Damon Albarn has been talking Gorillaz and reflecting on Blur’s now-infamous show at Coachella back in 2024 when, with their greatest hits set being greeted with quiet bemusement, he turned on the crowd and told them that "you’re never seeing us again".
In a new interview with Rolling Stone to promote the upcoming Gorillaz album, The Mountain, Albarn said: "We did feel at Coachella, when we came over with Blur, that maybe it was a slight mismatch, us being at that festival. It’s kind of the embodiment of social media now, isn’t it?”
To which Jamie Hewlett (who was being interviewed alongside him) added: “It’s the only festival where the phones aren’t pointed at the stage, but at the person holding the phone.”
Albarn did say that, despite his Coachella mini-strop, Blur may one day return to the States, saying that a gig at Madison Square Garden is “more possible”. He did, however, point out: "The only problem with bloody playing Madison Square Garden, and I’ve done it a few times, is that there’s all these banners for flippin’ … what’s his name? Billy Joel. Any sense of achievement is just so deflated. I can’t bear it.”
Well, the good news for Albarn and his bandmates is that Joel’s ten-year long residency at the Garden finally ended in July 2024. The banners will have come down and it’s now safe to return…
Elsewhere in the interview we found out that Albarn doesn’t currently own a mobile phone and he’s not a listener on Spotify - “I’ve never streamed anything in my life,” he claims, somewhat remarkably.
He and Hewlett also talked about how, in some respects, the success of Gorillaz paved the way for the likes of the KPop Demon Hunters. "Between that and the fucking ABBA hologram show there’s really nothing left of our ideas," says Albarn. "All have been taken and monetised in an extreme way.”
"I think that the fact that we are an animated band has helped just a little bit," Hewlett added. "Young people go, ‘What’s that? I love that animation. Let me check it out.’ Then they hear the music and they go, ‘Oh, my God, I love it.’ And then it brings a new audience.”
Meanwhile, the new album Gorillaz album, The Mountain, is out on 6 March.
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