Jamie Hewlett: The G-U 2011 Interview

Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett recently took time out to speak to Gorillaz-Unofficial.com about Gorillaz Phase 3 and plans for the future. A special thanks to Jamie for his continuing personal support for the site and for agreeing to the interview.

Gorillaz’ album The Fall is out on CD and download in April (April 18th in the UK, April 19th in North America, April 20th in Japan)

There is a limited edition vinyl of the album out for Record Store Day only, on April 16th.

What a great Gorillaz year 2010 was. The album Plastic Beach, every bit as inventive and challenging as its predecessors, was hailed with great, if not universal, critical acclaim (it currently hovers only a handful of marks below the all-conquering Demon Days on reviews aggregating site Metacritic) featuring a dazzling array of genuinely exciting musical collaborations. Lead single Stylo was also a signature tune of the year and made numerous ‘year end’ lists, as did the video starring Bruce Willis. The setting of Plastic Beach was arguably their most realised to date, the huge Plastic Beach model being the basis of a series of short film clips, featuring in videos and being the basis of a website which featured a whole new level of interactivity. Then there was the tour, an immense production and something unlike anything that had ever been attempted before. The Gorillaz band and a galaxy of star guests performed for thousands each night across several continents, continuing and extending the Gorillaz tradition of genre-defying, innovative shows. The fan and critical reception to the shows was immense. Add to this a new Gorillaz story, a slew of Gorillaz media appearances (very often Murdoc, back to fine form), radio and TV appearances and sessions and a new fan club. And finally, a whole new record, The Fall, recorded on tour. Against all odds, Damon and Jamie had done it again.

Or had they? Plastic Beach charted well around the globe initially, achieving some of Gorillaz’ all-time best chart positions (#2 in America, #1 in Australia, #2 in the UK) but fans would look at the charts nervously in the weeks to come as it slid down the rankings. Was-it, wasn’t-it single Superfast Jellyfish and second single proper On Melancholy Hill did little to revive its fortunes. In the end, it did go platinum in the UK (300,000 copies) and cleared 900,000 copies outside the UK, one of the top-selling UK albums internationally in 2010 – not a shabby total by any means but a far cry from the totals of Demon Days, even taking into account the downturn in the music industry. Rumours (eventually confirmed) flew around that Rhinestone Eyes, the scheduled third single, had been cancelled. A new non-album single Doncamatic seemed to come out of nowhere, and its video featured barely any animation and Jamie’s previously-stated desire to tell the story over ‘4 or 5 videos’ seemed to have been put to one side. In contrast to Gorillaz Phases 1 and 2, very few B-Sides and non-album tracks were released, despite the fact that several album’s worth of material had been recorded during the Plastic Beach sessions.

It was with both sides of Gorillaz year 2010 in mind that we approached our interview with Jamie, on the phone from Paris. Gorillaz Phase 3 had been monumentally ambitious, far outstripping Phases 1 and 2 in that respect. As Jamie clarifies below, it was ultimately market forces (take your pick: the recession, downturn in the music industry in general, financial issues looming over the record company, mainstream radio conservatively not backing the Plastic Beach sound) which lead to some aspects of plans going unrealised. And after all their hard work and gruelling tour schedule you can’t blame Damon for wanting to put Gorillaz ‘back in the box’ for a bit (as he told Triple J Radio in December) or Jamie for taking some time out to get back to what he loves about his art. It was great to hear Jamie still so upbeat and positive about Gorillaz and justifiably proud of what the project has achieved so far. It was also clear that despite false reports, his respect for Damon on a personal level and as a musician is completely undiminished, as he spoke of the Gorillaz co-creator with obvious warmth and affection. Perhaps most excitingly of all for Gorillaz fans, Jamie is still determined not to let the Plastic Beach story go unfinished, and is open to new plans for the best of the unreleased material. We may have to wait awhile but knowing Gorillaz, it’ll be worth it.

The Call.

G-U: Hi Jamie, it’s Gorillaz-Unofficial here!

Jamie: I know! How are you?

G-U: I’m doing very well thank you and yourself?

Jamie: Mm. Not bad.

G-U: Good stuff! Just to say thanks ever so much for agreeing to this interview, it really means a lot, and you’ve supported the site for many years, and people who visit the site know that and I know that, and just thanks ever so much for it.

Jamie: It’s my pleasure, I’m sorry I couldn’t do it sooner.

G-U: That’s okay, your year last year was just busy beyond belief! Ok, I’m going to ask you a few questions about The Fall later, because that’s coming out isn’t it, as a physical release. And before that, I’ve got a few questions about looking back over the past year, is that okay?

Jamie: Okay, whatever you want to ask.

G-U: Okay. Going back to the start of last year then, the Plastic Beach model that you did, that got a lot of good reaction, many fans were quite inspired by that, it was something new. Have you still got that? Is that still around somewhere?

Jamie: Yeah! [laughs] I believe it’s in storage. I believe it’s in the same storage where all the sets and costumes for the Monkey opera are stored. I think it’s probably a bit like that warehouse at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark! It is intact. It’s an extremely fragile model as you can imagine. The people who created it for us also made sort of a packing. So it’s safe. It comes into a few pieces. But yeah, it exists. We were trying to think what the hell to do with it after we filmed it. And we talked about exhibiting it in various places. But I didn’t want that to happen. Because it’s a beautiful thing but I don’t know if it really works in a gallery, for people to look at.

G-U: Not even in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern? That was one fan proposal of where it should be shown [laughs]

Jamie: It’d be really small in the Turbine Hall! It’d be a tiny little thing at the back.

G-U: Well I do think it was quite a loved thing in general.

Jamie: Well it was Tracey Island, wasn’t it. Kind of. It was from my childhood, having loved watching Thunderbirds. We wanted to introduce the album in a new style. On Demon Days we talked about how wonderful it would be to make a huge model but we never got to do it in the end. So it was just waiting to happen.

G-U: And you got to realise your vision then. Great, so, that was something that was unveiled at the start of the Phase. The first single release back then was Stylo, and the album came out in March. Now there was this quote from Damon in the NME at the end of last year where he said: “EMI made us release it before we were ready, because they wanted it to be in the last financial quarter”. Were you under a lot of pressure to get stuff out?

Jamie: Yes, it was a real shame for us because we didn’t feel we were completely ready. We were still putting stuff together and we had looked at a slightly later release. Only a couple of months, but those couple of months would have given us breathing room to prepare better. But you know, it’s always the case with these things that it’s talked about for months and months and then they want it tomorrow. It did mean that Stylo, as a choice of single, was pushed around for ages, and then the decision was made at the last minute.

G-U: Did you want Stylo first?

Jamie: I wanted Stylo from the beginning. I thought it might not have been the hit track off the album but I thought it was the perfect introduction to it, catching up with Gorillaz. And the idea with video for me was, you hadn’t seen them for four years, and here they were in this car escaping from you don’t know what, and what a fantastic start to a campaign I thought. So I pushed for Stylo and I think Damon thought Stylo was the best choice as well. But there were all these things… we were waiting for Barry Gibb who was, then he wasn’t, then he was, then he wasn’t. It was late in the day when we finally we found out that he wasn’t going to appear on the single so we had a very short time to rush to LA and film the Stylo video in a day and a half.

G-U: You mentioned the Knight Ryder theme music.

Jamie: Yeah, exactly. And I’m a huge fan of the very first Mad Max film. And I love the driving sequences in that. He had a real art for doing that, they look really fast and really dangerous and I wanted to try and make something along those lines, so it meant using real cars and real stunt drivers, and then of course when you put the characters into the equation, if they’re 2D animated, to put them in a live action car is not only extraordinarily expensive, it’s also going to take five times as long and you don’t know if it’ll be convincing, but with CG characters…

G-U: Yeah I think in general it was well received. One thing that puzzled a lot of fans, a lot of fans will want me to ask this question. Superfast Jellyfish, there were promos for that, and there were remixes, was that always intended as just a radio single?

Jamie: This was a record company idea. We were going to follow Stylo with On Melancholy Hill, but they really wanted to release Superfast Jellyfish to radio. They promised it was just going to radio and it would be treated like that, but I think a lot of people thought it was the next single. And the video that was done by James Coore was meant for the screens at Coachella. It wasn’t meant to be a video, and it got misinterpreted.

G-U: Yeah some people did think that was the second single.

Jamie: It wasn’t supposed to be.

G-U: Well fans are going to be interested to hear that, there was always a bit of a mystery over that.

Jamie: We knew that would happen.

G-U: This phase also had a great website. In the website, the delivery of a certain part to go up to another room, the delivery man has written that he’ll redeliver in “April-ish”. Actually, I don’t know if this is true, but someone came on the Gorillaz-Unofficial Forums and posted that web development for the Plastic Beach site had been cancelled at the last minute.

Jamie: Things don’t always run seamlessly – things can go wrong. The Stylo car was a classic example of let’s make a wonderful toy to give to fans, yeah, we can do that, not a problem, then we get a letter from General Motors saying you can’t make this car or we’ll sue your arses off!

G-U: And the site was the same sort of thing?

Jamie: Yeah. Because things don’t run according to plan all the time and the Gorillaz website is quite a big, ambitious…

G-U: Yeah there’s nothing else quite like it. And I don’t know if it means anything to you but I think fans are understanding, there’s not much finger pointing going on, especially not with you guys, people understand there’s money involved…

Jamie: I think our fans are very tolerant of the kind of levels we’re dealing with on some of these projects…

G-U: Well one real positive, and one absolutely unqualified success from the fans’ point of view was the tour. I threw it open to fans on the Gorillaz-Unofficial forum to suggest questions for this interview, and a few people just posted I don’t want to ask Jamie anything, I just want to tell him thanks so much for the tour, the tour was fantastic, and so many fans came out to see that, and that was a really joyful thing wasn’t it, really.

Jamie: Yeah. It was wonderful. And again you see, it was a wonderful experience, but noone’s going to be able to repeat that, and I don’t know if we would be able to repeat something on that scale. You know, taking all those people around America and Austalia in buses.

G-U: Yeah! All your techy guys as well, and all your chefs and stuff and everyone you had there.

Jamie: Having your breakfast every morning with the Hypnotic Brass and Bobby Womack and De La Soul, and the Clash, all sitting there eating their porridge, is quite a bizarre thing.

G-U: Was there a best gig or standout gig for you?

Jamie: Maybe Madison Square Garden. Because of the history of the place, and it was a good show, but all the gigs were great, all of them, everybody felt that in the band… everybody came off stage, literally everybody, came off on a high, loving it. Even Lou Reed who was only going to play one show but then ended up playing a few shows because he enjoyed the experience.

G-U: Yeah, LA he played didn’t he.

Jamie: Yeah he played LA. He never goes to LA [laughs].

G-U: Okay. Moving on through the Phase. Rhinestone Eyes and Doncamatic… The Clash Music magazine interview came out in January so people know about that scenario with the Rhinestone Eyes video, you had it all ready…

Jamie: The problem was I spent too much money when I made Stylo. I didn’t take into account all the extra things you need on a live shoot, like policemen, and water trucks, and hiring out sections of freeway and it was very expensive and the record company paid for it, and paid for On Melancholy Hill, and when it came to Rhinestone Eyes there wasn’t the money.

G-U: Okay so we’ve heard the story about Rhinestone Eyes, Doncamatic quickly came out of that, did it?

Jamie: After On Melancholy Hill, we came up with Rhinestone Eyes, and I think by that point the finances sort of ran out.. So Damon said, I’m going to make a new song, and he wanted to work with Daley and he made this track which was very infectious and catchy and then the record company said ‘we need a video’ and a lot of discussions were had about whether to make a video or not, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do for it , I didn’t know how it fitted into the storyline, Anyway, I had to do a video, I had a very very short space of time to make it, and very little money, so we had to think.. you know I was on the tour, I had to come off the tour, go to LA, film this.. I like to meditate on my videos and try and get them right, but this one was done very quickly. But I was pleased with the end result.

G-U: That’s great to hear that you were. I think fans knew, people could tell, it’s not an all-singing all-dancing video, but it’s fun, it’s got touches of your artistic style in it, some people were saying ‘where’s the animation?’ but I think a lot of people liked it. Okay, I should mention The Fall, because that’s what we’re promoting and that’s coming out on vinyl for Record Store day and CD, and there’s a digital single coming out for it, Revolving Doors and Amarillo. So you did the cover for that, and the video, and the art direction for the package and so on. What do you think of the record?

Jamie: I think it’s great. Damon, after many years of touring and understanding the amount of hours you spend hanging around doing nothing, used that time creatively to make an album, which is a really really great album. It didn’t have as much time spent on it as a normal Gorillaz album but I think it is wonderful.

G-U: Yeah and it’s been positively received in many quarters. NME gave it 8/10 and several others have said that while it is what it is, because it’s recorded on tour, it’s got some lovely moments in there.

Jamie: If Damon was locked away in a Mexican jail for a month and all he had was an elastic band, he’d make a good album. That’s what he does. He’s an extraordinarily musical person who is always making music.

G-U: I think that’s very true. I hope the album does well. Moving on, there was this intiguing quote in the Clashmusic interview where you said ‘we need to finish the story off, but it’s not going to be through another video’. Is Gorillaz, not in the long term, because obviously you might come back to it or whatever, but in the short term, is it over? In terms of no further plans for the moment?

Jamie: It’s not over. It’s never over, not at all…

G-U: No, but in the short term….

Jamie: We’re not going to walk away from something that really works and that has the support of so many committed people, we wouldn’t do that… but due to the fact that the money has completely fallen out of the bottom of the music industry, people are being much cleverer about how they’re putting together music and videos and we need to think about how we can do it.

G-U: So the story, *for now*, we’re leaving it there for now?

Jamie: We want to finish the story of Plastic Beach, absolutely, and we will be trying to do that through the website… but we can’t leave the story sitting, just, mid-story [laughs]… there’s a lot more to tell.

G-U: Perhaps you could do a book again? Like a Rise Of The Ogre part 2?

Jamie: No, well, we did that. There’s an idea for a book but it’s not similar.

G-U: Okay. I won’t ask anymore about that. You want to keep people in suspense. Moving on, people will have a go at me if I don’t bring up this question, did you hear about this, I don’t know the veracity of it, but the People newspaper, a tabloid, did you hear about that?

Jamie: Yeah I did. [laughs]

G-U: They ran a story saying… well it says Damon and Jamie, after the end of the tour, things ‘came to a head’, that there was a ‘massive argument’? [laughing]

Jamie: Do you think it’s true?

G-U: Er… no.. no I don’t, I couldn’t really believe it, I know you guys a bit and… it didn’t sound quite right, no…

Jamie: Me and Damon have a very honest relationship which means if there’s something that pisses us off we fight about it and we sort it out. We’ve always been like that, for the last 13 years. But no, that story is not true, it was taken out of context.

G-U: Okay, final question then, because you’ve been very generous with your time and I really appreciate it. You’re doing some of your own stuff this year, perhaps…?

Jamie: I am, yeah.

G-U: We’ll keep an ear to the ground for that, shall we?

Jamie: [laughs] I am now working on stuff. You know what, this constant conveyer belt of working hard, working hard, you do reach a point where you forget what it is you do, and I’m an artist, and I intend to spend the next few months drawing, and painting, and remembering how to draw, and then I will be ready to start the next thing.

G-U: Wonderful. Jamie, just to recap what I said at the start, thanks so much for agreeing to the interview, I know fans will be pleased to hear from you again.

Jamie: I’m glad to have answered some of the questions.

G-U: Okay Jamie.

Jamie: Alright mate.

G-U: Thanks ever so much.

Jamie: Take care of yourself.

G-U: Bye!

Jamie: Bye!

[some material was removed from the transcript by request, including questions about ‘Plastic Beach 2’]

Special thanks to Tanyel and all at CMO, all at RMP, and Damon, for help with the interview.