Damon Albarn

0:05Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Every December, we start singing. At church, around the fire, in our cars, with the radio turned up. But have we ever stopped to ask, where did our favorite Christmas carols come from? And what makes them so magical? Join me in unwrapping the meaning and the magic behind these caroling classics. Listen to Hark, the stories behind our favorite Christmas carols. available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at americamagazine.org. You want your master's degree? You know you can earn it, but life gets busy. The packed schedule, the late nights, and then there's the unexpected.

0:50American Public University was built for all of it. With monthly starts and no set login times, APU's 40-plus flexible online master's programs are designed to move at the speed of life. Start your master's journey today at apu.apus.edu. You want it? Come get it at APU. When it comes to the holidays, I believe you fall into one of two camps. Someone who loves holiday music, or someone who won't admit they love holiday music. There's something about a voice you love singing a familiar opening phrase, maybe it's Donny Hathaway, maybe it's Mariah Carey, that just flips a switch, and you instantly back into that warm and cozy headspace only the holidays can bring.

1:30For me, that feeling pairs perfectly with a cup of Starbucks caramel brulee latte. That's their signature espresso with steamed milk and a rich caramel brulee flavor topped with whipped cream and a crunchy caramel brulee topping. It's like the sound of the season, but in drink form. And that's really what this season's about. Because this season and every season together is the best place to be. Come together over your favorite holiday favorites at Starbucks. Over the course of a 35-year career, Damon Albarn has reached international fame with two very different groups. In 1988, Damon created the rock band Blur with four friends in his native London.

2:11Blur started out as what Damon calls a classic art school band, but they quickly morphed into one of the seminal groups of the 90s Britpop explosion, along with their former rivals, Oasis. After a series of successful albums with Blur, Damon started Gorillaz in 1998 with cartoonist Jamie Hewlett. Dubbed as the world's first virtual group, the Gorillaz' rotating lineup includes collaborations with De La Soul, Stevie Nicks, Bobby Womack, and Lou Reed. The band's influences are as diverse as electronic music, hip-hop, and world music, and over the last 25 years, Gorillaz has been wildly successful, selling over 30 million albums worldwide.

2:53Despite having found such success, Damon's never stopped exploring his artistic potential. He's written an opera, released solo and side projects, and recently he reunited with Blur to release the band's latest album called The Ballad of Darren. On today's episode, Leah Rose talks to Damon Albarn about what it's like for Blur to headline music festivals in 2023. Damon also reveals how gorillas are about to undergo a major paradigm shift. And he explains how, according to family lore, John Lennon and Yoko Ono first met at his dad's art gallery in London. This is Broken Record. Line of notes for the digital age.

3:33I'm Justin Richman. Here's Leah Rose with Damon Albar. Let's talk blur. Okay. So it looks like you've been on a, you all have been doing a little run of shows in Europe. How's it been being back on stage with everybody? Oh, it's great. Yeah, we did three, four small gigs in England. and then we went over to Spain and did the Primavera gigs. First one was Barcelona. I mean, the only problematic thing is that if you're headlining, you go on at 2am. God. Which at our age is almost unthinkable, but we can just about do it. Yeah. And then the next date was in Madrid and it was the first time they were ever doing it and the weather was so bad that they had to cancel our concert at 2 a.m.

4:24So we managed to find a smallish club called La Riviera, about 2 ,000 people, and 2 ,000 of the 40 ,000 managed to see us. So it was quite a magical evening, really, considering what a tumultuous afternoon it had been. What was the energy like in the club? Yeah, it was fantastic. I threw myself around with Wild Abandon. Very nice. How has it been for the other guys in the band? Because I know you've been consistently touring for the most part since the last Blur album. Has it been hard for them to sort of... I thought you were going to say you've been consistently tearing it up. You've been thrashing, tearing the club up consistently.

5:09Yeah. Well, I mean, everyone's been doing their own thing. Graham's done a lot of concerts, but not maybe of that size. Alex has his own festival so he even he knows everything about about what a festival is you know the complete dna of a festival and Dave's been doing everything humanly possible and also got his own little band out as well so everyone's been super busy that's great yeah well it's necessary isn't it otherwise it just feels like I don't know this this is supposed to be old friends sort of finding each other latterly and trying to express that in a sort of you know vibrant and honest way have you learned anything new about the old friends in the process of recording the new album well they're a lot more grown up all of them a lot more maybe resilient than maybe they were 20 years ago, emotionally and physically.

6:17Yeah, I think there's a huge amount of necessary growing up that's gone on for all of us. Are the band dynamics, do they feel exactly the same as they used to, you know, way back when? Or have things sort of changed, just like on a more interpersonal level? Things have changed a bit, but essentially it's through exactly the same dynamic. That's so cool. It's so nice to have that. Yeah, it is really nice. It is really nice, but I suppose the fact that we haven't kind of chased it much in the last 20 years means that, you know, there's still that possibility for something to surprise us, you know?

7:03And, I mean, this whole thing initially started off with a conversation about, okay, it's probably time we sang those songs again with no real destination. And then when I was in the States in the autumn, I mean, I always take a studio on tour anyway, and I just thought, well, I'm just going to write songs. It's kind of interesting being here in all these mad cities and everything that, you know, that you carry on the road with you and the experiences you have. and I thought maybe that's quite a nice, sometimes it's quite a nice place to write about something else, you know. And so I just wrote lots of songs.

7:46I didn't tell anyone. Then in the new year I said to all of them, I said, just can I invite you down to the studio? I'd just like to play you some stuff, see what you think. And I said, look, I think I've written an album. There's 20 songs. You choose the ones you want to record. and that's really, it was as simple as that. They were like into it and it felt, I suppose at that moment, I was kind of, you know, I was still kind of a bit nervous about letting all that material go without knowing where it was going to go. But it went pretty much exactly where I hoped it would and yeah, it didn't take us more than six weeks to do the whole thing.

8:30It's amazing. But the most amazing thing about that was that that seemed to sort of inform the momentum of everything and the fact that we already had this sort of totemic Wembley gig. It's sort of everyone was like, oh, well, we should get the record out in time for that as well, or at least proximity to it. So something, a process that latterly, to be honest, has just become so sort of slow for me. you know like having to wait a year sometimes to put a record out she's just so that's happened a few times so this was literally we we finished it and then it was like oh shit we need to rehearse for these concerts and now we're here and i haven't and we're putting another single out next week and then the album and that's it's just nice to know that that nothing existed in january apart from the songs i suppose so the gig existed first and then the album came yes so it's sort of like a Beatles get back, let it be situation.

9:34It's exactly like that. I'm watching Get Back right now. I mean, it's inevitable, isn't it? Sort of for some reason, because we come from this island, we're always going. But I mean, this is the annoying thing about the Beatles is that they kind of sort of, they created every kind of sort of trope that you throw at pop music, really. You know, not invented, but they seem to embody so many. and the idea of mass hysteria, although it happened previously with Elvis, I don't think it ever happened for a band, the idea of the independence that a band, when it's a good one, kind of offers its audience.

10:15They know that these individuals have come up together and that they share very similar kind of sort of beliefs and passions and that they've known each other since they were kids so it's just yeah it's so important really that bands exist and i suppose i feel like i don't know i feel like it was a bit more excitement about guitar music again at the moment yeah and uh that can't be a bad thing because it got so sterile i mean you know for me really the last great guitar band would have been arctic monkeys i don't really know if as anything as good as that since. I mean, but now there's bands who look, have got a huge amount of potential and it's really, it's kind of dismantled itself, guitar music, and it's kind of putting itself back together again in a different form, you know?

11:08And you've got some fantastic new kind of sort of mutations of the genus of it. Yeah, what are some that you're thinking of when you say there's some new bands out there that are bringing back guitar music? Well, I really like a band like Wooloo. They seem to be really cool. There's one that I've picked up on somewhere in the American countryside, but I can't remember his name. That's narrowing it down, isn't it? American countryside, okay. Yeah, the American countryside, the great American countryside. Yeah. It's a collective of, I don't know, it sort of just felt like exactly what a young band should sound like.

11:53There were lots of them. And you've got bands like Yard Act who are here who seem to be getting better and better. And obviously, not that they're new, but I still see them as kind of emerging bands like Sleaford Mods. You know, brilliant. And lots of great language being used again. You know, not this sort of generic rock shit. I hate that. Yeah. I hate that. I like poets and guitars, you know. It's like, that's what always inspired me. I was curious about your relationship to the Beatles because you came up, you were sort of the generation after the Beatles and we've had a lot of artists on this show who talk about, you know, someone like Ozzy Osbourne, when he heard the Beatles, it was like it went from black and white to colour.

12:39So you being sort of the generation. And then back to black, permanently. he brought it back to black yeah i'm not sure where the color comes in really with aussie osborne but i mean yeah you know so they still put out albums while you were alive young but you were alive well yeah yeah yeah growing up when when you were finding your own music what role did the beatles play with you and your friends like were you guys into the beatles well the first thing i knew about the beatles really was that my parents lived in the same mansion block in Emperor's Gate back in the very early 60s as them. Wow.

13:15And then what's my next connection? The other thing within my family kind of sort of folklore is that my dad had a gallery just off Carnaby Street, and he put on the exhibition where Yoko Ono had the ladder, and John Lennon climbed up a ladder to read the word yes or whatever it was. So he kind of got them together. That was their first meeting. Really? Yeah, I mean, obviously it's not. I've been dying to know how those two met watching Get Back. Yeah, they met in – he came to see her art show at my dad's gallery. Was she like a popular artist at the time? I mean, underground, yeah, but very cool.

14:02Cool. Yeah. And so that was how I kind of knew more about that. And I also, I used to love Lucy in the Sky of Diamonds because I got given it, but I didn't know that it was a Beatles song. I thought it was an Elton John song. Oh. But then I did, and obviously I did discover the Beatles and like, you know, then it becomes an obsession until you've kind of, you've listened to everything and kind of assimilated the whole thing. but but then you know like other amazing things came into my life you know but i mean it was one of the very early influences obviously very cool i've seen your um your house described the house you grew up in described as bohemian and i know what that means in america but what does that mean in london i i did till i was nine i lived in london when i moved to the to the essex countryside bohemian i suppose in the sense that my dad's and my dad was like very inter uh lastly into art education my mom's always been an artist painter and creates installations and everything really just everything is and yeah i've got lots just lots of artists in my family it's just pretty normal yeah so it wasn't i mean i don't know i guess i picture sort of just like people sitting around on pillows and smoking hookahs and yeah that sort of thing i mean it was a bit like that in the late 60s yeah my dad amongst many things he did he created happenings and uh psychedelic buildings in weird places in fact once he kind of worked with the soft machine and they did a concert in the south of france and uh he thought it'd be a really good idea to go out the night before because it was on on on a beach he went out into the bay and he doused the whole bay in in uh petrol and then when they came on that evening he lit it so they had this amazing kind of very dangerous enough no one would ever let you do that now but that hey it was the 60s i mean but i but you know i just heard all of this uh through you know just the the thing that all families have which are like these stories you know yeah you want to hear again and again and again totally the family lore yeah he's like the family lore exactly i don't know if you went through like an early experimentation drug phase when you're a teenager or whatever but were they cool with that like could you talk to them about oh yeah my parents were always very good with all my uh yeah my dalliances you know they didn't necessarily think i was being very responsible sometimes but i mean they they were never judgmental ever yeah i read that your primary school burnt down like seven or eight times yeah that's true why what is that about well it turned out that our form teacher was a complete psychopath but the sad thing is that the the school caretaker the school caretaker was blamed initially and he had a heart attack because he was so distressed that anyone could think he'd do anything like that.

17:10But it kept happening, and it really disrupted two years of my education terribly. And then in the end, it turned out it was our teacher who'd been burning the school down. Was it big fires, or was it just like little...? Yeah, yeah. Well, like classrooms and stuff. I mean, once we'd done this whole project of raising all these hamsters, and then he burnt the hamsters as well, which, you know, is like, it's not nice. That's like serial killer stuff. Yes, I mean, yeah, I mean, sort of Essex in the 1980s was a fairly errant place, to be fair. We're taking a quick break and then coming back with more from Leah Rose and Damon Albarn.

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18:29With the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you're actually earning points for going on a grand adventure anywhere you go, any trip you take. And that's not even mentioning how the card gets you into the Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences like music festivals and sports events. Whether you're booking your next big trip or we can escape, Chase Sapphire Reserve makes travel more rewarding. Discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve.

19:04I firmly believe when it comes to the holidays, you fall into one of two camps. Someone who loves holiday music, or someone who won't admit they love holiday music. There's something about a voice you love singing that familiar opening phrase, maybe it's Donny Hathaway, maybe it's Mariah Carey, that just flips a switch, and you're instantly back into that warm and cozy headspace only the holidays can bring. For me, that feeling pairs perfectly with a cup of Starbucks caramel brulee latte. That's their signature espresso with steamed milk and a rich caramel brulee flavor topped with whipped cream and a crunchy caramel brulee topping.

19:37It's like the sound of the season, but in drink form. And that's really what this season's about. Little moments of pairing, little moments of connection. Sharing a song, sharing a story, sharing a caramel brulee latte. Because this season and every season, together, is the best place to be. come together over your holiday favorites at Starbucks. If you've ever hired for your small business, you know how important it is to find the right person. That's why LinkedIn Jobs is stepping things up with their new AI assistant so you can feel confident you're finding top talent that you can't find anywhere else.

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20:47That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash broken, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI Assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash broken to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. We're back with more from Damon Albarn and Leah Rose. As a kid, how did you find music? What was the first music that you felt really spoke to you? Oh, I was more family law. I had a harmonica that was in my cot, which I used to play.

21:33I've always been interested in music. Yeah, through quite conventional musical education, classical. And then I just sort of, with Graham, discovered other kinds of ways of playing music. You know, and here I am now. What were you guys into music-wise? Were you into punk or were you, like, what was the new wave? What was the... Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of our early stuff comes directly from Thursday night on Top of the Pops. You know, it was a national obsession with the youth, really. It felt like that, where I lived. That was my connection with everything, you know, top of the pops. Clothes, music, hairstyles.

22:18How much did you guys think about the way that you looked, like the aesthetic look of Blur when you first started? Was there a lot of thought put into the haircuts and the clothes? There's a lot of thought put into making it not look like there's a lot of thought put into it. Yeah. I mean, we were just a classic art school band, really. Yeah. You know, slightly foppish, slightly foppish, slightly disheveled, but kind of, you know, cool. Yeah, but the hair was always good. Yeah, we had good hair. We had good hair. Like it looks disheveled, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, remarkably, we've still pretty much all got our hair, which is, honestly, that's quite a thing.

23:01A 55 is definitely not something to take for granted for sure. you know it's true but yeah i've always wondered that because you always look cool and it's like how much thought i'm just curious how still you look cool you have cool outfits you obviously make cool choices with what you wear oh i mean i mean you know we we were in second hand shops from day one i mean it's our it's one of our greatest joy especially graham and i you know we just love shopping for old clothes yeah but there you still you have to be good at it like someone like Andre 3000 like always looks cool oh yeah you could walk into the same shop and no of course but it's like it's like everything practice makes perfect you know yeah it's like all those things that you tried on that really didn't work but you put down and I bought a lot of stuff that I was convinced was a major statement in fashion that I when I got home it was like and these days I have I mean my daughter because she's at London School of Fashion very serious I was very, very serious about everything related to that.

24:05I mean, I can't get rid of anything anymore. You know what I mean? It's like I have to really be at my top A game every day. Otherwise, she will call me out. Yeah. So does she like your style? Well, I think so. I mean, I'm her dad. You know what I mean? I can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm never going to have as much drip as other people. But, you know. Yeah. Do you remember, I was reading about your first Blur's First tour in America, and it sounds like it was a bit of a disaster. I don't know if that's accurate, but do you remember first going on the road and playing shows in the States? They weren't all a disaster, but we did play quite a lot of kind of sort of Midwest towns where no one had an idea who we were at all, you know, which is part of, I mean, looking back, it's an incredibly important part of our development.

25:01And, I mean, recently, especially with Gorillaz, I've spent so much time in America. I've done a lot of playing in America. So I feel very comfortable and at home in America these days. Ironically, I feel very at home in America these days. I've even got my LA hat on. I know. It seems like you like that hat. I know. Right? I've literally, I can't get rid of the fucking hat. I love it. Is it just the same hat every time? It's the same hat. I've bought so many hats since I got this hat and nothing kicks like this hat. But it's totally the wrong hat for blur. I shouldn't be wearing a hat like this.

25:39I shouldn't be wearing a hat. I mean, I don't wear a hat on stage, obviously. And all the clothes that I kind of sort of, you know, the whole look that I've got, that I've thought about everything, is just ruined when I put this hat on. So I can't really wear the hat. I shouldn't really be wearing the hat in this podcast, but I just, I can't help it. But you're right. I literally, I mean, I haven't washed it either since I've had it. And it was about 30 years old when I bought it. Really? I mean, this is a truly loved hat. It's a cool hat. It's gotten broken in over the years. I've watched a lot of your videos.

26:16And in the beginning, it was a little bit more stiff. Yeah. I saw you had it at Coachella. What are you trying to say about my hat? It's a good thing. It's like a nice pair of leather shoes. It is. It is. But I mean, the only other kind of hats that I really feel comfortable in are like old fisherman's beanie hats, you know. Those are cool. Yeah, but I can't wear them in the summer. Too hot. Too hot. Nothing else. I found some nice old deer stalkers that I might be able to get away with. But it's been so hot, really. This is the only hat I can wear. It seems like, I don't know if this is true, but was Gorillaz the first project where the music really super resonated with Americans?

27:00Well, no, Song 2 was. But no one knew who made Song 2. It's just that ubiquitous woo-hoo song. Yeah. There'd probably be people who listened to this going, no, they didn't do that, did they? You know what I mean? It's so detached from us. Yeah. But yes, that's our biggest song by far, obviously. After you make a song too, do you want to incorporate a little woohoo or something similar in every... You definitely want to make a song free, but it's harder than you think. It seems very difficult, but I don't know. I just feel like I would be tempted if you get something that really sticks. Yeah, well, I've had a few, but then as Frank Snartre said, I've had too few to mention.

27:49that's really poor it's a really really really really poor joke it's a poor joke i apologize for that um i always come goes wrong when i try and be amusing have you ever tried to analyze what works in america versus what works in the uk or in europe is that something that you even think of when you're making music or you just i don't think about i don't think about it i just you know you make and then you just wait do you care or are you just making to make uh i i've existed to make it must be so nice to have such a clear passion yes i mean it's it's uh i mean it's condition isn't it you know i've got i have some these days it would be it would be on a spectrum somewhere you know it's got a name i'm sure i just haven't chosen to go down that path to to be analyzed.

28:45Is it near constant? Is it something you can always rely on or does it ever leave you, the ability to make new songs? Well, it's like yoga. I try and do yoga every day and I try to write every day. I get up basically in the morning unless you can be disciplined enough to do it in the evening, which I can't. Are you working on any new Gorillaz music? I've done a few tunes. I'm doing an opera at the moment. about using Goethe's fragment he wrote of the Magic Flute Part 2, which is fascinating. Very cool. You've heard of the Magic Flute, Mozart's Magic Flute. Well, Goethe, who's a contemporary of Mozart, wrote Part 2 of that, like, you know, the sequel, but it never got put to music.

29:33Oh, okay. So it's this legendary lost thing. Wow. Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I don't know. Very cool. what I'm doing. I've never really known what I'm doing in that world at all. I'm a complete and utter idiot. But you were trained in music theory and everything. Yeah, I mean, I don't know whether it's any good, put it that way. Whereas with songs, I'm kind of more confident about that. Yeah. Okay, so New Gorillaz, you're working on New Gorillaz? A bit, yeah. We're going to do something. It's going to be not as dramatic as a quantum shift. A paradigm. Be a paradigm shift. Just be very different.

30:16No cartoons? Yeah, but just an entirely different approach to everything, to the band, to everything. We're just at a point where we're going to change. Why? Why? Why does it feel like it's time for a paradigm shift? Because it was always just Jamie and I. So, you know, really, although it's a very big thing now, it's still, in essence, it's two people. So if we decide between us that we want to do something unrecognizable, then we will. That's exciting. Yeah. I mean, you need that, don't you, for it to stay alive, really. Definitely. That's cool. So when abouts do you think that will start surfacing?

31:02Well, I will keep writing, but until I've kind of written the opera, I can't really do anything much else other than that. But, you know, I might write it really quickly. It's got to be next autumn anyway, so before that, I'll be working on Gorillaz. We're going to pause for one last quick break and then come back with Leah Rose and Damon Albarn. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Everybody loves to travel, right? We can getaways, a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, all of it. And no matter where you're going, Chase Sapphire Reserve is your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations.

31:44Travel is its own reward, you know. You're out there having experiences you can't have any other way, and with your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you're also being rewarded. You earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel. So let's say you book a trip to Hawaii, you go surfing at Sunset Beach, you go hiking on a volcano, and you go out to dinner. With the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you're actually earning points for going on a grand adventure. Anywhere you go, any trip you take. And that's not even mentioning how the card gets you into the Sapphire Lounge by the club. At select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences like music festivals and sports events.