Needing a drummer, 2D and Murdoc kidnapped Russel (who was fine with that) and stayed on in the band. Drummer Russel Hobbs was involved in a drive-by shooting in which his friend Del (the real life Deltron 3030) was killed and possessed Russel. Rather than serving jail time, Murdoc was sentenced to care for 2D, and during that time noticed he was an attractive guy who could sing – so he shanghaied him into his band. Phase 1 begins with bassist and Satanist from Stoke-On-Trent Murdoc, who – while attempting to steal music equipment – ran over Stu-Pot, aka 2D, named after the two dents Murdoc made in his head. To summarise loosely, the Gorillaz story is at this point divided into four phases – one for each album.
The Gorillaz universe still exists in almost its entirety online, and every bizarre, dark, hilarious twist and turn can be traced if you have the time. Hours upon hours of skits, short films (or ‘ Gorillaz Bitez’), music videos, fake interviews, games, and interactive tours can be dredged from the depths of the internet to this day, and with Gorillaz beginning to re-emerge with rumours of a new album (or, as the band’s lore would put it, re-emerging from the fallout of the events at Murdoc’s Plastic Beach hideout), we made an attempt to get our heads around all of it. The Gorillaz universe is more detailed and multifaceted than anything before it. As Albarn would later put it, “delivery of misinformation is as valuable as delivery of information.”
Before long Gorillaz spilled into real life and the non-fictional minds behind the band began to trickle into common knowledge, but by this point Albarn and Hewlett had achieved their goal: the manufactured Gorillaz universe had become so immersive that nobody really cared who was behind it. They connected with fans by giving interactive tours of their fictional studio on their website, while their off-the-wall music videos gradually developed into an immensely complex and strange story of a band unbound by reality. They created Gorillaz.īilled as the world’s first virtual band, for a brief period Gorillaz lived entirely within their self-contained multi-media universe. So they decided to push things the other way: they created a band so manufactured that the lines between fiction and reality became blurred. They were disillusioned with the lack of connection that manufactured bands had with the creative side of their music, and were finding the music videos they were watching increasingly lacking in substance. During their time sharing a flat in the late 90s/early 2000s, Blur’s Damon Albarn and comic illustrator Jamie Hewlett became bored of MTV.
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