The animated band is led by sometime devil worshipper Murdoc. 2-D (Damon’s alter ego) is the lead vocalist and god’s gift to women. Russel is a big ape like American rapper (aka Del). Finally there’s Noodle, the ten year old Japanese martial arts expert (sung by Cibo Mato’s Miho Hatori).
I met with the real people behind the band, during their press tour, on a picnic table outside Virgin Records Beverly Hills offices. Damon was recovering from a hang over and didn’t really have much to say. Most of the time we couldn’t really be bothered to answer the questions. Dan was always game for a joke. It was animator Jamie Hewlett who came to the fore and seemed to be the natural leader of the project, as you will see:

What came first, the cartoons or the music?
Damon Albarn: Neither.
Jamie Hewlett: They came together.
Dan “The Automator” Nakamura: The band came first, right?
Jamie: We had the idea to work together on something, and obviously me being an artist and him being a musician, it was going to be an animated band. Seeing as though there were so many manufactured bands in the charts, we thought, ‘why not manufacture something properly and do something decent for a change. So we spent a year getting all the ideas together really, sort of preparing it all. Then we got Dan in. We lived together, we shared a flat in London and we wanted to do something together, something different.

Do you see this as a one off project, or are there going to be future Gorillaz albums?
Damon: It’s a bit too kind of evolved to be a one of thing. It’s taken two and half years of our lives, almost continuously so I think it’s an on going thing and it’s very organic.
Jamie: I’ll end up with Murdoc living in a big mansion with a whole rack of TV’s, sitting there injecting anphetimines into his bollocks and going insane probably. Or maybe not.
Damon: Or maybe not.
Jamie: The whole thing with Gorillaz is that it takes money to do everything, from the live show to the animation to the music to everything. If people are into it and it’s successful we can keep doing it, as long as we enjoy it. So it was never meant to be a one off novelty thing, we’re already thinking about the second album and stuff. It will go on as long as it’s good and we’re enjoying it. And as soon as it starts to be crap we shall think of some lovely way of ending it all.

The interesting thing about Gorillaz is that technically you wouldn’t have to age them, they could always be young.
Damon: That’s the virture of the cartoons thing, you know. It’s like, they could do what they want to do.
Jamie: I think I will age them though.
Damon: It goes really kind of, sort of in the face of cartoons, aging.
Jamie: Noodle will be a teenager by the time it’s over, definatly. She’ll be a sixteen year old, developed in every way.
Dan: She’ll be like the fucking Tomb Raider girl.
Jamie: The possibilities are endless. We keep realizing every day, we keep adding to it and adding to it. With the web site and everything. It’s just, do we have enough ideas; it’s going alright, we haven’t run out yet.

What can we expect from the live show, I know the band performs behind a screen, while projecting the cartoon images on the screen.
Jamie: The main the problem is.....
Dan: The screens two-dimensional and if you’re looking sideways you can’t see the screen.
Jamie: We’ve come to realize that we’ve come up with something that’s a bit ahead of its’ time and the technology doesn’t exist to do everything we want to do, so the live show was something we had to really think hard about. What we’ve come up with so far is a giant cinema screen that we project images onto and the band play behind the screen and every now and then you see the silhouettes of them. But that will become more advance as time goes on and we’re sort of updating it. By the time we come to America to play, which hopefully we will do, we should have a pretty polished off event. What I’d ideally like, is in a couple of years time to be able to have the characters standing on stage, playing guitars and banging their drums. They’d be some guy sitting in a booth with a whole rack of buttons.

You’d have like 3-D projected animated images or something?
Jamie: Yeah. We spoke to an animator who reckoned that Damon could dress up in this suit with loads of pads on it and stand behind a screen jumping around, and 2-D would appear on stage doing it, but I reckon he’s lying. But I’m sure that technology is in the works somewhere.
Damon: It wouldn’t have to be me surely.
Dan: If you put little electric shock devices on every joint, I’m sure you could get any guy to dance like 2-D or Murdoc. (laughs)
Jamie: That’s torture though. The Gorillaz show will become a huge torture event.
Dan: Well, you wouldn’t be suffering, you’d be pushing the buttons. (laughs)
Jamie: This whole thing has forced to think hard about how to do everything and that makes it fun I suppose. It’s hard work. It’s a full time job at the moment, really. We do the internet site from our studios. We program it everyday, we add to it everyday. We’ve got to a point in England now where we don’t get mentioned too much, which is great. The characters do all their own interviews and editorials in magazines. And Penthouse want Murdoc to do a five page spread with some page three stunners, and it’s sort of taken off finally. And for English people to get into like that.Damon: In his underpants.
Jamie: In his dirty, piss stained underpants with naked women. For the English public to get into it that much is encouraging. I would’ve thought they’d be sort of the audience to most likely not want to get into it.

They’d be more cynical about it?
Jamie: Yeah, absolutely. I imagine American audiences, I don’t know, it’s the kind of thing they could accept quite easily. But in England and in Europe it’s going down really well. It started off with us getting mentioned a lot, but now we’re sort of fading into the background. And we’re here for this just to get the ball rolling really, and sort of explain the whole thing. Then hopefully the characters will come over.

Here’s a silly question about the characters: who do you think would win in a fight, Noodle or Hong Kong Phooey?
Dan: Noodle.
Damon: Absolutely.Jamie: Mrudoc wouldn’t win any fights would he, not unless he had a baseball bat. No, Noodle would win, because Hong Kong Phuoie would be stuck in a cabinet, wouldn’t he. So she’d just push the cabinet out the window porbably. If she was fighting Spot the Cat (who always rescued Hong Kong Phuoie) it might be different.

Which cartoon character would 2D most likely date?
Dan: I think Daphne from Scooby Doo.
Jamie: I think we’d probably go do what Archie never did and fuck both Betty and Veronica.
Dan: We’d run through Josie and all her Pussycats.
(To Damon) do you agree with that?
Damon: Uh, I can’t, I’m not really bothered who he....know what I mean.

Are there any plans for a Gorillaz cartoon, movie or comic book?
Jamie: Well, we’ve been approached about all of the above. And um, I didn’t really want to do a cartoon show, because it seemed to obvious, but we’re thinking about a film maybe. We’re sort of in the early stages of wondering whether or not we could do a film.
Dan: It would be like Apocalypse Now.
Jamie: Yeah, that would be great. If we can come up with an idea that’s really fucking good. Because I think animated films are pretty fun, unless you’re talking about Toy Story or Akiria. If we can think of a good idea. I think we might have a good idea actually, so we might do that. We’ve been offered money from people, who want to give us money, which is nice.

Would it be totally animated, or would it be the animated characters in the real world?
Jamie: It would be a bit of everything really. A bit of live action in there and a bit of animation. I think making people watch an hour and a half of animation can be hard work.
Dan: It could be the ultimate version of Meet the Feebles.
Jamie: Meet the Feebles? Is that the guys who did Bad Taste? That’s the Muppet Show with chainsaws isn’t it?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jamie: There you go, Meet the Feebles and Apocalypse Now. And then you know, you could turn the score into the second album. We’ve sort of been chewing around ideas at the moment. Because we are going to do a second album, but we want to do it differently. There’s no point in peresenting it the same way we’ve done this one. So it’s just the best way of doing it.

Who would do the voices, would you do the voice of 2D?
Damon: No.
Dan: Gorillaz would do their own voices.
Jamie: They exist already. So that’s all sorted.
Damon: We’re pretty far down the line in Europe with it.

So you have voices for interviews?
Jamie: Yeah, and they do a lot of online interviews and stuff. They’ve been on the radio loads in England, which has been quite funny.

How do they answer the questions? Do you write the answers ahead of time?
Jamie: No they answer them.

They answer them in character and just come up with whatever?
Jamie: Well, with a bit of promoting. Yeah absolutely.

Do you worry that Murdoc’s ties with Satanism will be a problem for the American Christian Right?
Jamie: No, I hope it really upsets them. He’s not really a full on nasty Satanist, he’s more into Paganism and stuff, and the Wicker Man, which is always a little bit different from that.
Damon: He’s a bit mixed up really, like most of us. It’s like a sweet shop, religion these days, isn’t it.
Jamie: You know if it causes a stir with whoever in America then that’s great, it’s good publicity isn’t it. He’s only a fucking cartoon character really. That would be funny, I’d really like that, actually.
Dan: I think Murdoc was a fan of Marilyn Manson for awhile until we had to tell him that that really wasn’t all that cool.

Who do the rest of Blur feel about the Gorillaz project?
Damon: You’d have to ask them. You would yeah.
You haven’t talked to them about it?
Damon: Not a great deal, no.
Jamie: They’re on summer camp at the moment, Blur. (laughs)
Dan: Building canoes.
Jamie: Learning pottery.
Dan: Where you weave those wonderful wallets.
So was the musical collaboration difficult to come about, with the different styles?
Dan: Well actually, we started out with the same style at the very beginning.
Damon: Yeah.
Dan: Even when we were kids. I mean, we didn’t know each other then, but we both studied the Suzuki method of the violin for many years. It’s a very specific way to learn classical music. Since that time we’ve obviously branched out into other things a lot, but it all kind of comes back to that.

Finally, what are your personal favorite comic books and cartoons besides the Gorillaz, and Tank Girl of course?
Dan: Milk and Cheese!
Jamie: Well I’m a big Daffy Duck fan. And I like MoJo JoJo of the Powerpuff Girls. And Him, he’s pretty cool. And Dexter’s Lab. I love animation, I love cartoons. I don’t read many comics anymore though, having stopped drawing them. Hell Boy’s cool. And I heard a rumor that Ang Lee’s supposed to be directing the Hulk movie, which I’m very excited about. Somebody might get it right for a change.