L'Interview, March 2001

This interview was originally transcribed on the old official Gorillaz fansite. I have pasted it here for preservation.

Q) The members of your band have different backgrounds. How do you manage these differences?

Russel
We formed as a band in April 1998. It then took some time for our individual characters to gel together. It’s only after many punch ups, screaming matches and late night colouring in sessions that we have reached a point where we can get on stage, pull our pants up high under our armpits and shout "Hello Mr President…."

Q) Do you feel related to a musical scene (or a cartoon scene)?

Russel
We live in an animated alter-world were Augustus Pablo can walk into Electric Lady Land Studios pick up a Gibson and play a fuzz lead over a Cachao bass line while Dr Dre plays the tin flute to Rag Time beatz

Q) How did you collaborate with such strong personalities as Damon Albarn, Dan The Automator, etc?

Murdoc
It was an easy vibe with everyone, you know? We had already been working on the tunes for about a year before we started getting anyone else in, so we had such a strong vision of who we were and what we were about that anybody who came along had to acclimatise to us. Like Russel said we’re in some animated-alter-bollocks or whatever!

Q) Do you plan gigs? And how will it happen?

Russel
That’s the ace up our sleeves!

2D
Yeah! The world is having a hard enough time wondering how and where we exist and what happens in the studio. People go into melt down when they try and imagine us playing live.

Murdoc
People will bloody melt down when they get an ear-load of what we’ve got to give them.

Q) What could be the best compliment to address to you?

Murdoc
It was a real compliment to play bass in Jamaica with the original dub bass master Junior Dan, now all I need to do is record with Ozzy and my life will be sweet. Apart from that I always like it when people notice my Cuban heels.

2D
Yeah! People are always equally nice about my hair and my voice.

Murdoc
Which are both average.

Q) What kind of feelings do you try to give to your fans? And what are the goals you would like to achieve as artists?

Russel
We’re trying to take them on to higher ground…

Murdoc
And I envisage a smorgasbord of sexual liaisons with nubile young fillies from my glands-end to me old–john-o’-scrot’. Then, after my coronation I’ll make porn, smoking and love bites compulsory on the national curriculum, and I will be setting exams. This will be followed by a swift but extremely painful eradication of all of the feeble minded, consciousness choking, half arsed, lowest common denominator dross that passes for popular entertainment across the board in all contemporary forms of so called entertainment.

Q) How do you define the real world?

Murdoc
I’m the living definition of "the real" world. I see people walking around like regurgitated copies of themselves everyday, acting the way they think they should, trying to say the right thing, trying to make their bands have the right sound. Fuck that! I might be a drawing but at least I’m not shit-dull-boring.

Russel
That was a damn awful rhyme man, just you keep off of the mic and we’ll be fine!

2D
I thought it was cool!

Murdoc
Piss off the pair of you. Don’t forget whose band you’re in. It’s my band, my band!

Q) Are you more Daft Punk than Roger Rabbit (or the reverse)?

2D
There used to be this kid in the fifth year at school when I was in juniors called Roger and he was a punk, I always thought he was really cool. I didn’t even mind when him and his gang, called the organ boys, stuck the five a side football posts down my shirt and out of my trouser leg and crucified me in the middle of the playing field.

Q) Is Jamie Hewlett an important part of the group? Do you actually work with him?

Murdoc
He’s as important as any designer or director is to any band. You really put your life in these peoples hands when you hand over any amount of control of your visual style to them. He’s cool as long as you steer him off of his obsession with nudity and military hard wear. It gets on my bloody wick when he sticks his ore in on interviews though. Him and Albarn are the same, you do them a favour with their tired old careers and they take it as carte blanche to start gobbing off.