Damon Albarn

00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Over the course of a thirty five year career, Damon Auburn has reached international fame with two very different groups. In nineteen eighty eight, Damon created the rock band Blur with four friends in his native London. Blur started out as what Damon calls a classic art school band, but they quickly morphed into one of the seminal groups of the nineties britpop explosion, along with their former rivals Oasis. After a series of successful albums with Blur, Damon started Gorillas in nineteen ninety eight with cartoonist Jamie Hewlett. Dubbed is the world's first virtual group, the Gorilla's rotating lineup includes collaborations with De La Soul, Stevie Nicks, Bobby Womack, and Lou Reed. The band's influences are as diverse as electronic music, hip hop, and world music, and over the last twenty five years, Gorillas has been wildly successful, selling over thirty million albums worldwide. Despite having found such success, Damon's never stopped exploring his artistic potential. He's written in an opera, released solo and side projects, and recently he reunited with Blur to release the band's latest album, called The Ballad of Darren. On today's episode, Lea Rose talks to Damon Albarn about what it's like for Blur to headline music festivals in twenty twenty three. Damon also reveals how Gorillas are about to undergo a major paradigm shift, and he explains how, according to family lore, John Lennon and Yoko Ono first met at his dad's art gallery in London. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.

00:01:56
Speaker 2: I'm justin Mitchman.

00:01:58
Speaker 1: Here's Lea Rose with Damon Albarn.

00:02:01
Speaker 3: Let's talk Blur. Okay, so it looks like you've been on a you all have been doing a little run of shows in Europe. How has it been being back on stage with everybody?

00:02:12
Speaker 2: Oh, it's great. Yeah. We did three four small gigs in England and then we went over to Spain and did the Primavera gigs. First one was Pastime. I mean, the only problem problematic thing is that if you're headlining you go on at two am, which are our age is almost unthinkable, but we can just about do it. Yeah, And then the next date was in Madrid and it was the first time they were ever doing it and the weather was so bad that they had to cancel our concert at two am, so we managed to find a smallish club called labry Vieira about two thousand people and two thousand of the forty thousand managed to see us. So it was quite quite a magical evening really, considering what a tumultuous afternoon it had been.

00:03:07
Speaker 3: You know, what was the energy like in the club?

00:03:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fantastic. Threw myself around with Wild Abandon.

00:03:14
Speaker 3: Very nice. How has it been for the other guys in the bank? So, I know, you've been consistently touring for the most part since the last Blur album, has it?

00:03:23
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say, you've been consistently tearing it up.

00:03:28
Speaker 3: Been thrashing, tearing the club up.

00:03:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, consistently yeah, yeah, Well, I mean everyone's been doing their own thing. Grahamson and lot of concerts, but not maybe of that size. Alex has his own festival, so he even he knows everything about about what a festival is, you know, the complete DNA of a festival. Dave's been doing everything humanly possible and also got his own little band out as well, So everyone's been super busy that's great. Yeah, But it's necessary, isn't it. Otherwise it just feels like, I don't know this. This is supposed to be old for ends sort of finding each other latterly and trying to express that in a sort of, you know, vibrant and honest way.

00:04:22
Speaker 3: Have you learned anything new about the old friends and the process of recording the new album?

00:04:29
Speaker 2: Well, they're a lot more grown up, all of them, a lot more maybe resilient than maybe they were twenty years ago emotionally and physically. Yeah, I think there's a huge amount of necessary growing up that's gone on for all of us.

00:04:47
Speaker 3: Are the band dynamics? Do they feel exactly the same as they used to, you know, way back when, or have things sort of changed just like on a more like interpersonal level, things.

00:04:59
Speaker 2: Have changed a bit, but essentially so exactly the same dynamic.

00:05:06
Speaker 3: That's so cool. It's so nice to have that.

00:05:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, really, it is really nice. It is really nice. But but I suppose the fact that we haven't kind of chased it much in the last twenty years means that, you know, there's there's still that possibility for something to surprise us, you know, And I mean this whole thing initially started off with a conversation about Okay, it's probably time we sang those songs again, with no real destination. And then when I was in the States in the autumn, I mean, I always take a studio on tour anyway, and I just thought, well, I'm just going to write songs. It's kind of interesting being here in all these mad cities and everything that you know that you carry on the road with you and the experiences you have, and I thought, maybe that's quite a nice sometimes it's quite a nice place to write about something else, you know, And so I just wrote lost songs. I didn't tell anyone. Then in the new year, I said to all of them, I said, just can I invite you down to the studio, I just like play some stuff suit you think And I said, look, I think I've written an album. There's twenty songs. You choose the ones you want to record, and that's really It was as simple as that. They were like into it, and it felt, I suppose of that moment, I was kind of, you know, I was still kind of a bit nervous about letting all that material go without knowing where it was going to go. But it went pretty much exactly where I hoped it would, and yeah, I didn't take us more than six weeks to do the whole thing.

00:06:53
Speaker 3: It's amazing.

00:06:55
Speaker 2: But the most amazing thing about that was that that seemed to sort of inform the momentum of everything and the fact that we already had this sort of totemic Wembley gig. It's sort of everyone was like, oh, well, where we should get the record out in time for that as well, or at least least proximity to it. So something a process that that latterly, to be honest, has just become so sort of slow for me, you know, like having to wait a year sometimes to put a record out. She's just so that's happened a few times. So this was literally we we finished it and then it was like, oh shit, we need to rehearse for these concerts, and now we're here and I haven't and we're putting another single out next week and then an album, and that's it's just nice to know that that nothing existed in January apart from the songs I suppose, so.

00:07:49
Speaker 3: The gig existed first and then the album came yes, So it's sort of like a Beatles, get back, let it be situation.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: It's exactly like that, and it's.

00:07:59
Speaker 3: Just why did you get back right now?

00:08:02
Speaker 2: I mean, this is inevitable, isn't it. That's sort of for some reason because we come from this island. We're always going. But but I mean, this is the annoying thing about the Beasts is that they kind of sort of they created every kind of sort of trope that you throw up pop music really you know, not invented, but they seem to embody so many and you know, the the idea of mass hysteria, although it happened previously with Elvis, I don't think it ever happened for a band. The idea of the independence that are banned when it's a good one kind of offers its its audience. You know. They know that these these individuals have come up together and that they share very similar kind of sort of beliefs, you know, and passions, and that like you know, there's no need to have since they were kids. So it's just it's so important really that bands exist. And I suppose I feel like, I don't know, I feel like it was a bit more excitement about guitar music again at the moment, and that can't be a bad thing because it got so sterile. I mean, you know, for me, really the last great guitar band would have been the Artic Monkeys. I don't really know if there's anything as good as that since. I mean, but but now there's bands who look got a huge amount of potential, and it's really it's kind of dismantled itself guitar music, and it's kind of putting itself back together again in a different form, you know, you get you've got some fantastic new kind of sort of mutations of the the genus of it.

00:09:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are some that you're thinking of when you say there's new there's some new bands out there that are bringing back aut our music.

00:09:45
Speaker 2: Well, I really, I really like I really like a band like Wooloo. They seem to be really cool. There's one that I picked up on somewhere in the American countryside, but I like, I can't remember his name. That's narrowing it down, isn't it.

00:10:04
Speaker 3: American countryside? Okay?

00:10:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the American countryside, the great the great American country side. Yeah, it's a collective of I don't know, it's sort of just felt like exactly what a young band should sound like. Lots of there are lots of them, and you've got bands like Yard Acts who are here. It seemed to be getting better and better, and obviously not that they're new, but I still see them as kind of emerging bands like Sleaford Mods, you know, brilliant. So it's and lots of great language being used again, you know, not the generic rock shit. I hate that. Yeah, I hate that. I like I like poets and guitars, you know, it's like that's what always inspired inspired me.

00:10:46
Speaker 3: I was curious about your relationship to the Beatles because you came up you were sort of the generation after the Beatles, and we've had a lot of artists on this show who talk about, you know, someone like Ozzy Osbourne when he heard the Beatles, it was like it went from black and white to color, so you.

00:11:03
Speaker 2: Being and then back and then back to black permanently.

00:11:09
Speaker 3: He brought it back to book.

00:11:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm not sure where the color comes in really with Ozzy Osborne, but I mean, yeah, you know.

00:11:14
Speaker 3: So they still put out albums while you were alive young, but you.

00:11:18
Speaker 2: Were alive well yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:20
Speaker 3: Growing up when you were finding your own music. What role did the Beatles play with you and your friends? Like, were you guys into the Beatles?

00:11:28
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing I knew about the Beatles really was that my parents lived in the same mansion block in Emperor's Gate back in the very early sixties as them. And then what's my next connection and the other thing within my family kind of sort of folklore, is that my dad had a gallery in just off Carnoby Street and he put on the exhibition where Yoko Ono had the ladder and John Lennon climbed up a ladder to read the word yes or whatever. It was, so kind of he kind of got them together. That was their first meeting, really, yeah, I mean office, it's it's not.

00:12:11
Speaker 3: I've been dying to know how those two met watching Get Back.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they met in he came to see her art show at my dad's gallery.

00:12:20
Speaker 3: Was she like a popular artist at the time.

00:12:22
Speaker 2: I mean underground, yeah, but very cool cool yeah, so so so that was I kind of knew more about that. And I also I used to love lucim the Sky of Diamonds because I got given it, but I didn't know that it was a Beatles song. I thought it was Elson John's song. Oh, but then and then I did, and obviously I did discover the Beatles, and like, you know, then then it becomes an obsession until you've kind of you've listened to everything and kind of assimilated the whole thing. But then you know, like other amazing things came into my life, you know. But I mean, it was one of the very early influences. Obviously very cool.

00:13:03
Speaker 3: I've seen your your house describe the house you grew up in described as bohemia, and I know what that means in America, but what does that mean in London?

00:13:14
Speaker 2: I did till I was nine. I lived in London when I moved to the to the Essex countryside. But he mean, I suppose in the sense that my dad's and my dad was like very into latterly into art education. My mum's always been an artist, painter and creates installations and everything really just everything is and yeah, I've got lots, just lots of artists in my family, which is pretty normal.

00:13:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it wasn't. I mean, I don't know. I guess I picture sort of just like people sitting around on pillows and smoking hookahs and yeah, that.

00:13:49
Speaker 2: Sort of thing. I mean, it was a bit like that in the late sixties, me and my dad's. Amongst the many things he did, he created happenings and psychedelic buildings in weird places. In fact, once he kind of worked with a soft machine and they did a concert in the south of France and be a really good idea to go out the night before because it was on a beach. He went out into the bay and it doused the whole bay in Petrol, and then when they came on that evening, he lit it. So they had this amazing, very dangerous but no one would ever let you do that now, but that Hey, it was the sixties. I mean, but you know, I just heard all of this through, you know, just the thing that all families have, which are like these stories you know that you want to hear again and again and again.

00:14:42
Speaker 3: Totally the family law.

00:14:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's at the family law exactly.

00:14:46
Speaker 3: I don't know if you went through like an early experimentation drug phase when you're a teenager or whatever, But were they cool with that, like, could you talk to them about Oh.

00:14:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, my parents were always very good with all my yeah, my dalliances, you know, I didn't necessarily think I was being very responsible sometimes, but I mean they were never judgmental ever.

00:15:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I read that your primary school burnt down like seven or eight times.

00:15:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.

00:15:15
Speaker 3: Why what is that about.

00:15:17
Speaker 2: Well, it turned out that our form teacher was a complete psychopath. But the sad thing is that the school care segue, the school caretaker was blamed initially, and he had a heart stack because he was so distressed that anyone could think he'd do anything like that. But it kept happening and it really disrupted two years of my education like terribly. And then in the end it turned out it was our teacher who'd been burning the school down. Yeah.

00:15:45
Speaker 3: Was it big fires or was it just like little yeah?

00:15:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, like classrooms and stuff on them. Once we'd done his whole projects of raising all these hamsters, and then he burnt the hamsters as well, which you know, it was not nice.

00:16:00
Speaker 3: It's like serial killer stuff.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean yeah, I mean sort of. Essex in the nineteen eighties was a fairly errant place, to be fair.

00:16:10
Speaker 1: We're taking a quick break and then coming back with more from Leo Rose and Damon Albarn. We're back with more from Damon Albarne and Lio Rose.

00:16:23
Speaker 3: As a kid, like what was how did you find music? What was the first music that you felt was like really spoke to you.

00:16:28
Speaker 2: Oh, I was more family law. I had a harmonic hererap that was in my cot which I used to play. I've always always been interested in music. Yeah. I went through quite conventional musical education, classical, and then I just sort of with Graham, discovered other kinds of ways of playing music, you know, and here I am.

00:16:55
Speaker 3: Now what were you guys into music wise? Were you into punk or were you like what was a new wave? What was there?

00:17:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean a lot of our early stuff is comes directly from Thursday Night on Top of the Pops. No, it's a national obsession with the youth. Really, it felt like that where I lived. That was my connection with everything, you know, Top of the Pops, clothes, music, hairstyles.

00:17:23
Speaker 3: How much did you guys think about the way that you looked, like the aesthetic look of Blur when you first started. Was there are a lot of thought put into the haircuts and the clothes.

00:17:34
Speaker 2: It was a lot of thought put into making it not look like there's a lot of thought put into it. Yeah, it was just a classic art school band really yeah, slightly foppish, slightly foppish, slightly disheveled, but kind of you know, cool. Yeah.

00:17:52
Speaker 3: But the hair was always good.

00:17:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had good hair. We had good hair.

00:17:56
Speaker 3: Like it looks dishovel, but yeah, yeah.

00:17:58
Speaker 2: I mean remarkably, we've still pretty much all got our hair, which is honestly, that's quite the thing. Fifty five is definitely not something to take for granted. For sure, you know it's true.

00:18:14
Speaker 3: But yeah, I've always wondered that because you always look cool, and it's like, how much thought, I'm just curious, how still you look cool your cool outfits. You obviously make cool choices with what you wear.

00:18:23
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, I mean you know, we we were in second hand shops from day one. I mean it's it's one of our great joy especially Graham and I you know, we just love shopping for old clothes.

00:18:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, but still you have to be good at it, like someone on you two three thousand, like always looks cool. Oh yeah, you could walk into the same shop and no, of.

00:18:42
Speaker 2: Course, but it's like it's like everything practice makes perfect, you know, It's like all those things that you tried on that really didn't work, but you put down and I bought a lot of stuff that I was convinced was a major statement in fashion that when I got home, it's like, and these days I have I mean my daughter because she's at London School of Fashion, very serious, very very serious about everything. To that, I mean, I can't get with anything anymore, you know what I mean. I have to really be my top a game every day otherwise she will call me out.

00:19:22
Speaker 3: So does she like your style?

00:19:24
Speaker 2: Well? I think, I mean I'm a dad, do you know what I mean? I can't. Yeah, I mean, I'm never going to be have as much trip as other people, but you know, yeah.

00:19:34
Speaker 3: Do you remember I was reading about your first Blurs first tour in America and it sounds like it was a bit of a disaster. I don't know if that's accurate, but do you remember first going on the road and playing shows in the States.

00:19:47
Speaker 2: They weren't all a disaster, but we did play quite a lot of kind of sort of Midwest towns where no one had an idea who we were at all, you know, which is part of I mean, looking back, it's an incredibly important part of our development, and I mean of recently, especially with Grid, as I spent so much time in America. I've done a lot of playing in America, so I feel I feel very comfortable and at home in America these days. Yeah, ironically, I feel very home in America these days. I've even got my Hala hat on.

00:20:22
Speaker 3: I know it seems like you like that hat.

00:20:24
Speaker 2: I'm I know it right, I've literally I can't get rid of the fucking hat. I love it?

00:20:31
Speaker 3: Is it just the same hat every time, the.

00:20:34
Speaker 2: Same hat I dropped. I've bought so many hats since I got this hat, and nothing, nothing kicks like this hat. But it's totally the wrong hat for Blurd. I shouldn't be wearing a hat like this. I should be wearing I shouldn't be wearing a hat. I mean, I don't wear a hat on stage obviously, but and all the clothes that I kind of sort of you know, the whole look that I've got. Yeah, but I've thought about anything. It's just ruined when I put this hat on. So I can't really wear the hat. I shouldn't really be wearing the hats in this podcast, But I just I can't help it. But you but you're right, I literally, I mean, I haven't washed it either since I've had it, and it was about thirty years old when I bought it. Really, this is a truly loved hat.

00:21:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a cool hat. It's gotten broken in over the years. I've watched a lot of your videos. Yeah, and in the beginning it was a little bit more stiff. Yeah, I saw you had it at Coachella.

00:21:25
Speaker 2: What you're trying to say about my hat?

00:21:28
Speaker 3: It's a good thing. It's like a nice pair of leather shoes.

00:21:31
Speaker 2: It is. It is. But I mean, the only other kind of hats that I really feel comfortable and have been like old Fisherman's beanie hats, you know, like those are cool. Yeah, but I can't wear them in the summer. Too hot, too hot. Nothing else I've got. I found some nice old deer stalkers that I might be able to get away with, but it's been so hot. Really, this is the only hat I can wear.

00:21:53
Speaker 3: It seems like I don't know if this is true, But was Gorilla's the first project where the music really super resonated with Americans?

00:22:05
Speaker 2: Well, no song Too was, but no one knew who made too. It's just that you be just woo who song. Yeah, they're probably probably people who listened to Bisco. No, they didn't do that, did they. You know what I mean? It's so sort of detached from us. Yeah, but yes, that's our biggest song by far.

00:22:26
Speaker 3: Obviously, after you make a song, too, do you want to incorporate a little woohoo or something similar in every you.

00:22:33
Speaker 2: Want to make You definitely want to make a song free. But it's quite it's hard. It's harder than you think.

00:22:40
Speaker 3: It seems very difficult. But I don't know. I just feel like I would be tempted if you get something that really sticks.

00:22:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I've had a few, but you know, but then, as Frank Sinatra said, I've had too few to mention. Yeah, that's really poor. It's a really really really really poor Joe. It's poor Joe. Apologize. It always goes wrong when I try and be amusing.

00:23:05
Speaker 3: Have you ever tried to analyze what works in America versus it works in the UK or in Europe? Is that something that you even think of when you're making music?

00:23:14
Speaker 2: Or you just oh, I don't I don't think about I don't think about it. I just you know, you make and then you just wait.

00:23:22
Speaker 3: Do you care or are you just making to make?

00:23:26
Speaker 2: I'm existing to make.

00:23:29
Speaker 3: It must be so nice to have such a clear passion.

00:23:32
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean it's I mean, it's a condition, isn't it. You know I've got I have some these days. It would be be on a spectrum somewhere. You know, he's got a name. I'm sure, I just haven't chosen to go down that path to be analyzed.

00:23:50
Speaker 3: Is it near constant? Is it something you can always rely on or does it ever leave you the ability to make new songs?

00:23:57
Speaker 2: Well, it's like yoga. I do try and do yoga every day, and I try to write every day. I get up basically in the morning unless you can be disciplined enough to do it in the evening, which I can't.

00:24:10
Speaker 3: Are you working on any new Gorilla's music.

00:24:14
Speaker 2: I've done a few tunes. I'm doing an opera at the moment about using Geta's fragment. He wrote of the Magic Flute, Part two, which is fascinating, very cool. You've heard of the Magic Flute, Mozart's Magic Well, Gertzer, who's the contemporary of Mozart, wrote part two of that, like you know the sequel, but it never got put to music. Okay, so it's this this legendary lost thing. Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I don't know very cool what I'm doing. I've never really known what I'm doing in that world at all. I'm a complete and that's a idiot.

00:24:52
Speaker 3: But you were trained with in music theory and everything.

00:24:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can, Yeah, I mean, I you know, I can. I don't know whether it's any good put it that way, you know, whereas with songs I'm kind of more confident about.

00:25:05
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, so New Gorillas. You're working on New Gorillas a bit.

00:25:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to do We're going to do something. It's going to be a not as dramatic as a quantum ship, a paradigm be a paradigm shift would just be very different. No cartoons, yeah, but just an entirely different approach to everything, to the to the band, to everything. We're just a point where we're going to change.

00:25:33
Speaker 3: Why. Why does it feel like it's.

00:25:36
Speaker 2: Time because it was always just Jamie and I. So you know, really, although it's a very big thing now, it's still in essences to people. So if we decide between us that we want to do something unrecognizable then we will.

00:25:54
Speaker 3: That's exciting.

00:25:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean you need that, don't you two, Yeah, for it to keep to stay alive.

00:26:01
Speaker 3: Really definitely, that's cool. So when abouts do you think that will start surfacing?

00:26:07
Speaker 2: Well, I will keep writing, but until I've kind of written the opera, I can't really do anything much else of than that. But you know, you know, I might write it really quickly. It's got to be next autumn anyway, So before that, I'll be working on Guerrillas.

00:26:26
Speaker 1: We're gonna pause for one last quick break and then come back with Leo Rose and Damon Albarn. We're back with Leo Rose and Damon Albarn.

00:26:38
Speaker 3: What's the significance of the album title.

00:26:42
Speaker 2: Ballads of Darren. Well, Darren's a very very old friend of everyone in the band. He's been kind of sort of there in various reincarnations since almost day one. And we have this group of very close friends who work with us, and I've always worked with us, and he's one of them, so therefore he represents all of us. So the ballot of Darren is Darren is this moment the every man? You know?

00:27:13
Speaker 3: Did he go through something significant recently?

00:27:16
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we've all been through significant things, you know. I mean obviously, as I write with songs, it's probably I've probably been through some significant things as well. But you know, I mean, I am a I am a certified sad fifty five year old.

00:27:33
Speaker 3: I hear you. I feel sad too.

00:27:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fine, it happens. I mean, I'm not I'm not afraid of sadness, you know.

00:27:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you're productive. You're a productive fifty five year old.

00:27:45
Speaker 2: I'm a very productive saddow.

00:27:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So this album, when I first started listening to it, it feels like it needs like, you know, like a pair of shoes. Sometimes you need a break in period. Yeah, this album just there's no break in period. It immediately sounds good.

00:28:03
Speaker 2: Oh good.

00:28:04
Speaker 3: I got in there really easy. I woke up yesterday singing the Narcissist. It was just it was there. It's in my consciousness. Do you have any sort of tricks or little formulas that you've developed at this point for making something just go down easy?

00:28:22
Speaker 2: Well? What was the song in My Fair Lady, A little bit of Sugar helps the Medicine go down?

00:28:28
Speaker 3: Would the sugar come in the melody?

00:28:30
Speaker 2: I don't know I mean, it's certainly not in the lyrics. The lyrics are rarely uplifting. But I suppose it's that juxtaposition with the music that creates you know, it's the classic ram It's the end of the world kind of thing, isn't it? You know what I mean? Where you are singing, it's like Spike Milligan. You're probably not familiar with him. He's a brilliant comedian writer. And on his gravestone he had inscribed he had inscribed, I told you I wasn't feeling well.

00:29:05
Speaker 3: That's good.

00:29:08
Speaker 2: You know. What I mean is that that is in the joy and sadness of life. It's kind of, you know, that final victory that makes people laugh. And yet I suppose in a way that's kind of sort of the essence of melancholy, you know, it's that sort of realization that you are both living and living your best and dying your best life.

00:29:30
Speaker 3: Is there like an overall emotional framework to the album or how would you describe the vibe?

00:29:36
Speaker 2: I think once they catch you, certain songs will play with your emotions quite heavily, you know, songs like the Everglades I think will smap people around the face at one point.

00:29:48
Speaker 3: M h.

00:29:49
Speaker 2: I mean, so it's got that it's in there, but it doesn't it's not going to scare anyone away, you know what I mean. I don't think, but I mean, I can't talk about me at work. I just all I can do is make it and then sing it.

00:30:01
Speaker 3: Do you ever have any trepidation about putting about writing vulnerable lyrics or exposing a part of your experience?

00:30:09
Speaker 2: I suppose, I mean, I suppose in many ways this is my vulnerable. But I think vulnerability is by singing about it, You're you're somehow kind of easing it. You know, You're the vulnerability is diminished by your ability to express.

00:30:28
Speaker 3: It through writing songs. Does it help you understand your emotions or is it just a way to talk about it and share emotions?

00:30:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't make it all about myself strictly. It's kind of use. I use where where I'm at in my life and how I feel as a kind of tool to talk about other things. Sometimes. You know, it's that, you know, there's quite a lot of politics on the record as well. I mean politics, not affiliated, not not not pastes and politics. But you know what I mean, So I can Russian strings, say that there's the strings attached to all of us. You know that we're all complicit, and therefore, you know, what are we doing?

00:31:17
Speaker 3: How did the narcissists come about? How did that song come to be?

00:31:22
Speaker 2: Well? I think I think it's kind of sort of maybe is kind of came about from my belief that we're living in the most narcissistic age of epoch of man's man. Basically, I don't know if you can get any more narcissistic than the years now, m M, they are now or whatever we are, you know, collectively, we're living through this.

00:31:51
Speaker 3: Do you talk about that with your daughter, since she's, you know, at a young age where this just feels normal.

00:31:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's she thinks, you know, like understandably that. I mean, she's called me a boomer on a couple of occasions, which I'm sure is not a good thing.

00:32:06
Speaker 3: Are you a boomer?

00:32:07
Speaker 2: I don't think so, aren't you just I really have no idea what I am, but boomer is surely before me. I can't be a boomer.

00:32:15
Speaker 3: No, I don't think you're a boomer. I think you're gen X.

00:32:18
Speaker 2: But I think she's been doubly rude by calling me a boomer. I think it's intentionally. I mean I deserve it, so it's fine. No, No, I just think by the very nature of the way we go about our business and where we communicate with each other, and our ability to send pictures of ourselves, and our ability to distort those pictures, to filter those pictures, to create narrative through those pictures of ourselves and our expressions, we are in love with the image of ourselves, which is in the essence of the original story of Narcissus. And we do live in an echo chamber, which is another key component of the original, not the echo chamber, but echo being the counterpoint to Narcissus that he couldn't hear, he couldn't see, he couldn't kind of externalize any empathy for anyone who's just about himself and his image.

00:33:16
Speaker 3: Do you feel that when you're playing in you know, in different countries all over the world, like if you're going over to Molly or you're playing somewhere in Africa, do you feel that same force there? Or is that a total eskill?

00:33:31
Speaker 2: I mean, not as much as it used to be, because the world's changed and everyone is everyone everywhere anyone's got phone is in on it, aren't they in one form or another. So that reason I don't have a phone.

00:33:46
Speaker 3: You have an iPad, right.

00:33:47
Speaker 2: I do have an iPad, but you know it's just not the same thing. You can't whip out the iPad, you know, it's quite it's a sort of it's an event getting an iPad to take a photograph. It's not very boome exactly. You can't do it one hand. It's impossible. You have to have two hands. And the whole point is this mediacy A boom they go. That was where I started. But really the song is about a story of my own kind of you know, from being a kid in my bedroom looking in the mirror and using an old Strobe light that my dad had given me, which he'd used in the Ufo Club with Pink Floyd back in the early sixties.

00:34:31
Speaker 3: What's the Ufo Club.

00:34:33
Speaker 2: It was a very famous club where Pink Floyd started. It's like a cool place in the early sixties where people played. And he had the strobe light and he gave me this strobe light. So I had my sympthesizer a mirror strobe light, and I'd switched off my bedroom light, so I'd be in the dark just with the stroke flickering. I put on whatever record I wanted to transport myself to, and you know, so that was my kind of weird narcissism, and then I'd just sort of trace the the journey really of the band during that song.

00:35:13
Speaker 3: That's so cool. So would you kind of just like watch yourself in the mirror and practice, yeah, dance moves and things like that.

00:35:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, but in strobe all the time. I don't know if anyone would ever be allowed to have something quite so mind my I mean, you know, I really didn't need any any other drugs when having a strobe like that. I had. It had a dial, so you could go from very slow to very fast.

00:35:37
Speaker 3: Very cool. Do you feel when you write songs that a lot of it is inspired from when you were a kid and when you were a teenager, Like, does everything feel like it comes from that? Well?

00:35:47
Speaker 2: No, not really, I mean it just comes it comes from the portable well I carry around with myself.

00:35:55
Speaker 3: So there's still things today that are inspiring. Oh yeah, I mean new music.

00:35:58
Speaker 2: It's not oh, one hundred percent. This whole record is completely kind of informed by how I feel about what's happening now in my life, in everyone's lives.

00:36:08
Speaker 3: Have you ever thought about it if you didn't do this, what you would be interested in doing? What you feel like you'd be really good at.

00:36:14
Speaker 2: I honestly don't think I'll be good at anything else. I mean I do sometimes think it's like, how would I have been? How would I have fared in like an early Viking community? Yeah, because I went once to a beach where they have five stones outside of Rekavik in Iceland, and these stones have been this for a thousand years and basically depending on which stone you could lift and take to the shoreline, you were allocated a job within the community.

00:36:48
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:36:49
Speaker 2: And I couldn't lift the heaviest stone, which was the one reserved for people who traveled, so I wasn't going to be doing any traveling. People who rode basically you know, they had this, But I was able to pick up the one before that, So I suppose i'd have been I would have worked and worked the land maybe and hopefully you know, being able to write and play music and sing.

00:37:14
Speaker 3: When you sit down to play with somebody new, do you ever feel that you have to impress that person? Are you nervous, Like, what's the feeling in you?

00:37:22
Speaker 2: Ah? I mean you want them to feel comfortable and have a sense that you know, you're not completely incompetent. Yeah, but I mean really it's about it's about a shared sort of experience, isn't it. And you know, I think all writers and singers in my world, the good ones understand the sort of the aspect of connecting with the spirit, and so that's that's the main objective. Really, if you can call on the spirit, then whatever you make will have some kind of value to it.

00:37:57
Speaker 3: Is there any way to encourage the spirit?

00:38:01
Speaker 2: Yeah? Many ways, many ways really. I mean sometimes people like to have a drink. Sometimes like people like smoke weed. Sometimes people just like a cup of tea. But I think it's just about that being sensed and sensitive enough to each other that you can kind of pick up on them whatever vibration is being made.

00:38:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, Speaking of people you've worked with, is there anybody who's just collaboration wise you've started to play with where it's just an instant click.

00:38:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean luckily, Well, I mean, okay, someone like Bobby Woman. As soon as you sit down with a piano with Bobby Womak. He just has to sing one note, and yeah, it's incredible.

00:38:45
Speaker 3: I saw that some of your fans on Instagram or commenting, and they're saying they wanted you to slow down and take care of yourself and get some rest.

00:38:56
Speaker 2: Well, I've just had four days off, So there you go.

00:39:01
Speaker 3: Are you? Are you in constant perpetual motion?

00:39:04
Speaker 2: Yes, you know I say about rolling stones, but I'm happy at some I understand by the sheer law law of physics and gravity. I will I will eventually stop, and you know, and I'll be more than happy to be completely disappear in the moss.

00:39:25
Speaker 3: Is that what you want to do? Disappear in the mass.

00:39:27
Speaker 2: Life sounds like quite a nice environment to sleep.

00:39:31
Speaker 3: Eternally, it seems like the album is a bit of a maybe a comment on morality.

00:39:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose that's there. It's kind of as a lot of questions post within the record. Yeah, I don't think it's judgmental. I really am really not in a position to judge anyone. As I say, instant Charles Square, it's how fucked up. But I'm not the first to do it. So that's my kind of my one of my opening gambits really, do you.

00:40:00
Speaker 3: Pay attention to reviews about what critics are writing about the work?

00:40:05
Speaker 2: Well, if I was disingenuous, i'd say no, of course, of course I do. I mean I'm always interested. But I mean there's a kind of sort of there's like a slightly mad moment when the record is out there and you sort of get some start to get some feedback where you know, I mean I pick up on it a bit, I'm not obsessed by it. And then it's and then and then that's it. It's finished as I don't care anymore. You know, it usually lasts a few days, but it's definitely a madness.

00:40:38
Speaker 3: Does it bring you down or.

00:40:40
Speaker 2: What when people don't like it? I suppose if everyone didn't like something that I put a lot of work into, it might be a bit sort of I might, I might kind of feel a bit low. But I mean it's never like that, really, But.

00:40:54
Speaker 3: It's so nice that you have the experience of going out and playing for people because you get to see the effect on people.

00:41:00
Speaker 2: Well we see that, and that's the wonderful thing about finishing something and playing it almost simultaneously. You really, you know, while you're still and the sort of under its spell. You can cast that on other people.

00:41:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, it must just be so great. It feels so good. Exhilarius, it's great.

00:41:17
Speaker 2: So it's a good feeling for sure.

00:41:20
Speaker 3: Has your crowds changed a lot.

00:41:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's sort of there's people from our generation and people from this generation there.

00:41:30
Speaker 3: But the Gorilla's audience is really young.

00:41:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, really young. I mean sometime, I mean it's just crazy. Sometimes I kind of go into the audience and I go quite deep into the audience and sort of in the middle of the moshpit almost it's like a five year old with headphones on. It's amazing. It's wonderful. I mean, just just the most wonderful audiences. Yeah. I've had some most beautiful experiences playing live in America with Griers.

00:41:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're The Coachella set was so good. I streamed it this year.

00:41:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a wonderful band.

00:42:01
Speaker 3: So you know, it felt very joyous.

00:42:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It generally is.

00:42:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much for doing this.

00:42:09
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Tiers. Thanks for taking the sign to talk to me.

00:42:15
Speaker 1: Thanks Damon Auburn for talking to Leah Rose about Blur's new album, The Ballad of Daring You can hear that record, along with all of your favorite songs from Blur, Gorillas, and Damon Auburn's various solo works on the playlist at broken record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. Broken Record is produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Vent Taliday, Nisha Venkat, Jordan McMillan, and Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription service that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for only four ninety nine a month. Look for push and Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like the show, remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast staff. Our theme is Expecting the Beats.

00:43:19
Speaker 2: I'm justin Richmond.