CelebritiesEdition 6 January 2011

Their HistoryGorillaz, Damon Albarn%% and Jamie Hewlett

four pa

Ges with

exclus

ive pho

tos!

successHow did they succeed?

The BandHow and when was the band formed?

Live!The bands live performances

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Table of Contents

01 HistoryPaGe 3-4 Gorillaz

PaGe 5-6 Damon Albarn

PaGe 7-8 Jamie Hewlett

02 Exclusive PhotosPaGe 9-10 Gorillaz Wallpapers

PaGe 11-12 Band Members Photos

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03 Important factsPaGe 13-14 Live Performance

PaGe 15 BackGround Information

“Gorillaz is a musical project created in 1998 by British musician Damon Albarn and British cartoonist Jamie Hewlett.”

This project consists of the Gorillaz music itself and an extensive fictional universe depicting a “virtual band” of cartoon

characters. This band is composed of four ani-mated members: 2D (lead vocalist, keyboard), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar), Noodle (guitar, keyboard, and occasional vocals) and Russel Hobbs (drums and percussion). Their fictional universe is explored through the band’s web-site and music videos, as well as a number of other media. The music is a collaboration be-tween various musicians, Albarn being the only permanent musical contributor. Their style is a composition of multiple musical genres, with a large number of influences including: dub, hip hop, alternative rock, electronic and pop music.The band’s 2001 debut album Gorillaz sold

Gorillazover seven million copies and earned them an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Successful Virtual Band. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize 2001, but the nomination was later withdrawn at the band’s request. Their second studio album, Demon Days, released in 2005, went five times plati-num in the UK, double platinum in the United States, earned five Grammy Award nominations for 2006 and won one of them in the Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals category. Gorillaz have also released two B-sides compilations and a remix album. The combined sales of Go-rillaz and Demon Days had, by 2007, exceeded 20 million albums. The band’s third studio album, Plastic Beach, was released in 2010. Their newest album, The Fall, was released on 25 December 2010.

Early years (1998-(1999%Gorillaz co-creator Damon Albarn, 2010

Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett created Go-

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rillaz in 1998 when they were living together in a flat on Westbourne Grove. The idea to cre-ate the band came about when the two were watching MTV, “if you watch MTV for too long, it’s a bit like hell – there’s nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a cartoon band, something that would be a comment on that,” Hewlett said. The band originally identified themselves as “Gorilla”, and the first song they recorded was “Ghost Train”, later released as a B-side on their single “Rock the House” and the B-side compilation G Sides. The trio of mu-sicians behind Gorillaz’ first incarnation includ-ed Damon Albarn, Del the Funkee Homosapien and Dan the Automator, who had previously worked together on the track “Time Keeps on Slipping” for Deltron 3030’s eponymous debut album. The song can be seen as the genesis of the musical style that

Phase One: Celebrity Take-dOwn (2000-(2003(

The band%s first release was Tomorrow comes Today EP, released in 2000.

The band’s first single, “Clint Eastwood”, was released on 5 March 2001. Later that same month, their first full-length album, the self-titled Gorillaz, was released, producing four singles: “Clint Eastwood”, “19-2000”, “Tomor-row Comes Today”, and “Rock the House”. “19-2000 (Soulchild Remix)” became popular after being featured in both an Ice Break-ers commercial, as well as in EA Sports’ FIFA Football 2002. Around this time, a half-hour TV mockumentary entitled Charts of Dark-ness was released. It follows Channel 4 news reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy attempting to track down Albarn and Hewlett after they were placed in an insane asylum.

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Damon Albarn“Damon Albarn, born 23 March 1968, is an English singer-songwriter and record producer who has been in-volved in many high profile projects and collaborations throughout his career.”

He is perhaps best known internationally for his current role as the frontman and song-writer of Gorillaz, whose first two studio al-bums had sold more than 20 million copies combined by 2007 and as the frontman and primary songwriter of Britpop band Blur, and has also helmed such lesser-known projects as The Good, the Bad & the Queen, Monkey: Journey to the West and Mali Music. Albarn was voted the 4th greatest frontman of all time in a national 2010 Q magazine poll.

Albarn was born in Whitechapel, London in 1968, and grew up with his bohemian middle-class family in Leytonstone, later moving to Colchester, Essex. He attended the George

Tomlinson Primary School, and studied piano, guitar, and violin, and became friends with Graham Coxon when he was aged 12, both being students at the Stanway Comprehensive School at the time. At 15, he won the regional heat in the Young Composer of the Year con-test. He studied acting at the East 15 Acting School in Debden, leaving after the first year. On leaving drama school he performed as a mime artist, and worked as a tea boy at the Beat Factory studio. He then attended a part-time music course at Goldsmiths, University of London in London. His first band was the synth pop group Two’s a Crowd. Other pre-Blur bands that he was involved with were The Aftermath and Real Lives. His father Keith Albarn was, for a time, the manager of Soft Machine and presenter of the BBC’s Late Night Line-Up, and also the head of North Essex College of Art, which was combined with other East London colleges to form the North East London Poly-technic which exists today as the University of East London. His mother Hazel, was a theatri-cal set designer.

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The start

Albarn, the son of an author/art professor and a theatrical stage designer, met guitarist Graham Coxon, a self-taught musician whose father played in an army band, in school in Colchester in 1980. The pair collaborated on some demos before heading off to dif-ferent art colleges - Albarn to study acting, Coxon to pursue art. They met up again at a party on behalf of Albarn’s band Circus, which featured drummer Dave Rowntree, a classi-cally trained percussionist. Coxon introduced Albarn to his school friend Alex James, and when Circus folded, the four began recording demos and performing club gigs in late 1989 under the name Seymour (after the Swell Maps song ‘Read About Seymour’). EMI-distributed Food Records signed them in 1990, whereupon they changed their name to Blur and debuted with the Top 50 British single “She’s So High”. “There’s No Other Way” fared even better, and Leisure, released a year later, went to #7 on

the U.K. album chart. The follow-up, Modern Life is Rubbish, peaked at #17,

BritpOp years

In 1994’s chart-topping Parklife, featuring the hit “Girls & Boys”, cemented Blur as British superstars and won the band four BRIT Awards, including Best Group and Best Album. By the time Blur released 1995’s The Great Escape, it was locked in a battle of the bands with a new contender to the Brit-pop throne, working-class heroes Oasis. The U.K. press made front-page news out of each band’s bid for #1 with their new singles, and Blur’s “Country House]” beat out Oasis’ “Roll With It” by a narrow margin. It was the #1 Oasis album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, however, that won in the end, earning the Manchester band bragging rights as the biggest new band in the U.K. and significant stateside success, while The Great Escape stalled on the U.S. chart at #150.

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“Jamie Christopher Hewlett (born 3 April 1968) is an English comic book artist and designer. He is known for being the co-creator of the comic Tank Girl and co-creator of the vir-tual band Gorillaz.”

Raised in Horsham, West Sussex, Jamie Hewlett was a pupil at Tanbridge House School, the local mixed comprehensive. His ar-tistic skill showed up early on – he contributed to the art work to a road safety campaign that ended up runner-up in a national television competition. Also, he worked part-time stack-ing shelves on the weekend at the local Payless DIY store.

While studying at Northbrook College, Wor-thing, Hewlett, Alan Martin and fellow stu-dent Philip Bond had created a fanzine called Atomtan. This brought him to the attention of Brett Ewins. After leaving college Hewlett and Martin were invited by Ewins to create mate-rial for a new magazine he was setting up with Steve Dillon in 1988.

The magazine was called Deadline and fea-tured a mixture of comic strips produced by British creators, and articles on music and cul-ture. Martin and Hewlett created Tank Girl, an anarchic strip about a teenage punk girl who drove a tank and had a mutant kangaroo for a boyfriend. The strip proved instantly popular and quickly became the most talked about part of Deadline. Hewlett’s quirky style (he was a fan of Brendan McCarthy) proved popular and he started to work with bands such as Sense-less Things and Cud providing covers for record releases; he also contributed artwork sporadi-cally to Commodore User magazine.

He also designed decor for a nightclub called The Factory in Worthing. The decor featured red and green stripes, a wall of blown-up pan-els from Tank Girl set against 1970s wallpaper, a Ford Escort hung from the ceiling and toilets pasted with pages from old comic book annu-als. The Factory has since been refurbished

Damon Albarnand renamed.

By 1992, Hewlett had become a major creator in the comics industry, and one of the few to break into mainstream media. He had worked with writer Peter Milligan on Hewligan’s Hair-cut in 2000 AD issues 700 to 707. The series was later compiled into a trade paperback. He was also involved in providing covers and art for Shade, the Changing Man, also written by Milligan for DC Comics.

Tank Girl was also optioned to be made into a film by MGM after being considered by among others, Steven Spielberg. The film was re-leased in 1995 and featured Lori Petty as Tank Girl. It was a commercial and critical failure and was criticised by fans who said it failed to capture the essence of the original strip. Hewlett had very little involvement with the film, where he did the animation sequences. Hewlett has expressed his disdain of the adap-tation since its release.[citation needed]

He also drew a Tank Girl mini-series for the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics written by Peter Milligan, as well as helping adapt the film for Vertigo. He also opened a secondhand clothing store, 49. The shop, at 49 Rowlands Road, Wor-thing, was managed by girlfriend Jane Olliver, originally a member of Elastica, but this was a short-lived venture and closed within a year.

Hewlett was still involved with British bands of the mid 1990s, including illustrating a comic strip version of Pulp’s song “Common People”.

In 1999, Hewlett Did the album artwork for the band Mindless Self Indulgence second CD Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy.

Deadline was eventually cancelled in 1996 due to falling sales in a changed market and Hewlett concentrated on working in advertis-ing and designs for television, most notably the children’s series SMTV Live featuring Ant and Dec. He also created the strip ‘Get The Freebies’ published monthly in British fashion magazine The Face. The stories, all set in Lon-

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don, followed the exploits of Terry Phoo, a gay, Buddhist kung-fu law enforcement officer and his side kick Whitey Action an enigmatic young anarchist with a bad attitude as they tackle their primary adversaries The Freebies Gang of the title. The dynamic between the two heroes was much like that of Tank Girl and her mutant Kangaroo boyfriend Booga, with the episodes from the female protagonist’s point of view. The strip’s primary function was for Jamie to vent his spleen against the media idols and trends of the day, the story often taking sec-ond place to the jokes. The strip ran for one year, the second series was cancelled due to a change of editorial staff at the publication.

At this time, he had moved into a flat with Blur’s Damon Albarn after Hewlett split with Olliver and it was while sharing a flat that the pair came up with the idea of Gorillaz, one of the world’s first virtual bands. Albarn would work upon the music, while Hewlett would come up with character designs, and both came up with ideas for the members of the band. The first Gorillaz single was released in 2000 followed by the first album, Gorillaz in 2001. In 2005, their second full studio album, Demon Days was released. Both albums were popular successes. The band also performed ‘live’ several times in 2005, including a per-formance at the 2005 MTV European Music Awards, a performance in the Manchester Opera House and a similar one in the Apollo

Theater in New York. The band plan a world tour which will feature Hewlett’s designs. A feature film was proposed but never made.

In 2004, he was commissioned by Eastpak to design a limited edition range under his Zom-bie Flesh Eaters brand.

Gorillaz remains Hewlett’s main project for the foreseeable future. When asked if he would return to comics by Jonathan Ross on an edition of Ross’s chatshow on 25 Novem-ber 2005, Hewlett said no, but he had several ideas which he may do one day.

Tank Girl though has returned (with Hewlett’s blessing) to print under the stewardship of co-creator Alan Martin and artist Rufus Dayglo. The new series are ongoing, and very much in the spirit of the original Deadline run.

In January 2006, Hewlett’s artwork for Gorillaz was shortlisted for the Design Museum’s ‘De-signer of the Year’ award. In May 2006, Jamie Hewlett was named the Designer of the Year 2006.

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“Between 1 November and 5 Novem-ber 2005, there was a Gorillaz festi-val at the Manchester Opera House.”

The event was filmed by an EMI film crew for a DVD release, Demon Days Live, in late March 2006. It was later announced that an American version of the event would take place from 2 April to 6 April 2006 at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem. Within an hour of release tickets were sold out. The 6 April show was filmed for a live webcast at MSN Video. Pal-ladia (then known as MHD) also broadcasted an Apollo Theater show in HDTV on 31 December 2006.

At the 2006 Grammy Awards, held on 8 Febru-ary 2006, Gorillaz opened the show using the same technique sharing the stage with Ma-donna. Their performance was a mash-up of

Live Performancethe Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” and Madonna’s “Hung Up”. A week later, on 15 February 2006, Gorillaz performed their song “Dirty Harry” at the 2006 BRIT Awards, with Bootie Brown and the Children’s Choir San Fernandez. This concert had giant versions of the video clips on large screens, with Bootie Brown and the Children’s Choir San Fernandez to either side of the screens. A similar, but not completely identical, version of this performance was shown on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and the video was projected at the 2006 Designer of the Year Award exhibition, which Jamie Hewlett later won.

A world tour was planned using the hologram technology described above. However, due to extreme costs and fine technical difficulties, the tour was cancelled. Gorillaz headlined the final night of the Coachella music festival on 18 April 2010, performing to one of the larg-

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est crowds in Coachella history of over 70,000 people strong. On 27 April they were the main guests on Later... with Jools Holland (aired on 30 April). In addition, Gorillaz played a short run of intimate UK rehearsal gigs exclusively for G-Club members, before taking up a two-night residency at London’s Camden Round-house (29 and 30 April 2010). Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of The Clash performed guitar and bass respectively with the band and more than once in the evening chords from the Clash song “Guns of Brixton” were heard as a subtle reference to their presence. These will both feature the full Gorillaz production, includ-ing video animation, artwork and film. On 22 March they were announced for Roskilde Fes-tival. On 22 April, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett appeared on The Colbert Report for an interview as the Gorillaz. They performed “Stylo” without animation of the members with special guests including Bobby Womack, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, and with a back-drop featuring the animated music video.

Gorillaz took the Friday night Pyramid stage slot at the Glastonbury Festival on 25 June 2010, U2 having been forced to pull out. Da-mon Albarn became the first performer to headline Glastonbury two years in succession. Guest singers included De La Soul, Bobby Wom-ack, Mark E Smith, Shaun Ryder, Snoop Dogg and a special appearance by Lou Reed.

Gorillaz kicked off their first ever world tour on 20 July at Byblos, Lebanon. The tour will then take them across America in October, Europe in November, and finally through Aus-tralia, New Zealand, and one date in Asia in December.

In 25 July 2010, Gorillaz performed a concert at the Citadel of Damascus in Syria.

The Escape to Plastic Beach World Tour of-ficially kicked off in Montreal, Canada on 3 October to rave reviews.

During the Gorillaz show at Vector Arena in Auckland, New Zealand on 21 December, 2010, Damon Albarn announced that it would be their final live show with the Plastic Beach line up.

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Origin: Essex, EnglandGenres: Alternative hip-hopYears active: 1998–presentLabels: Parlophone, Virgin, EMIAssociated acts: Blur, The Good, the Bad & the QueenWebsite: gorillaz.com

studiO albums

Gorillaz (2001) Demon Days (2005) Plastic Beach (2010)

FiCtiOnal band members

Stuart “2D” Pot – Lead vocals, keyboards, rhythm guitar (1998–present) Murdoc Niccals – Bass guitar (1998–present) Noodle – Lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (2000–2006, 2010–present) Russel Hobbs – Drums, percussion, DJ, MC (active 1998–2006) Cyborg Noodle – Lead guitar (2010–present)

FOrmer Members

Paula Cracker – Lead guitar (1998–2000) Del the Ghost Rapper – Guest vocals (2001–2003)

ACtual members

In the half-hour TV mockumentary Charts of Darkness, it was explicitly stated that Da-mon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett were behind the project. Albarn said “There could be fifty [people] here, but there’s two.” The first album featured the voice of Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto as Noodle, most notably on the song “19-2000”, and Tina Weymouth of Talk-ing Heads. Phil Cornwell provides the voice of Murdoc. The band’s music videos (with the exception of “Rock It” and “Tomorrow Comes Today”) are created by Passion Pictures. The live band’s current lineup includes half of The Clash (Mick Jones and Paul Simonon).

Background Information Damon Albarn – Vocals, keyboards, guitar, bass guitar (1998–present) Jamie Hewlett – Illustration, visuals, FX (1998–present) Mike Smith – keyboards (1998 – present) Cass Browne – Drums, percussion (1998 – present)

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