Gorillaz singer: no standing still
Restless frontman Damon Albarn can’t stop heading for new places
Damon Albarn may have started Gorillaz as a cartoon band some 20 years ago, but the project has evolved into something far more interesting. “Humanz,” its fifth studio recording and first new album since 2010, features eclectic guests such as Mavis Staples, Grace Jones and Noel Gallagher. When Gorillaz perform at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on Wednesday, Oct. 4, the touring act will be joined by underground rappers Danny Brown and Vince Staples. We spoke with Albarn, 49, former lead singer of the British pop band Blur and a restless creative spirit, before the group’s headlining set at this year’s Outside Lands Music and Arts
Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in August. Q: I imagine you must be the most difficult person at home because you can’t sit still. A: That is something my partner cites as one of my major faults. And as soon as I do, I get ill. Q: Does it take much work to get Gorillaz out on tour? A: The nice thing about not being totally wed to anything is you can move to something else once you feel fatigued by it, creatively or physically or whatever. I mean, commitments are commitments. I’ve got a lot to do this year, but it’s worth doing it because I always enjoy when I’m onstage, and the crowds seem to really enjoy it. Q: Are you the one making the phone calls and filling out the calendar and all that boring stuff ? A: Well, I write a letter. I’m not very good with phone calls. I write handwritten letters, which is slightly eccentric. And I see if I get a reply. Sometimes I get nothing. Sometimes I get sort of a really tentative agreement to have a conversation. And sometimes I get an “Oh, hell, yeah, I’ll do that!” It depends. And it’s very random. I don’t really have a plan when I start. It depends on the people I’m working with, really. In a way, they suggest more things than I do. Q: Most of your Britpop peers have settled into the retro show circuit. You have gone on to do a Chinese opera, several collaborations with African musicians and, of course, Gorillaz. How did you break off the usual path? A: Well, probably a combination of curiosity, drugs and sheer f— bloody-mindedness. When I look back on my drug intake, it’s kind of ... as you get older, obviously, you can do less and less because you just don’t have the energy for it. So, I look back and celebrate it now sort of as a totem of my vitality that I was able to ingest so many f— narcotics. Who knows? I could drop dead onstage tonight. But if you’re asking me, I think it was a combination of those three. Just curiosity, mainly. That’s still my biggest drug. Q: You have probably put yourself in bigger harm’s way by coming to the West Coast. A: I have, really. I was in Korea eight days ago — they were unbelievably relaxed about it. They’re almost like, “Eh, thermonuclear war. Yawn.” I mean, clearly, it’s terrifying. We’re so numb to it all. We really don’t appreciate how precarious our existence truly is. Q: Isn’t that what the new album is about? A: A bit. It was that sense that, “F— hell, stuff is really accelerating at the moment and we are about to enter a whole new epoch, really.” We’re now in it. When I was making the record, I was concerned with my own internal didactic. Now I just play the music. I don’t even feel it. It’s so of now that I don’t even feel like explaining what the songs are really about.