Gorillaz Interview
Music Monitor, July 2001
Murdoc
Whose band is Gorillaz?
Murdoc: You’ve read enough press by now, you’re just doing this to goad me. Listen, I’m not Olli Reed and I won’t rant to order just to give you under-endowed morons more column inches!
Russel: Morons, Murdoc? More like an oxymoron, rant man!
Are you a Satanist? If so, what attracted you to Satanism?
Murdoc: Have you seen The Wicker Man? It’s wic, wic, wic, wicker, man!
I understand you recently lost your Winnebago. What happened? Where did you finally find it?
Murdoc: I found it out on the New Jersey turnpike, it was just abandoned there, no explanation.
You've been to Jamaica. What's it like?
Murdoc: What can I say, it’s fantastic. That’s where we met Junior Dan, he used to play bass with Augustus Pablo, Burning Spear, and Marley amongst many others, and it was a real honour to jam with him. He added that extra dubbed-up sound dimension to our album.
Describe your dream date.
Murdoc: It’s not me who has to do the dreaming about this sort of thing, man. I’m the dream, not the dreamer. Look at me, what mere mortal could resist the evil of the Niccals?
Have you ever been to jail?
Murdoc: Hell, the police know my name for sure, but so does the rest of the world. They’ll just have to wait in line for a night in the slammer with me.
Have you ever killed anyone?
Murdoc: Shut up!
Have you ever been dead?
Murdoc: Listen, if you’re expecting some Peter Fonda-esque acid ramble about “I know what it’s like to be dead”, then you’d be wrong, but I’m not giving you carte blanche to assume I’m giving you the tired kill all hippies bullshit either.
What's a typical day with Murdoc like?
Murdoc: Who do you think I am, Caesar? I mean, I can see where you’d get that idea from, but I don’t ever talk about myself in the third person. Hail the Niccals!
Noodle
Are you a self-taught guitarist, or have you studied with an instructor?
Noodle (Translated from Japanese): I was sent to a Zen guitar monastery at the age of three, this is a long tradition in my family. My great, great, great, great grandfather discovered the missing chord.
How did you find the other members of the band?
Noodle: They were there when I jumped out of the Fed Ex crate.
Does your family know where you are?
Noodle: They know that to allow the unknown to occur and occur requires tremendous clarity, for where there is clarity there is no choice, and only where there is choice can there be misery.
Do you miss Japan?
Noodle: Do I Miss Japan what? Promote world peace, work with charities to help underprivileged small children? That’s all in my past, and I want to concentrate on my music now. Hehehehe!
2D
How did you first meet Murdoc?
2D: He was there when I came out of my coma on the ground in Tesco’s car park in Nottingham.
Does it make you sad when he threatens to kill you?
2D: We have fights, but he’s never threatened to kill me. It upsets me when he says I’m stupid and I have to spend interviews getting people to realize that I’m not.
What is your most prized possession?
2D: I’ve got some really brilliant Spider-Man underpants, but they are made for twelve-year-olds so I can only wear them on very cold days when my testicles shrink.
Murdoc: You’re doing a pretty good job of making yourself look stupid without me, Stu-Pot!
2D: Leave it out! I look wicked in those pants!
People love you for your hair and clothes, but who is the REAL 2-D?
2D: No, I’m sorry I don’t really understand what you mean.
Murdoc: I rest my case, retard!
Do you have groupies? If so, are they friendly or scary?
2D: Murdoc has the scary groupies, mine are all really cool but I wouldn’t call them groupies really, that’s out of order.
Murdoc: Shut up! They love it, the sooner you dump that dumb arse bird of yours and make the most of the whites on offer the better off you’ll be, numb nuts.
Russel
Seems like it would be confusing having ghosts in your head all the time, is it?
Russel: Y’know? I can only draw strength from all of the hardships that Allah has seen fit to throw at me. As for Del, the hip-hop spirit of my un-dead pal that resides inside of me, that too gives me positive powers that I can draw upon anytime.
Who invented Hip-Hop?
Russel: It depends on what you mean by invented. Its roots are in Jazz, Reggae toasting, and funk, but I guess you could say the Father of Hip-Hop is Afrika Bambaataa. He’s the man who brought the Zulu nation to the attention of the world, no matter what that thieving idiot McLaren has to say about it.
What is your favourite record?
Russel: There are a few vying for that position in my collection, but I sometimes like a disk for the possibilities it has for mixing, so a Mrs. Mills piano collection might find its way to the top for a break or that type of shit.
Is there a heart of gold beneath your tough exterior?
Russel: A heart is not a commodity that can be bought and sold in the marketplace, and neither is a man's skin. I won’t be a draw on your materialist allegories for the soul, but I do have some 24-karat Hip-Hop teeth you could check out if you like.
Describe one of the dominant post-structuralist theories of language.
Russel: You’re asking the wrong man, it’s Murdoc who throws Foucault into conversation to try and validate his own half-baked libertine ideology. If you're asking this to gain a convoluted response about structuralism and post-structuralism, which might help the reader make sense of the post-modern obsessions with language and with the "disappearance of the individual" in relation to us being animated, then I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m a modernist brother, y’dig?
Whose band is Gorillaz?
Murdoc: You’ve read enough press by now, you’re just doing this to goad me. Listen, I’m not Olli Reed and I won’t rant to order just to give you under-endowed morons more column inches!
Russel: Morons, Murdoc? More like an oxymoron, rant man!
Are you a Satanist? If so, what attracted you to Satanism?
Murdoc: Have you seen The Wicker Man? It’s wic, wic, wic, wicker, man!
I understand you recently lost your Winnebago. What happened? Where did you finally find it?
Murdoc: I found it out on the New Jersey turnpike, it was just abandoned there, no explanation.
You've been to Jamaica. What's it like?
Murdoc: What can I say, it’s fantastic. That’s where we met Junior Dan, he used to play bass with Augustus Pablo, Burning Spear, and Marley amongst many others, and it was a real honour to jam with him. He added that extra dubbed-up sound dimension to our album.
Describe your dream date.
Murdoc: It’s not me who has to do the dreaming about this sort of thing, man. I’m the dream, not the dreamer. Look at me, what mere mortal could resist the evil of the Niccals?
Have you ever been to jail?
Murdoc: Hell, the police know my name for sure, but so does the rest of the world. They’ll just have to wait in line for a night in the slammer with me.
Have you ever killed anyone?
Murdoc: Shut up!
Have you ever been dead?
Murdoc: Listen, if you’re expecting some Peter Fonda-esque acid ramble about “I know what it’s like to be dead”, then you’d be wrong, but I’m not giving you carte blanche to assume I’m giving you the tired kill all hippies bullshit either.
What's a typical day with Murdoc like?
Murdoc: Who do you think I am, Caesar? I mean, I can see where you’d get that idea from, but I don’t ever talk about myself in the third person. Hail the Niccals!
Noodle
Are you a self-taught guitarist, or have you studied with an instructor?
Noodle (Translated from Japanese): I was sent to a Zen guitar monastery at the age of three, this is a long tradition in my family. My great, great, great, great grandfather discovered the missing chord.
How did you find the other members of the band?
Noodle: They were there when I jumped out of the Fed Ex crate.
Does your family know where you are?
Noodle: They know that to allow the unknown to occur and occur requires tremendous clarity, for where there is clarity there is no choice, and only where there is choice can there be misery.
Do you miss Japan?
Noodle: Do I Miss Japan what? Promote world peace, work with charities to help underprivileged small children? That’s all in my past, and I want to concentrate on my music now. Hehehehe!
2D
How did you first meet Murdoc?
2D: He was there when I came out of my coma on the ground in Tesco’s car park in Nottingham.
Does it make you sad when he threatens to kill you?
2D: We have fights, but he’s never threatened to kill me. It upsets me when he says I’m stupid and I have to spend interviews getting people to realize that I’m not.
What is your most prized possession?
2D: I’ve got some really brilliant Spider-Man underpants, but they are made for twelve-year-olds so I can only wear them on very cold days when my testicles shrink.
Murdoc: You’re doing a pretty good job of making yourself look stupid without me, Stu-Pot!
2D: Leave it out! I look wicked in those pants!
People love you for your hair and clothes, but who is the REAL 2-D?
2D: No, I’m sorry I don’t really understand what you mean.
Murdoc: I rest my case, retard!
Do you have groupies? If so, are they friendly or scary?
2D: Murdoc has the scary groupies, mine are all really cool but I wouldn’t call them groupies really, that’s out of order.
Murdoc: Shut up! They love it, the sooner you dump that dumb arse bird of yours and make the most of the whites on offer the better off you’ll be, numb nuts.
Russel
Seems like it would be confusing having ghosts in your head all the time, is it?
Russel: Y’know? I can only draw strength from all of the hardships that Allah has seen fit to throw at me. As for Del, the hip-hop spirit of my un-dead pal that resides inside of me, that too gives me positive powers that I can draw upon anytime.
Who invented Hip-Hop?
Russel: It depends on what you mean by invented. Its roots are in Jazz, Reggae toasting, and funk, but I guess you could say the Father of Hip-Hop is Afrika Bambaataa. He’s the man who brought the Zulu nation to the attention of the world, no matter what that thieving idiot McLaren has to say about it.
What is your favourite record?
Russel: There are a few vying for that position in my collection, but I sometimes like a disk for the possibilities it has for mixing, so a Mrs. Mills piano collection might find its way to the top for a break or that type of shit.
Is there a heart of gold beneath your tough exterior?
Russel: A heart is not a commodity that can be bought and sold in the marketplace, and neither is a man's skin. I won’t be a draw on your materialist allegories for the soul, but I do have some 24-karat Hip-Hop teeth you could check out if you like.
Describe one of the dominant post-structuralist theories of language.
Russel: You’re asking the wrong man, it’s Murdoc who throws Foucault into conversation to try and validate his own half-baked libertine ideology. If you're asking this to gain a convoluted response about structuralism and post-structuralism, which might help the reader make sense of the post-modern obsessions with language and with the "disappearance of the individual" in relation to us being animated, then I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m a modernist brother, y’dig?