Monkey Business
Dazed And Confused, January 2001
The face of a generation has konked out. 2D, the zero-eyed urchin poster boy from Gorillaz, nods forward into a multi-story sandwich and buries his nose in the snack. There's no sound, but in the air above his head a graffiti scrawled word forms and then vanishes: "SPLAAAAAAAAAT!"
Face down and besmirched by pickle, the graphically scrawny cypher-singer sleeps on, oblivious to the fact that his fellow Gorilla,
twisted speedfreak bassist Murdoc, has wedged a lighted cigarette in his ear. Weird scenes inside the slag heap, anybody? Welcome to the flatlands at the furthest point of the pop frame.
As the first one allowed into the Gorillaz warren of crash pads'n'studios, I was expecting peculiarity. For months now the Dark Pop Kings have been the subject of scurrilous rumour and tabloid mendacity Are they 4 real? Who's behind them? How does 2D get his hair looking like an acid house balloon? And is the precognitive mesh of their ghetto-ghost punk beatz a vile cardboard cut-out commodification of youth's primal anomie, or cutting-edge cool that pisses all over Coldplay?
All of these questions prong right out the window the moment the hack stumbles in on 2D, Murdoc, Russel, and Noodle. Amongst the chaos of lo-tech gear and bad lifestyle junk cluttering the Gorillaz studio den, a disorientating inner band chemistry bubbles.
Hulk-like American drummer Russel frowns down at his zombied-out frontman. "If 2D chokes on his sandwich, you're going to jail Murdoc," he growls, towering over his scrot-faced bass player.
"Death by saaaandwich, man!" gurgles Murdoc. "Fook off! He attacked me sandwich. That is a Swedish Death Metal Special and his dumb-assed face is trespassing in it."
Russel folds his arms. "Remove him from the snack, Murdoc!" he orders.
"Not piggin' likely," snaps Murdoc. "That is a Sandwich Of Odin. Black Pork'n'pickle! Each pig that went into that butty was individually tattooed with a satanic emblem by Ozzy's tattooist. War Pigs in the area! 'Witches gather at black maaaasses/Bodies burning in red aaaaashes!'"
So Murdoc's singing and air-guitaring and Russell's glaring and 2D's turning blue and suddenly, from the corner of the studio, a dwarf baboon robot with a radio antenna in its head somersaults into Murdoc's arse, butting him across the room. The bassist collides with the sandwich, Murdoc slides in front of 2D and a burning fag drops from the singer's ear onto Murdoc's arse.
"Noodle you friggin' Wasabi bitch, I'm on fire!" Murdoc yells, running to plonk his flaming behind in the studio goldfish tank. The small Japanese girl clutching the baboon's remote control shrugs and opens her Mao jacket to reveal a t-shirt. The slogan reads 'NO PAIN : NO PUBLICITY'.
"Gorillaz!'" yelps Noodle, hugging 2D and wiping pickle off the singer's face.
"Hey guys," mutters a semi-comatose 2D. "What time are we on stage?"
Ten years dragging your typewriter through the gutters of pop and you encounter some strange shit: Trustafarian skate-metal bible-bashers, dick-fixated drum'n'bass DJs, Finnish reggae bands, puking Northern disco clans, Argentinian Nazi midget bands, neanderthals, Godfunk-robots, alienated Sloanes, Martians, wannabe-Martians, gristle, jellyfish, pond life. Nothing, however, compares to Gorillaz.
The story goes that Stoke On Trent-born bassist Murdoc put the band together after encountering the pretty boy singer 2D when he attempted a heist at the organ shop where 2D worked. Murdoc's Vauxhall Astra rams the shop window hitting Crawley kid 2D in the head. Injuries are sustained, community service is handed out and a flickerbook of 'formative' events is set in motion.
US beats envoy Russel turns up in a Soho hip hop shop after leaving behind a trail of spook in New York. A posh boy who got tangled with the downtown brothers, he allegedly ingested the spirits of a rapper when he was the only survivor from a drive-by shooting. A ghost rapper named Del now lives inside Russel. As for the Japanese guitarist, Noodle, she came by mail order. In a crate, apparently.
The globally correct, haunted dancehall dub punk profile sounds suspiciously hipper-than-thou. The tale of double-denting eyeball fractures, transatlantic out-of-body wassups! and ten-year-old Manga-Metal girl axe heroines have the ring of hype. Or at least that's what it sounded like until the taxi swung off the road in the gloomy flatlands of South Essex and I took the climb up the slagway to their haven, feeling somehow more animated with every step.
Weird Scenes Inside The Slag Heap: Part 2.
As his hair sleeps on, 2D shakes himself half-awake. "Fing, is right, I'm up for it," mumbles the front man. "Rock'n'roll is like space, right? It's infinite, innit, so you can like, be whatever. And I am whatever. Whatever is my father and my muvver. And my nan. You just gotta let it out. Forever, and whatever, amen."
"Yeah thanks, pal," sneers Murdoc. "Want some diazepam to help you think more clearly? Mind like an unfurnished black hole that kid. You're not going to write any of that dribble down are you mate? Owzabout we listen to our album now."
Creative chemistry is vital for a great band. Chemical warfare is more the Gorillaz style. We have convened for a playback of the band's debut album, but first Murdoc decides to get a "vibe" going. The warty bassist wheels out his customized "voodoo decks", balanced on a drinks trolley festooned with Day Of The Dead dolls and plastic skulls. Noodle pulls down her radio hat and turns up the volume. For the next half an hour the rest of us are forced to listen to Sabbath's "Paranoid" three times, plus an entire Deicide album while Murdoc makes the devil sign, shouts "Tune!" and swigs from a bottle of black vodka..
"Alright my friend, I am not feeling these compositions," declares Russel. The drummer stomps to the decks, and removes the offending vinyl, gouging a deep scratch into the surface. "Oh, I'm sorry Murdoc. Guess that's slightly unplayable now. "
"Oi! MC Grandmaster Twat!" yelps Murdoc. "Scratch one more of my tunes and I'll hex the entire Nation Of Islam."
"Yeah Murdoc, I'm really scared for my peeps," growls Russell. "You were the one who spent a week listening for satanic messages in the Gary Crowley Show 'til I pointed out it was Aleister Crowley. Shall we listen to some shit that's tight, as the niggas demographic say back home?"
"You the maaaan, Russel," sneers Murdoc. "You an' that waste-of-ink singer are the men the A&R man fookin' fell for anyway..."
Take a million four-piece combos composed of a black arts-obsessed Svengali bassist, a downers addict voidoid singer, a hip hop hard man drummer, and a Tamagotchi rock chick guitarist, and 999, 999 times you'd get Skunk Anansie at the wrong speed. Gorillaz debut is the one-in-a-million exception.
A seminal summation; an eclectic revelation; a sensi'n'bongo riffed simultaneous requiem and eulogy for pop. No, really. 'Slow Country' floats it. "Tomorrow Comes Today" ouija-raggas out. "M1 A1" roadrunner flatfloors for the central reservation of retro-nihilism. Oh, indeed. Dubbed, echoic, clangorous, and zombie-rocking it draws a line from Crawley to Kingston via New York'n' Cuba and tightrope-walks the distance doing the punky reggae pogo.
As the old-school trumpet-ska jig "Rock The House" fades away, the four Gorillaz shift in their seats. This is where they're supposed to talk to the journo, except Noodle is busy folding 2D into a yoga knot, Russell has his nose in a book called Jewels For Fools: How The CIA Got Rappers Wearing South African Mined Diamonds, and Murdoc is defacing a Britney Spears fan mag with upside down crucifixes and penis shapes. Eventually, however, the three talking members (Noodle's Japanese interpreter was suffering from shopping exhaustion) deign to speak.
Given the mad eclecticism of the band do you think the public are going to understand Gorillaz?
Murdoc: If the music works that's all that counts, and I don't like to think of people as stupid.
2D: You're always calling me stupid.
Murdoc: That's different. You are stupid.
Who do you regard as the competition?
Murdoc: There aren't any other bands like us so were not in competition with anybody.
What's the chemistry between you and 2D?
Murdoc: I saved his life so he owes me his soul. I write all the tunes and he gets all the press attention.
It's been suggested that a lot of the attention Gorillaz have had so far is cause 2D looks so cool, is that something you're happy for the band to exploit?
Murdoc: I could see right from the start that his sticky-up hair would go down well with 13-year-old girls. I'm happy to exploit that to a point, (aside) but I wouldn't let him do any interviews by himself.
Does it upset you that 2D gets so much of the attention, particularly from girls?
Murdoc: Like I said, he may get attention from 13-year-olds but I think we all know who the ladies like.
Do you think the Britneys and Christinas and Kylies currently dominating the charts deserve to be there?
Murdoc: The charts have always been dominated by turdy music for children's parties, that's nothing new. I'm not gonna waste my time getting pissed off about it because the more shit there is about, the better it is for us. But I quite like Kylie.
Is the punk side of the Gorillaz stuff an expression of your current alienation or a memory from difficult teen years?
Murdoc: I reached puberty when I was eight and I lost my virginity to a dinner lady at nine and I've been in a bad mood ever since.
You were caught shoplifting on a number of occasions culminating in the judge describing you as 'truculent, devious and profoundly wicked'. Was that fair?
Murdoc: Absolutely. I am truculent. I am wicked.
Damon from Blur has a restraining order against you after you stalked him, threatened him with a baseball bat, and tried to extort money from him at the height of Britpop. Was that a cry for help?
Murdoc: That story is bullshit. I met Damon for the first time five months ago when Dan (the Automator) got him in to work on some of our tunes. I think I can say we hit it off pretty well.
Russel: He said he thought you were a wanker.
Does the ghost rapper inside Russel have a message from the afterlife from Tupac?
Russel: I want to put a stop to all of this right now. People have been coming to me asking to speak to Tupac, asking to speak to Easy E, and asking to speak to Biggy. I'm not the Doris Stokes of the Hip-Hop world, it's just Del and me.
If you could battle Eminem or the Wu-Tang clan, who'd you choose?
Russel: Dougie Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew, because he and Slick Rick had it going on.
How did you come to write 'M1 A1' and does it relate to your feelings of urban isolation?
Murdoc: I've always been a big Howard Devoto fan and was listening to Magazine while driving up to Stoke to see my Grandma on Christmas day. The motorway was completely empty and it reminded me of Romero's 'Day Of The Dead' so I sort of stuck all that together and came up with 'M1 A1'.
What's the fascination with zombies?
Murdoc: 2D is completely obsessed with them but I did work in the Superdrug in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre for a while. That place is full of zombies.
Russel: What were you doing working in Superdrug?
2D: He thought he could nick loads of prescription drugs. He didn't know they only sold hair mousse and bubble baths.
Tell us about your childhood in Crawley, 2D.
2D: I bunked off school when I was 11 to watch American Werewolf In London, a Fang Face cartoon, and Zombies Dawn Of The Dead on my mate's Betamax. I was so scared that I rode my bike home, crying all the way.
Do you think you're cut out to survive the pressures of fame?
2D: If the pressure gets too much I'm gonna tell everyone to fuck off.
Murdoc (glugging more vodka): Look pal, Hello magazine can come round my gaff any time. I've got me pentagram pinny and I can cook a wicked Toad In The Hole. Kate Moss can be in the pictures. I know she's up for a shag. This band, mostly down to me, are the bollocks of the gods. Who else is there? Oasis? Boring old wank. U2? Tuna fish snoggers! Fred Durst? Fred West more like. And I've seen plumber's arses that are better looking than Five. We are our own independent state. We do not recognize Camden. Official. We do not recognize Oldham. We are virtual crack for the stereo! And the sooner twats like you realize it the better. So can we do the photos now? My arse is ready for its close-up.
A sense of relief descends on the hack as we take the steps down out of Gorillaz HQ. This swiftly turns to panic once it's discovered that Murdoc is driving us to London in his death-trap Astra. The Gorillaz' chauffeur quit last week after discovering Murdoc had disemboweled a taxidermied black cat and strapped it to the limo's fender while parked up outside the Mercury Awards.
So sniffing sulfate off a King Tubby CD, the Dick Dastardly Of Stoke on Trent tears up the A roads north, bawling at birds, head-turning round to yawp at the petrified hack, seemingly guided by one of Beelzebub's secret satellites.
At 89mph, we round a leaf-coated bend and for an instant, just before the car flips over, I'm sure I glimpse Bob Hoskins coming the other way, at the wheel of a 1930s Daimler. Then the peculiarity happens again. Murdoc's Astra bounces off a haystack and lands upside down flattening a chicken coop. The four Gorillaz climb out of the upturned car holding their heads. And, floating above each of them, I can clearly see flickering stars.
The great Nick Kent once said that the art of rock journalism was asking the difficult questions without getting punched. In which case a fist in the face has to be risked. The Gorillaz foursome are entirely unscathed when we finally make it to the Dazed & Confused studio. And Murdoc's booze bottle never seems to be empty. Suspicious, eh? During the long wait, while Rankin tries to impose some photographic depth of field, the hack decides to go for the jugular.
Some people out there are saying Gorillaz are not 4 real, that you are in fact a bit of a cartoon band. Does that upset you?
Murdoc: I'll tell you what upsets me. I was out with 2D last night, at this club standing at the bar, when someone dropped a fag butt in this fucking giffer's beer. The prat swallowed the fag end and puked it up all over the back of my neck. THAT fucking upset me.
George Michael recently complained that British pop was being ruined by manufactured bands. Some people have suggested the Gorillaz are in a way the ultimate boy band, so do you feel you're helping the state of music or just cashing in?
Murdoc: Just because we are drawn, it doesn't mean we are manufactured. There's a big difference.
What did you mean, 2D, in that fanzine interview where you said you were a fully-rounded man who'd just never had a three-dimensional experience?
2D: I think that's a Gerry Anderson quote.
Murdoc: That's Brett Anderson, numb nuts.
Badly Drawn Boy is on record as saying 2D looks like 'one of those model twerps in Dazed & Confused.'
2D: I'm not badly drawn and he looks like a gnome.
Do you ever feel any doubt about how real you are?
2D: You're just trying to be weird.
Isn't it the case, though, that your, erm, unique qualities as a band constitute a kind of privileged status within pop?
2D: My girlfriend Paula says I should make plans for my future. She says they'll only want to frame us for 15 minutes.
Murdoc: Shuttit, you muppet.
Russel: I think you'll find people of our origin are actually
discriminated against. How many US Presidents have been caricatures? Oh alright. Bad example.
Murdoc: You think we have it easy? Try coming through customs with us. I spent a week in a cell last month cause they couldn't work out how to strip-search me. It's all just jealousy cause we're having a better time. Aren't there any Glen Hoddles 'round here? I thought there'd be more classy minge in the area.
The commission had been to hang out with the Gorillaz 'til I felt I knew them inside out. Eight hours was long enough to suspect there was only an outside to deal with. 2D? -A scrambled inaction man. An intermission in a wig. Russel? -A militant schizoid. Noodle? -A backward Haiku. A clockwork rising sun. And Murdoc? -A mangy scavenger on the rubbish mountain of pop. A stinking rotter for sure. Fair enough, the music rocks. But if there was depth behind Gorillaz night-glo facade, I'd done enough wading.
So while 2D's graffiti-ing the studio wall with bunny rabbit shapes and Murdoc's slurring into his mobile, I slip out the frame.
Later that night: a party to celebrate a year of Alan McGee's abominably hip scuzz-rock club. The VIP queue struggles along the Notting Hill pavement, held back by Robbie Williams, who's collapsed at the top of the stairs causing a blockage. Three bouncers are trying to lift him. The VIP couples are jostling. A magnificently tanned Norm'n'Zoe, Kate Moss'n'Puff Daddy in extreme fur. Billie snogging Badly Drawn Boy. Thom York'n' Monica Lewinsky holding hands. Mel C, in leopard skin, with David St Hubbins.
I'm right at the back when a twitching silhouette pushes in front of me.
"Beauty before scum," snickers Murdoc. So I punch him - gently, like - and he falls backward, domino-ing the VIP queue into an avalanche of glitterati thudding down the stairs. When they stagger to their feet, cartoon stars are bobbing above the VIP's heads. Miraculously they seem unscathed. But Murdoc is bleeding and appears to be in pain.
"Sorry mate, didn't think you were for real," I tell him.
"I'm just larger than life pal," spits the bruised bassist. "And getting more real by the column inch."
Face down and besmirched by pickle, the graphically scrawny cypher-singer sleeps on, oblivious to the fact that his fellow Gorilla,
twisted speedfreak bassist Murdoc, has wedged a lighted cigarette in his ear. Weird scenes inside the slag heap, anybody? Welcome to the flatlands at the furthest point of the pop frame.
As the first one allowed into the Gorillaz warren of crash pads'n'studios, I was expecting peculiarity. For months now the Dark Pop Kings have been the subject of scurrilous rumour and tabloid mendacity Are they 4 real? Who's behind them? How does 2D get his hair looking like an acid house balloon? And is the precognitive mesh of their ghetto-ghost punk beatz a vile cardboard cut-out commodification of youth's primal anomie, or cutting-edge cool that pisses all over Coldplay?
All of these questions prong right out the window the moment the hack stumbles in on 2D, Murdoc, Russel, and Noodle. Amongst the chaos of lo-tech gear and bad lifestyle junk cluttering the Gorillaz studio den, a disorientating inner band chemistry bubbles.
Hulk-like American drummer Russel frowns down at his zombied-out frontman. "If 2D chokes on his sandwich, you're going to jail Murdoc," he growls, towering over his scrot-faced bass player.
"Death by saaaandwich, man!" gurgles Murdoc. "Fook off! He attacked me sandwich. That is a Swedish Death Metal Special and his dumb-assed face is trespassing in it."
Russel folds his arms. "Remove him from the snack, Murdoc!" he orders.
"Not piggin' likely," snaps Murdoc. "That is a Sandwich Of Odin. Black Pork'n'pickle! Each pig that went into that butty was individually tattooed with a satanic emblem by Ozzy's tattooist. War Pigs in the area! 'Witches gather at black maaaasses/Bodies burning in red aaaaashes!'"
So Murdoc's singing and air-guitaring and Russell's glaring and 2D's turning blue and suddenly, from the corner of the studio, a dwarf baboon robot with a radio antenna in its head somersaults into Murdoc's arse, butting him across the room. The bassist collides with the sandwich, Murdoc slides in front of 2D and a burning fag drops from the singer's ear onto Murdoc's arse.
"Noodle you friggin' Wasabi bitch, I'm on fire!" Murdoc yells, running to plonk his flaming behind in the studio goldfish tank. The small Japanese girl clutching the baboon's remote control shrugs and opens her Mao jacket to reveal a t-shirt. The slogan reads 'NO PAIN : NO PUBLICITY'.
"Gorillaz!'" yelps Noodle, hugging 2D and wiping pickle off the singer's face.
"Hey guys," mutters a semi-comatose 2D. "What time are we on stage?"
Ten years dragging your typewriter through the gutters of pop and you encounter some strange shit: Trustafarian skate-metal bible-bashers, dick-fixated drum'n'bass DJs, Finnish reggae bands, puking Northern disco clans, Argentinian Nazi midget bands, neanderthals, Godfunk-robots, alienated Sloanes, Martians, wannabe-Martians, gristle, jellyfish, pond life. Nothing, however, compares to Gorillaz.
The story goes that Stoke On Trent-born bassist Murdoc put the band together after encountering the pretty boy singer 2D when he attempted a heist at the organ shop where 2D worked. Murdoc's Vauxhall Astra rams the shop window hitting Crawley kid 2D in the head. Injuries are sustained, community service is handed out and a flickerbook of 'formative' events is set in motion.
US beats envoy Russel turns up in a Soho hip hop shop after leaving behind a trail of spook in New York. A posh boy who got tangled with the downtown brothers, he allegedly ingested the spirits of a rapper when he was the only survivor from a drive-by shooting. A ghost rapper named Del now lives inside Russel. As for the Japanese guitarist, Noodle, she came by mail order. In a crate, apparently.
The globally correct, haunted dancehall dub punk profile sounds suspiciously hipper-than-thou. The tale of double-denting eyeball fractures, transatlantic out-of-body wassups! and ten-year-old Manga-Metal girl axe heroines have the ring of hype. Or at least that's what it sounded like until the taxi swung off the road in the gloomy flatlands of South Essex and I took the climb up the slagway to their haven, feeling somehow more animated with every step.
Weird Scenes Inside The Slag Heap: Part 2.
As his hair sleeps on, 2D shakes himself half-awake. "Fing, is right, I'm up for it," mumbles the front man. "Rock'n'roll is like space, right? It's infinite, innit, so you can like, be whatever. And I am whatever. Whatever is my father and my muvver. And my nan. You just gotta let it out. Forever, and whatever, amen."
"Yeah thanks, pal," sneers Murdoc. "Want some diazepam to help you think more clearly? Mind like an unfurnished black hole that kid. You're not going to write any of that dribble down are you mate? Owzabout we listen to our album now."
Creative chemistry is vital for a great band. Chemical warfare is more the Gorillaz style. We have convened for a playback of the band's debut album, but first Murdoc decides to get a "vibe" going. The warty bassist wheels out his customized "voodoo decks", balanced on a drinks trolley festooned with Day Of The Dead dolls and plastic skulls. Noodle pulls down her radio hat and turns up the volume. For the next half an hour the rest of us are forced to listen to Sabbath's "Paranoid" three times, plus an entire Deicide album while Murdoc makes the devil sign, shouts "Tune!" and swigs from a bottle of black vodka..
"Alright my friend, I am not feeling these compositions," declares Russel. The drummer stomps to the decks, and removes the offending vinyl, gouging a deep scratch into the surface. "Oh, I'm sorry Murdoc. Guess that's slightly unplayable now. "
"Oi! MC Grandmaster Twat!" yelps Murdoc. "Scratch one more of my tunes and I'll hex the entire Nation Of Islam."
"Yeah Murdoc, I'm really scared for my peeps," growls Russell. "You were the one who spent a week listening for satanic messages in the Gary Crowley Show 'til I pointed out it was Aleister Crowley. Shall we listen to some shit that's tight, as the niggas demographic say back home?"
"You the maaaan, Russel," sneers Murdoc. "You an' that waste-of-ink singer are the men the A&R man fookin' fell for anyway..."
Take a million four-piece combos composed of a black arts-obsessed Svengali bassist, a downers addict voidoid singer, a hip hop hard man drummer, and a Tamagotchi rock chick guitarist, and 999, 999 times you'd get Skunk Anansie at the wrong speed. Gorillaz debut is the one-in-a-million exception.
A seminal summation; an eclectic revelation; a sensi'n'bongo riffed simultaneous requiem and eulogy for pop. No, really. 'Slow Country' floats it. "Tomorrow Comes Today" ouija-raggas out. "M1 A1" roadrunner flatfloors for the central reservation of retro-nihilism. Oh, indeed. Dubbed, echoic, clangorous, and zombie-rocking it draws a line from Crawley to Kingston via New York'n' Cuba and tightrope-walks the distance doing the punky reggae pogo.
As the old-school trumpet-ska jig "Rock The House" fades away, the four Gorillaz shift in their seats. This is where they're supposed to talk to the journo, except Noodle is busy folding 2D into a yoga knot, Russell has his nose in a book called Jewels For Fools: How The CIA Got Rappers Wearing South African Mined Diamonds, and Murdoc is defacing a Britney Spears fan mag with upside down crucifixes and penis shapes. Eventually, however, the three talking members (Noodle's Japanese interpreter was suffering from shopping exhaustion) deign to speak.
Given the mad eclecticism of the band do you think the public are going to understand Gorillaz?
Murdoc: If the music works that's all that counts, and I don't like to think of people as stupid.
2D: You're always calling me stupid.
Murdoc: That's different. You are stupid.
Who do you regard as the competition?
Murdoc: There aren't any other bands like us so were not in competition with anybody.
What's the chemistry between you and 2D?
Murdoc: I saved his life so he owes me his soul. I write all the tunes and he gets all the press attention.
It's been suggested that a lot of the attention Gorillaz have had so far is cause 2D looks so cool, is that something you're happy for the band to exploit?
Murdoc: I could see right from the start that his sticky-up hair would go down well with 13-year-old girls. I'm happy to exploit that to a point, (aside) but I wouldn't let him do any interviews by himself.
Does it upset you that 2D gets so much of the attention, particularly from girls?
Murdoc: Like I said, he may get attention from 13-year-olds but I think we all know who the ladies like.
Do you think the Britneys and Christinas and Kylies currently dominating the charts deserve to be there?
Murdoc: The charts have always been dominated by turdy music for children's parties, that's nothing new. I'm not gonna waste my time getting pissed off about it because the more shit there is about, the better it is for us. But I quite like Kylie.
Is the punk side of the Gorillaz stuff an expression of your current alienation or a memory from difficult teen years?
Murdoc: I reached puberty when I was eight and I lost my virginity to a dinner lady at nine and I've been in a bad mood ever since.
You were caught shoplifting on a number of occasions culminating in the judge describing you as 'truculent, devious and profoundly wicked'. Was that fair?
Murdoc: Absolutely. I am truculent. I am wicked.
Damon from Blur has a restraining order against you after you stalked him, threatened him with a baseball bat, and tried to extort money from him at the height of Britpop. Was that a cry for help?
Murdoc: That story is bullshit. I met Damon for the first time five months ago when Dan (the Automator) got him in to work on some of our tunes. I think I can say we hit it off pretty well.
Russel: He said he thought you were a wanker.
Does the ghost rapper inside Russel have a message from the afterlife from Tupac?
Russel: I want to put a stop to all of this right now. People have been coming to me asking to speak to Tupac, asking to speak to Easy E, and asking to speak to Biggy. I'm not the Doris Stokes of the Hip-Hop world, it's just Del and me.
If you could battle Eminem or the Wu-Tang clan, who'd you choose?
Russel: Dougie Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew, because he and Slick Rick had it going on.
How did you come to write 'M1 A1' and does it relate to your feelings of urban isolation?
Murdoc: I've always been a big Howard Devoto fan and was listening to Magazine while driving up to Stoke to see my Grandma on Christmas day. The motorway was completely empty and it reminded me of Romero's 'Day Of The Dead' so I sort of stuck all that together and came up with 'M1 A1'.
What's the fascination with zombies?
Murdoc: 2D is completely obsessed with them but I did work in the Superdrug in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre for a while. That place is full of zombies.
Russel: What were you doing working in Superdrug?
2D: He thought he could nick loads of prescription drugs. He didn't know they only sold hair mousse and bubble baths.
Tell us about your childhood in Crawley, 2D.
2D: I bunked off school when I was 11 to watch American Werewolf In London, a Fang Face cartoon, and Zombies Dawn Of The Dead on my mate's Betamax. I was so scared that I rode my bike home, crying all the way.
Do you think you're cut out to survive the pressures of fame?
2D: If the pressure gets too much I'm gonna tell everyone to fuck off.
Murdoc (glugging more vodka): Look pal, Hello magazine can come round my gaff any time. I've got me pentagram pinny and I can cook a wicked Toad In The Hole. Kate Moss can be in the pictures. I know she's up for a shag. This band, mostly down to me, are the bollocks of the gods. Who else is there? Oasis? Boring old wank. U2? Tuna fish snoggers! Fred Durst? Fred West more like. And I've seen plumber's arses that are better looking than Five. We are our own independent state. We do not recognize Camden. Official. We do not recognize Oldham. We are virtual crack for the stereo! And the sooner twats like you realize it the better. So can we do the photos now? My arse is ready for its close-up.
A sense of relief descends on the hack as we take the steps down out of Gorillaz HQ. This swiftly turns to panic once it's discovered that Murdoc is driving us to London in his death-trap Astra. The Gorillaz' chauffeur quit last week after discovering Murdoc had disemboweled a taxidermied black cat and strapped it to the limo's fender while parked up outside the Mercury Awards.
So sniffing sulfate off a King Tubby CD, the Dick Dastardly Of Stoke on Trent tears up the A roads north, bawling at birds, head-turning round to yawp at the petrified hack, seemingly guided by one of Beelzebub's secret satellites.
At 89mph, we round a leaf-coated bend and for an instant, just before the car flips over, I'm sure I glimpse Bob Hoskins coming the other way, at the wheel of a 1930s Daimler. Then the peculiarity happens again. Murdoc's Astra bounces off a haystack and lands upside down flattening a chicken coop. The four Gorillaz climb out of the upturned car holding their heads. And, floating above each of them, I can clearly see flickering stars.
The great Nick Kent once said that the art of rock journalism was asking the difficult questions without getting punched. In which case a fist in the face has to be risked. The Gorillaz foursome are entirely unscathed when we finally make it to the Dazed & Confused studio. And Murdoc's booze bottle never seems to be empty. Suspicious, eh? During the long wait, while Rankin tries to impose some photographic depth of field, the hack decides to go for the jugular.
Some people out there are saying Gorillaz are not 4 real, that you are in fact a bit of a cartoon band. Does that upset you?
Murdoc: I'll tell you what upsets me. I was out with 2D last night, at this club standing at the bar, when someone dropped a fag butt in this fucking giffer's beer. The prat swallowed the fag end and puked it up all over the back of my neck. THAT fucking upset me.
George Michael recently complained that British pop was being ruined by manufactured bands. Some people have suggested the Gorillaz are in a way the ultimate boy band, so do you feel you're helping the state of music or just cashing in?
Murdoc: Just because we are drawn, it doesn't mean we are manufactured. There's a big difference.
What did you mean, 2D, in that fanzine interview where you said you were a fully-rounded man who'd just never had a three-dimensional experience?
2D: I think that's a Gerry Anderson quote.
Murdoc: That's Brett Anderson, numb nuts.
Badly Drawn Boy is on record as saying 2D looks like 'one of those model twerps in Dazed & Confused.'
2D: I'm not badly drawn and he looks like a gnome.
Do you ever feel any doubt about how real you are?
2D: You're just trying to be weird.
Isn't it the case, though, that your, erm, unique qualities as a band constitute a kind of privileged status within pop?
2D: My girlfriend Paula says I should make plans for my future. She says they'll only want to frame us for 15 minutes.
Murdoc: Shuttit, you muppet.
Russel: I think you'll find people of our origin are actually
discriminated against. How many US Presidents have been caricatures? Oh alright. Bad example.
Murdoc: You think we have it easy? Try coming through customs with us. I spent a week in a cell last month cause they couldn't work out how to strip-search me. It's all just jealousy cause we're having a better time. Aren't there any Glen Hoddles 'round here? I thought there'd be more classy minge in the area.
The commission had been to hang out with the Gorillaz 'til I felt I knew them inside out. Eight hours was long enough to suspect there was only an outside to deal with. 2D? -A scrambled inaction man. An intermission in a wig. Russel? -A militant schizoid. Noodle? -A backward Haiku. A clockwork rising sun. And Murdoc? -A mangy scavenger on the rubbish mountain of pop. A stinking rotter for sure. Fair enough, the music rocks. But if there was depth behind Gorillaz night-glo facade, I'd done enough wading.
So while 2D's graffiti-ing the studio wall with bunny rabbit shapes and Murdoc's slurring into his mobile, I slip out the frame.
Later that night: a party to celebrate a year of Alan McGee's abominably hip scuzz-rock club. The VIP queue struggles along the Notting Hill pavement, held back by Robbie Williams, who's collapsed at the top of the stairs causing a blockage. Three bouncers are trying to lift him. The VIP couples are jostling. A magnificently tanned Norm'n'Zoe, Kate Moss'n'Puff Daddy in extreme fur. Billie snogging Badly Drawn Boy. Thom York'n' Monica Lewinsky holding hands. Mel C, in leopard skin, with David St Hubbins.
I'm right at the back when a twitching silhouette pushes in front of me.
"Beauty before scum," snickers Murdoc. So I punch him - gently, like - and he falls backward, domino-ing the VIP queue into an avalanche of glitterati thudding down the stairs. When they stagger to their feet, cartoon stars are bobbing above the VIP's heads. Miraculously they seem unscathed. But Murdoc is bleeding and appears to be in pain.
"Sorry mate, didn't think you were for real," I tell him.
"I'm just larger than life pal," spits the bruised bassist. "And getting more real by the column inch."