Damon Albarn

(upbeat music) Hello, welcome to Changes. My name is Annie McManus. (upbeat music) I'm so happy to tell you that our guest on this week's episode is the musical Chameleon, an utter legend that is Damon Albon. Way back in the mid '90s, I was a huge, huge blur fan. It was the first time I ever kind of felt part of something in the way that being a music fan can provide, you know, that tribal aspect, us against the world. I really felt seen and heard by blurs, songs and albums. I came to modern life as rubbish first, then went back to leisure retrospectively. And then when Park Live came around in 1994, that was it. That was the kind of pinnacle. It was like, oh my god, this is so exciting. Definitely, maybe by Oasis got released in the same year, and an era was defined. Brit pop was the term, blur became synonymous with the '90s. Of course, so much has happened since then. Blur released HDDO albums in awe. Then Damon went on to co-found Gorillas with Jamie Hewlett and sold over 25 million records with them worldwide, still releasing records under the Gorillas' guise. Damon, between Blur and Gorillas, has won a huge number of awards, including a Grammy and six Brit Awards. He's a prolific collaborator as well, forming various bands like The Good, The Bad and The Queen with Paul Simmonon of The Clash, Simon Tongue of The Verve and Tony Allen of Failor Cooties Band. He also had a band called Rocket Juice in the Moon, again with Tony Allen and Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers. He's worked with the Strokes, Bobby Womack, Taylor Soul, so many more. He's created film scores, composed and opera. He's also channeled a lot of his activism through music. He's one of the people behind the Africa Express movement, which is a platform for exchanges between African and Western musicians. It was kind of born off the back of his disgust at the Live 8 movement, not really showing or including any musicians from Africa. And for years, Damon has encouraged plane loads of prominent pop stars and producers from the UK and beyond. To go to Mali and collaborate with local musicians on the ground there. Damon is 53 now with a grown-up daughter and spends his time between London and Devon and Iceland, where he's just received Icelandic citizenship. And he is as busy as ever. His latest solo album, The Near the Fountain, More Pure, The Stream Flows, has had wave reviews and is out now. He's going to be touring it at the end of February. We met at Damon's studio in West London. I cycled down one morning before Christmas and he was a little late. So I got led up to his studio and I sat there and I had some time to take it all in. It's kind of room on the top floor of a building. It's all black with bookshelves over the whole of One More. And lots of beautiful old synths and guitars and art looking instruments. And outside one window, there were skyscrapers with a train track underneath and outside the other window was the road. So you will hear the sounds of a train trundling by every now and again. And we had the most wonderful conversation. I really hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoy it being part of it. I started off the conversation by asking Damon what he was like as a teenager. I mean, shy, very competitive, insecurity and competitiveness or kind of, there were rare elixir for a teenager. So I probably came across sometimes as a bit difficult and odd. But you kind of need that sort of weirdness to stand out and to push yourself. And force yourself, yeah. And then it's, you know, because I used to get bullied of school a lot. Partly, well, my parents never had any sympathy for me ever. In being bullied. Wow. Never. Let's just say it's your fault. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a parent now, how do you compute that? I know. It's interesting. It was a very different world. You know, you said, you bring it on yourself. It was very good for me. I'm really glad that they were like that in a sense. You know, at times I remember being, there was some, you know, it just wasn't fair, that they wouldn't, I wasn't afforded that kind of sympathy. But it wasn't like that they were colder, I mean, not at all, but just in that context. They were like, what did you do to get hit? OK. And what did you do? Nothing really, nothing really. I mean, I just, you see, probably me, there's some. I had been a very ordinary, standard East End, dungeon kid, up until the age of 10. I'd gone to a very multicultural school in late and so. I didn't stand out at all. I was just one of, one of many. And I lived in a small terrace house. Jamaican family on one side and a Pakistani family on the other side. And then in 1976, that summer when everyone in the East End came out and went to the Onster flats, Epping Forest and had picnics. And London got to know itself of that summer. It was amazing. Yeah, well, tell me the context. '76 was we had nearly three months of uninterrupted blistering heat. Oh, right. It was a nice, incredible summer ever. Yeah. I mean, now it would be viewed as something terrible. But then it was, of course, for great happiness. So you want to be in what, eight? Yes, I was eight. Then I went to Turkey while I was there, because I didn't go with my parents, I was a friend of my parents, and traveled all the way around Turkey. And it became quite fair, or really, to be honest with you. Started to pick up Turkish. And when I got back, my parents had moved with my younger sister to rural Essex, which in itself was wonderful. They'd managed to sell a really small terrace house for like 14,000 pounds, I think. And then they bought a dilapidated medieval bakery in a little village, which had to be completely renovated. But that became their project for the next 10 years. But I was cast into a completely white, quite conservative society. And I didn't fit in at all. I think one of the idiotic things I did on my first day, at primary school, I ate a ladybird. Start with me. And that was 18. He's weird. He eats ladybirds. It's so good. It's so good, though. It's true. It's so brilliant. It's you just going in there being like, OK? Yeah, look at this. Hey, guys, what's this? This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to eat a fucking ladybird, and this is who I am. So deal with it. Anyway, and then it was like a golem. I crazy my own golem and everything. Everything that followed that was like when I started playing the violin, and that added to the ice. He eats ladybirds, and he plays violin. Food, sometimes I bring it in my sandwiches. It's got weird food. I mean, I never forget the day that there was a serene kid who came to the school, like the only person of color in the school. I remember in his lunch box, he had halloumi and olives. He said, these are my things. These are things I eat. We've got to be friends. Finally, we can relate. Of course, I'm not going to relate. And yeah, and then just went on and on like that. And then yeah, I was in school productions. I didn't like that. I did the boyfriend. I was a lovely war. Western story, guys and dogs. And then what happened? What was the thing that brought the camera back as far as everyone just really just like me? Oh yeah, it's like going out with the head girl who's two years older than me when I was 16. They read that. They didn't like that. That was it. It was like, he even does that. He does all of that. He still gets the head going. Yeah, oh, and there was another, there was another crucial moment where I went down to crucial only in my, my little life. But we are two, I've got a mic in front of me, so I suppose. I remember I went down and got my ear pierced in Canopy Street. And I came back to school and went to my form room. And when the teacher left, all these lads got me against the wall and started ruffing out and then ripped my earing out of my ear. Wasn't anything unusual. This has sort of been people didn't it didn't they you know there was a lot of you know Your gate. I had a lot of that as well But like two or three weeks later. They all had earrings so All of this bullying one of my point is all of this bullying and kind of sort of outside in this was Was and with my parents not in not indulging me with any our poor day. Yeah, I actually turned into a very positive energy. Yeah You And I suppose I suppose I had a kind of it was I get it all came back to me part of my Digmonds when when no all and Liam tried to cast me as public schoolboy Was based on Only knew what the shitty school I went to and get anywhere near of anything private Do you ever want to not say that at the time? I mean, it's no point. Listen. You've been around long enough to realize once dies a cast you can't you know I say Still a perception of me is I went I went to private school. Can I ask about your mom and dad So they moved you to the country that was obviously like a huge change for you. How was it for that? Do you think they did they like it? Yeah, well my dad continued to work at a North East London Polytechnic for a while I've only ended up working in Cultista, but my mom loved it my mom a grown up in the country. So I was really beautiful. I mean in that sense it was You know, I just transformed from being a proper urban kid into this sort of blissfully As in my own world, I had a river at the end of the garden fishing Successful Onophology Just to collect things They even had a little Museum which occasionally I'd open up to the public hoping anyone ever came I wouldn't mind having a little museum. I was a mess with detectorist as well. Where are you? Yeah, yeah, my son wants one for Christmas. Oh I mean now I could afford a really really really Fuck off mess with detector. You know the one I got one I could find a Saxon Horde with No, I go do some mudlark and down on the Thames Yeah, I did used to do that So fast forward then to you becoming enormously famous having the context of you as a kid there You were competitive so there's an ambition I suppose to be successful, but where you've appeared for the level of exposure that came Well, it's never what you think it's gonna be I didn't come Too quickly either it was with our third record, you know, so quite a lot of work And I've done a lot of touring in America a lot of really unsuccessful touring as well, you know at one point Our first manager left us, but he also left as bankrupt unfortunate, but Not the first or be the last person that managed just done that soon. So we had to do this ridiculous tour Because someone gave us a merchandising Deal just as a t-shirts, but back in those days that was that was kind of the way you made money. Yeah early on But it required us doing like 60 dates or something ridiculous like that and We know when you we were in America, so we were just I mean it was just a pure numbers game horrible But I suppose what came out of that was this thing this energy this sort of brought back this kind of huge fear of America and turning into Montenegro is rubbish and then part-life Which people always seem to think that those records were a celebration of Britishness not at all Completely was just a satire it was like a sort of it was a sort of dystopian kind of vision of the future You know what we would become and you know a lot of it has actually come to pass I In color preparation for this interview it's been marked because it's afforded me to look back at me as a teenager And this fucking crazy obsessive blurr fan and trying to dissociate my like obsession with blurr With me sitting here now talking to you. Yeah, and like it always felt looking at you then that there was a kind of You were entertained by the whole thing, but you could take your divit if you know Like as opposed to everyone else you were kind of like this is this is fun for the moment But at any point I can do I'm gone. Yeah, it felt like that. Yeah And also I didn't do cocaine for the whole of the 90s. What no? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's unbelievable because I mean shocked all right, maybe right at the end the late late late 90s But the all of that period so park like mine and I was rich park life. Yeah, no, no No, because I've done a little bit and I remember where it was it was Somewhere in Islington and I thought oh, this is nice Then I've gone back home and I had a really awful panic attack walking back from Cultures to like really really bad and I've been to a doctor and I said he disturbed your heart rhythm You're giving yourself a chemo clean juicer of me. Yeah, don't do any more of that for a while son So I didn't do it. Maybe that's the best thing that ever happened I know so and everyone else is doing it. I mean, I was getting drunk. Don't get me wrong But I never I didn't do anything so yeah, I wasn't in that in a way. I was in a different from world different headspace. Yeah I mean obviously then I got into other things later on. Yeah, no, no, no, no Funnily enough. I wasn't doing okay. I must have been the only person who wasn't Was there a moment in all of that shit when you were like I'm out. I don't want to be part of this Thing I don't want to be part of being caricatured, you know partly it was because Graham didn't deal with it very well So Alex won't complete the Alex loved it so much I mean so much You know if I I mean he really really did have a fantastic time You know what I mean no question about it. Graham didn't have such a fantastic time and an alcohol He's just one of us unfortunate people that when he drinks it changes personality. Yeah, so he just can't drink so it was kind of sort of You know between those two extremes of Graham and Alex Yeah, it felt like well, this is just it's not gonna last much longer anyway You know when you're so it interdependent on each other as you are when you're in a young band Because you've come as teenagers and suddenly you've got countenance and bank accounts and houses and managers and fans and it's like How did that happen? So I kind of always knew that it wasn't gonna last forever and I suppose you know I'd never really I got into it and I totally became it and lived it but You know it was really Graham who was into indie music and into all of that wasn't me I was much more eclectic Yeah, we learn that yeah, no so quick so in a sense When that started to kind of sort of break down Naturally and there was all these spaces to start trying other things and that's what it is I was watching that guerrilla film that that came out in 2007 And there's bananas that's it That's a clip of an interview with Joe Wiley. I can't remember the exact quotes. I'm not gonna try quote it back to me Wild times. I mean Jamie Hewlett was pretty wild. Yeah, he comes across us. So loathely. Yeah loved Living and hanging out with Jamie. He was so much fun. He was exactly the person I Needed in my life at that time. You know what I mean? He was just he was smart fun irreverence yeah different and all those things and so he was a perfect Person to do stuff with yeah, there's a line in that in that film where you're talking to Joe Wiley You're saying oh yeah, we're gonna do another album. I've done. I've got another blur album and then we're gonna go to Marley And it's it was kind of a very good Yeah, it's just snapshot of the kind of level of busyness that you had and what your brain was filled with and Joe Wiley was like you're literally rocking as you're talking you're kind of saying this and you're like and and then you talk about You said to me about the day when you wake up and you realize it's only about the music. Yeah the best day ever. Oh yeah, yeah, and that's I still have that. It's fun watching the the start of the girlers when you just like you're literally like a fucking kid in a sweet shop. Yeah, this guy, this guy, this guy was incredible. I mean if you think it's like I went from being in a big Brit-pop band to being massive globally like in America, all those places that didn't work. Yeah, all the places that hadn't worked worked this time and record sales like in a different league. Yeah, once you get America obviously. Yeah, it's a different world. So that was you doing exactly what you wanted without any sort of kind of agenda in terms of like the business side of it. Just doing something out of pure, pure love and passion and then it was the biggest commercial success you had in your career. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then it could even bigger. The whole thing started with Jamie and I hanging out with each other, living in a flat. For some reason, I suppose it's the kind of thing you do when you're two 30-year-olds. I bought the world's biggest television at that point, which was massive. It was like the first ever flat screen. Right. But for some reason, it insisted you watched eight things simultaneously at all times. Would you mean like a split screen? Yeah, massively though, sorry. Okay, right. It was massive. Like when you're watching CCTV or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All these things which we take for granted now were so new about then. Yeah. That sort of idea that you could do that never existed before. So we watched a lot of television and you could play compute games as well and watch TV around the world. You know, it was. And we just one day said, "Oh, come on, let's do something." So I went and did a tune and he went and did a picture. And then the next day we put them together and I went to show Tony Wasworth, who was ahead of Paraphone and the wonderful Tony Wasworth. And he kind of signed it on the spot from just a picture and like a concept tune, like this is the sort of thing I'm going to do. And then, you know, from there, it was. Yeah, it was very, very quick, very, very quick. You seem to. When you zoom out and look at what you've done in your career, it's just constant U-turns. Yeah. Well, not even you, you're not going back on yourself. I'm always moving forwards, but it's. Well, what is forward? I mean, what's forward? What's backwards? What's side? I mean, I don't really see it. Out, you're moving out. I don't see it in those terms anymore. I just try and keep myself challenged, you know. What was becoming a dad like in the middle of all that? Well, I mean, not ideal becoming a dad when you're suddenly becoming really successful. There's a clip in the video of your door on your knee. I know with the. In a session. But in her room, yeah. I mean, she's still pretty much like that, you know. I mean, she's. She's always comes to my gigs. She's always been. Yeah, she's a fashion college now. Right. Very serious about it. The scrutiny levels are quite high on me. Right, in terms of what you're wearing, what you put in there. She's everything. Am I ever going to be allowed to cross the bridge to social media? I don't think so. Does she want you to? No, she won't. Okay. Do you think it says this to me? It'll be disaster if I do it. I tried to do it in lockdown. There was something that was really fucking me off. So I thought I'm going to go on. I'm going to start this screen. I can't wait to see see how I'm doing it. I'm starting. And I got as far as giving myself a name. And I heard this scream downstairs. And then some running upstairs. And she ran into the room. I was in and cut my phone and threw it away before. She knew. Oh my God. It's funny. It's funny. So no, probably never. It will never happen. Yeah. What going on social media? Well, yeah, but I mean, you know, sometimes there's just to see things. And people, especially people, just so lost in their ownness, you know? Yeah. It's just crazy. As a woman in her 40s, who I'm not fucking like, I'm educated. I know what I'm doing. I know who I am. I'm very comfortable in my own skin. I feel it. I feel it when you're on now. You feel like this need for dopamine for like fucking likes raising up. And I can I'm conscious and aware of it. And it's addictive. It's addictive. I mean, occasionally, Jay, Jay, Jay, me, he's actually coming, you know, on his rare visits from France. He's coming here now. This afternoon, yes, we're going out for Chris, our Christmas. Fabulous. Voting well. But occasionally, like, he go, I'll just do something silly and I'll do it on his account. And then it, you know, it is. He's just looking, you say, oh my God, there's 40,000 likes in two minutes. And it's, and that's nothing compared to them in the, the real, the real kind of sort of heavy weights of that world, Jesus. It's bonkers. My husband gave me a book called How to Break Up With Your Phone. So I'm on it. It's really easy. I've affected that many, many, many years ago. Firstly, you have to slowly, lower people's expectations about you. And what to expect of you on there? On there. Okay. Yeah. Bit by bit. Just slowly say it. And then you, then you start leaving it and sort of mislaying it. Yeah. For periods of time. And then the, and then the, and then the, and then the sky starts to clear. Yeah. And no one expects you to do anything. To have a phone. Yeah. Any more. Wow. And you're free. Yeah. I mean, I have to sometimes have it. Like, if someone's not well, you have to have them a light, you know, and, I mean, you can't get in contact. My, my mom does get angry with me sometimes to be free. Yeah. For not picking up the phone. Well, for just not having your phone. But I just, I never light phone. I, I, I, I, I never light phones. This is actually telling us my autobiography. And I don't need to do one. It's my memoir. It's my memoir. It won't go. I was, I've never light phones. I'm still obsessed with the ladyboard by the way. I can't think of this. This is, this is, this is from that period. I hated phones so much. Yeah. And there was a, I remember, I can't remember who it was, but I had to phone someone to say thank you for something. Right. And I just didn't want to do it. So rather than do that, I went at night outside of the village to where the telephone exchange was. I had a very little one. And I did it and pulled all the wires out. And then did it, then put it all back together. So that wouldn't work, basically? The whole village wouldn't work. But I, I wasn't trying to take everyone else out. I was just trying to take my house out, but I couldn't work out how to do that. So yeah, I took the whole village out. And then you couldn't find the person to say that. I didn't need to and the phone didn't work, did it? Again, hugely talent. That's incredible. No, but it's like, it just shows I've never really been, I mean, I'm consistently not like phones. Yeah. Just don't like phones. I just don't like it. I'm much rather speak to someone in person. You know, my manager Chris always said that everything was cycling and that, you know, if something was out of fashion, it would come back at some point. So it's a long one, this one, with kind of sort of indie bands, but not really. It's a shame as well. I mean, there are a few good bands still, but I just feel like everyone, I don't feel like people are making music like that anymore, much, you know, like to get just people playing together, young people playing together and it's just, you know, they're all, I don't know, it's just the most important thing, you know, for music is people being at play instruments and, you know, it's like Jonathan Rush show. And he's like, I can't believe it, he's the first person in years who's coming actually sung and playing live. Actually, for real, without, without yeah, what's the word, when you just, yeah, or just music in a live vocal, but mine, no one plays live anymore. Yeah, that's not okay. Well, it's, it's so not, I fucking DJs, you know? Here we are, they're the ones. Only my hand up. They're the ones who have fucked it all up. Really, really, really made it hard for kids to want to go and learn instruments, because it's so easy not to. That's the thing. It's so easy not to. I've got that in my house at my moment, I'm trying to get my kids to learn instruments, because I was brought up to learn instruments. Yeah. And my husband is a music producer and he's just, he's, he's well, he's into making rap music, he's like, they don't just need an MPC, you know, give him a guitar and an MPC. Yeah. Anyway. I don't know, I don't know, I just feel the communal thing of making music together is something we mustn't lose. It's pure. Yeah, it is. I wanted to ask about kind of being in your 50s now and what it's like and how it feels, because on the outside you seem more relaxed than you've ever been. Yeah, I'm relaxed. I'm the best musician I've ever been, I sing better than I've ever sung, writing, I love writing, I find writing. It's difficult to write good words, I find that that's not easy, but making music has still found pretty effortless. But I think that's because I do it all the time. It's a job. It's my job. I do, I try and do yoga every day as well, I was late. But if you keep moving, you don't, you know what I mean, so it's the same with music. This is exactly why I wanted to talk to you for this podcast because your career is defined by change. Change, yeah. The world is constantly changing and it's exciting and I think it's also, if you don't change, you don't have that ability. You lose your empathy with the modern world and once you use your empathy with today, where are you? You become an artifact and inevitably we're all going to become artifacts anyway, if we're lucky. I'm interested in that change is empathy, so the idea of learning how to change brings empathy because you have to adapt to people around you and other cultures, yeah, got you, yeah, yeah. And there's a stack, like being stagnant, you're just kind of fucking sitting in your own shit. Yeah, yeah. And it could be comfortable, but yeah, you're not pushing yourself, so you're not making yourself vulnerable, are you? The more fear you have, the more chance there is that you will manifest that with fear. Yeah, yeah, I get that. Because that's how the universe works. The universe does not understand fear, it just only understands joy, do you know what I mean? Yeah, I really do. Can I ask you about faith? Yes. What do you have faith in? Well, I've read a lot about faiths. I have a huge amount of faith in the transference of energy, and I'm not particularly tied to the attendance of two, three thousand year old scriptures, but there's a lot of very interesting stuff, and a lot of allegory in there that we misinterpret completely. You know, you only have to watch damn Brown's films to know all about that. They make me laugh later, but I mean, you know, he does have a point. I'm used to have my own magic tree when I was a kid. What did that afford you? I used to bury things underneath it. I used to, you know, pray, get energy from it, and then I left it for a while, and I went for a walk and my mum back into this little village when I came back home. And I walked into the woods, and it's really quite magical, because we were talking, and this wind came, and then we were next to the tree. And there was a big wooden pentangle had been constructed, obviously, by local witches around the tree. Rammer tree, yeah, yeah, but not connected to. So you had identified this tree? Well, who knows? Who knows? It was one of those moments. So I've always, my mum's always been a bit witchy. So I've all, I mean, I'm a little bit witchy. Yeah, I love that. It'll be a bit more witchy. Well, being witchy really just means being in tune with the natural rhythms of nature. And I thought about that, because I know you have a place in Iceland, and this new album is inspired by that. And Bjork always talks about nature as being God itself, you know, her version of that. Absolutely. I mean, everyone in Iceland identifies with that. You know, everyone believes in fairies, in fact, to build my house in the first place, I had to employ a fairy lawyer to negotiate on the land, the area, because it was fairy land, it's recognised as fairy land. Oh, it's just absolutely, absolutely. Officially by law. Yeah, you have to. I mean, it's not like a parliament law, it's, yeah, it's considered very bad form if you don't consult some fairy lawyer and a fairy lawyer. It's someone who can talk to them and negotiate the. You know, every time I go there, you know, I have this special place where I give them presents, and anyone who stays there, I encourage them to do it. I don't know if everyone does it. Yeah. I make a big point of you, you must give the offer. The last question. What would you still like to change, be it in your life or if you don't want to make any more changes there beyond you? Oh, I always believe, I mean change, because there's just so much that. I know, it's fast. It's fast. I really like to just change people's attitudes, somehow make people slightly less fearful, but that is. At the end of the day, at the end of the day, all I can do is just really just continue doing what I do and see where it takes me. You know, I just wish people more, just went more out of themselves once they get something that feels solid. They find it very difficult to leave that and have the confidence to do something else that might. It seems like success is so hard, one, that people. it becomes. it becomes like a tyranny in their lives to maintain it, to maintain all the things that come with it and really it's all so ephemeral anyway. Thank you. My pleasure. I mean, I literally. I've said to the excuse, I don't think I was saving for my memory of his pointless love. There you go. No need for the memoir. Thank you so much to Damon, Al Baron, for his time. I absolutely loved that conversation and I learned so much. Like I thought I knew everything there was to know about Damon, you know, from being such a fan of Blair and watching his career so closely over the years. I'm really grateful to him for being so open and generous. As I mentioned at the start, Damon's new album "The Nearer the Fountain" more pure, "The Stream Flows" is out now. You heard some snippets of it in the episode. He will be touring the UK and Europe in February and March. We've put a link to the show dates in episode notes with all the details. So let me know what you thought of Damon please. Share the podcast around, send it to everyone you know who's a blur fan, who's a gorilla's fan, who's a Damon Al Baron fan, which is a music fan. And if you're a fan of changes, please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. They're always so, so appreciated. And I'm going to be back next Monday for Valentine's Day with my husband. Yeah, Tom, otherwise known as Todd. That's his production name, he's a music producer. It's going to be talking to me about his big changes, most notably his diagnosis of ADHD as an adult, another hugely enlightening conversation and something that I hope that you'll really enjoy. Changes is produced by Louise Mason and I will see you next week.