ve never seen anything so brutal, but it was very illuminating. Apparently, when these people think of Blur, the first thing they think of is Damon’s eyes. Among other things, it came across that we were a fully integrated band. People didn’t perceive us as different personalities. They perceived us as straight-down-the-line musicians.” Perhaps to counter the apparent lack of band personality beyond Damon’s eyes, the entire group were pictured on the sleeve of Best of Blur – designed by Julian Opie – in the simplest possible terms: black lines with paint chart colours. Each member boiled down to their most basic visual element: Graham’s glasses, Alex’s fringe, Damon’s little boy lost look and Dave’s gingerness. It’s a terrific piece of branding that now seems so obvious it’s become a cliché. Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones disagreed and voted the portraits as one of the ten worst pieces ever when the pictures were first acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. “Blur themselves are embarrassing subject matter,” Jones wrote. “They’re the quintessence of Britpop and what was supposedly hot in our culture in the 1990s. Now they’re just deeply unfashionable.” The reviewers were kinder to the band than Mr Jones was. “The Best of Blur serves as a document for an astonishingly consistent career,” Pitchfork said. “As with any retrospective, the track listing isn’t going to please anyone … Still, it’s hard to argue with the material that made it to this record.” Mojo had it down as “essential” and Q pointed out that there was plenty more where this came from: “Blur have had many more than eighteen hits; certainly there are sufficient omissions to form the bulk of a second disc.”
Damon claims he agreed to deliver the compilation – plus the customary bonus track – in return for a one-single deal for a new musical project he was toying with. “I thought that was a pretty good offer,” he told London’s Time Out magazine. The additional track was the atypical ‘Music Is My Radar.’ “We weren’t getting along very well at the time, but the song we produced was completely bonkers. It ends with me repeating this phrase, ‘Tony Allen got me dancing’, as I was listening to a lot of Nigerian music at the time.” Allen, by now in his 60s, was the master Afrobeat percussionist who had driven the infectious rhythms for legendary African musician Fela Kuti. He was a revered figure in World Music.
Now, if someone could tap into the potential international beats and appeal of World Music, but mould it into a package that wouldn’t repel the casual buyer … then the industry really would go ape.
Chapter 15
CARTOON BEGINNINGS & NEW ENDINGS
There are, of course, precedents for cartoon characters being used to front up pop music. The Beatles have done it. The Jackson Five and The Osmonds had a go. Never underestimate the contribution made by Josie And The Pussycats. But one example remains the template – and that involved monkeys too. Or should we say Monkees …
When Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz – TV’s premier manufactured answer to The Beatles – started to rebel against their taskmasters, who made them international stars with the zany series that bore the made-up band’s name, there was one straw that broke The Monkees’ back. And its name was ‘Sugar Sugar’. The Monkees, led by rebel-in-chief Nesmith, were becoming increasingly disenchanted with the material they were being asked to record and decided to make a stand against the latest song put before them. A simple tale of love for a “candy girl” who’s got our unfortunate two dimensional hero “wantin’ you”, ‘Sugar Sugar’ was a bubblegum confection too far and the band refused to have anything to do with it. Don Kirshner, the creator of The Monkees and the series, hit upon an ingenious solution. If The Monkees wouldn’t do as they were told, then he’d make a band that would – a cartoon band called The Archies who took ‘Sugar Sugar’ to No.1 in America and Britain in 1969. The song stayed on the UK charts for six months. The real musicians, the true voice of ‘Sugar Sugar’ – session singer Ron Dante – remained hidden. No one needed to see them or even know their names. That would be distracting.
Damon Albarn had stepped back from the fame of Britpop, escaped to Iceland when the pressures of Posh ’n’ Becks-ness became too much and hidden behind the relative anonymity of soundtracks and World Music; now was the time to remove his name and face from a project all together. Using the leverage afforded him by the need for a Blur Best Of …, he did indeed cut a deal initially for that mooted one-off single. Former flatmate and Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett was in on the act too. Damon would write the songs, Jamie would design the band and the world they inhabited and a floating coterie of musicians, singers and collaborators would be parachuted in as required. The pair were born a few weeks apart in 1968, the year of the monkey. Hence the initial banner for the project: “Gorilla”. This was soon funked up to … Gorillaz.
“Jamie and I spent our twenties being successful in many ways, but the residue of that success had left us questioning what we were doing and the nature of the world we lived in,” Albarn explained to CDNow. “One of the things that really got to us was the nature of celebrity and the cynicism of popular culture. That was really the genesis of Gorillaz, besides the fact that he’s a cartoonist, and I’m a musician, so the logical thing to do was to create an animated band.”
The band in question was a virtual four piece: a slightly vacant, pin-up boy lead singer, 2D; Murdoc, a Lemmy-esque bass player; a bulky beatmaster in the shape of Russel and hyper cute pre-teen rock chick, Noodles. Anonymous it may have been – bland it definitely wasn’t. “It demands that people use their imagination more than pop music generally allows for these days,” was one of countless explanations Damon gave to the obvious initial question about the ‘band’ … Why? He told Metro, “If you can believe in figures such as Eminem and Marilyn Manson, why not get your head around something which takes that to its logical conclusion?”
The demarcation between the two men and the way they worked – collaborative yet separate – seemed odd to outsiders. “Jamie and I work together in a very kind of isolated parallel with each other,” Damon told The Bulb. “We’re very good friends but we don’t invade each other’s space at all. We’ve basically got a given where everything I do he likes and everything he does I like. It doesn’t matter what that is. It’s only very occasionally that he would come up with some visuals and I’d go: ‘That’s shit,’ or I’d provide some music and he’d say the same.”
Hewlett was adamant that none of the Gorillaz were based on anyone involved in the band, “Everyone thinks 2D is Damon,” he told Q. Despite this he gave the magazine a very specific breakdown of the band. “2D is the classic stupid pretty boy singer, he’s the fall guy, the stooge. Everybody takes the piss out of him.” Noodles was originally called Paula, with greasy hair, bad teeth and was a “bit of a slut.” “She’s the mysterious one,” says Hewlett. “All she ever says is Noodles.” Murdoc, according to the comic artist, was modelled on a young Keith Richards, “a heavy metal bass player who wants to be the singer but isn’t pretty enoug
h.” “Hip-hop hardman” Russel is “dark, quiet and thoughtful … and hates Murdoc.” For a two-dimensional band, they appeared to have considerably more personality than the majority of pop acts on the market. And that, for Damon in particular, was largely the point.
“The whole pop aesthetic is more and more about personalities and you can get carried away with that and end up being let down,” he said in an interview with Metro. “Humans are such fragile creatures and the whole nature of celebrity screws you up. Look at all the manufactured bands in the world. Even those that claim not to be are, in some way. Bands such as Coldplay are a little bit too clean to be real. Then there’s Westlife, A1… Gorillaz is about trying to destroy that and take it further, to manufacture something with real integrity. It requires a leap of faith.”
There was another plus to the four characters fronting the music. It allowed Damon to experiment with hip-hop, reggae and some of the rhythms and textures picked up on his World Music travels. Some of these stylings – had they been presented in the flesh by Damon himself or indeed Blur – may well have attracted derision. Blur’s Alex James had already referred to the singer – who now listed his culinary speciality as “ackee and saltfish” and his favoured recent record purchase as 1970s Angolan music – as “the blackest man in West London.”
The full reggae-fied simian assault was launched in March 2001 with an extensive, virtual world website and a live show at The Scala, a former cinema in London – among the audience was ex-Clash bassist Paul Simonon. A full size screen was put back in the venue as Albarn and his fellow musicians performed behind it. “Show yourselves!” one punter cried. The audience and press were impressed, albeit to the point of bafflement, and the view from The Daily Telegraph was typical: “Much of the animation was not far removed from the elaborate backdrops seen previously at gigs by the Chemical Brothers or Orbital, except here it was given prime position. Gorillaz raised good questions about what we expect from a concert – who wants to look at ugly blokes playing guitars anyway?” The paper suggested that the whole thing may be little more than a post-modern prank by Albarn and his west London playmates, something that was hardly dispelled with the release of the skanking lead single ‘Clint Eastwood’. The desire to maintain the illusion of Gorillaz as a real entity went to considerable lengths, with a detailed fictional band history that even went to the trouble of inventing a made-up debut gig at the ‘Camden Brownhouse’ in December 1999, which ended in a fictional riot. When pressed, Damon insisted that he was acting as the band’s spokesman, as shown during an interview with Radio 1’s Steve Lamacq to promote the single.