EP.269 - JAMIE HEWLETT & DAMON ALBARN AKA GORILLAZ

Adam talks with Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz about not giving a f**k, being born in the 60s and growing up in the 70s and 80s, duetting with Mark E Smith and Lou Reed, why Damon isn't as impressed by Van Morrison and Coldplay as Adam is, partying too hard with Ant and Dec, trying to get The Spice Girls into Stockhausen, Dads, the new Gorillaz album 'The Mountain' and the experience of trying to make peace with mortality in India that inspired it. Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 22nd January, 2026 THE ADAM BUXTON BAND SPRING 2026 TOUR https://linktr.ee/theadambuxtonband BUG BOWIE SPECIAL @ THE LIGHTROOM https://lightroom.uk/whats-on/bowie-nights-adam-buxton-presents-bug-bowie-special/ SAILY 🌎 Get an exclusive 15% discount on your first Saily data plans! Use code buxton at checkout. Download Saily app or go to to https://saily.com/ https://saily.com/alexandsiggebuxton ⛵ NORD VPN EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/buxton http://nordvpn.com/buxton Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ Listen to Adam's album 'Buckle Up' https://adambuxton.lnk.to/BuckleUp Order Adam's book 'I Love You Byeee' https://lnk.to/iloveyoubyeee_ Sign up for the newsletter on Adam's website https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/ (scroll down on homepage) RELATED LINKS GORILLAZ - THE MOUNTAIN TOUR 2026 https://gorillaz.com/tour/ DAMON ALBARN'S SONGWRITING ROUTINE, USING GARAGEBAND TO CREATE BLUR SONGS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVhsZDJivpk ON TAPE NOTES PODCAST - 2023 (YOUTUBE) DAMON ALBARN: STUDIO TOUR, 'CRACKER ISLAND' COACHELLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDX6l9_58RA - APPLE MUSIC - 2023 (YOUTUBE) DAMON ALBARN - THE CULTURE SHOW SPECIAL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIMWTsj0hiA - 2014 (YOUTUBE) DAMON'S STUDIO 13 https://www.studio13london.co.uk/ (WEBSITE WITH STUDIO PICS AND GEAR LIST) THE ADAM BUXTON BAND SUPPORT ACTS ANNA B SAVAGE - THE GHOST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QawAJMjqbFg - 2022 (YOUTUBE) THE CINDYS - ETERNAL PHARMACY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLSR7GFeWTU- 2026 (YOUTUBE) TALIABLE - SCRUB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhp9D1Zes4w - 2025 (YOUTUBE) CLÉMENTINE MARCH - FIREWORKS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf3UzplJHnI - 2025 (YOUTUBE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buckston. I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this. That's the plan.

• 0:31Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buckston here. I'm with my best dog friend Rosie. Bless you. We're out for a walk in the Norfolk countryside on this quite cold, but bright blustery day in the latter half of April 2026. It's looking very beautiful out here. Spring has definitely sprung, is it? Well, it's sprangy and the blossom is out. Everything's looking very lush and beautiful. Like you, if you don't mind me saying, I'm sorry it's been a while since the last podcast,

• 1:15Adam Buxton?

  but I've been working unusually hard, I would say, on a new six-part comedy series for Audible. It's called Success Pod and it's now nearly finished and will hopefully be available sometime in May, I think. I'll let you know when we have an exact date. It's a mixture of new nuggets of conversation with some of my favourite previous guests from this podcast, as well as some conversations with Rosie, right, Rosie? Oh, yes, most certainly. As well as sketches all around the theme of what success looks like for a middle-aged guy who listens to a lot of podcasts, but isn't on social media and is occasionally concerned

• 1:59Adam Buxton?

  that he is becoming totally irrelevant. Not based on me, obviously. I've also been dusting off my bug David Bowie special, as it is the 10th anniversary of his death. And in June and July this year, I'll be performing it in a special enhanced form, like with some added visual elements, to take advantage of the technology at the amazing Lightroom immersive-projection-based exhibition space in King's Cross. And those shows are going to be taking place as part of the Lightroom's Bowie Nights

• 2:39Adam Buxton?

  season, which runs from May to September this year, and includes a series of events celebrating Bowie's life and work, with the centerpiece being a new film made specially for the Lightroom called You Are Not Alone. The blurb says, "With 11-meter-tall projected visuals and newly mastered immersive audio, You Are Not Alone features iconic performance footage, rarely-heard interviews, and never-before-seen material, celebrating the creative mind and soul of David Bowie." I'm going to see a preview this week, very excited. I'm only doing four performances of the Bug Bowie special, one in June and three in early July, so book now, there's a link in the description.

• 3:25Adam Buxton?

  And of course, don't forget, I'll be playing music shows with the Adam Buxton Band in May, just a couple of weeks away. So if you haven't already, get your tickets now, it's going to be a fun time. I'm really looking forward to those shows. Links also in the description, busy description today. Okay, Gorillaz. This was a good waffle session with musician Damon Albarn and artist and illustrator Jamie Hewlett, which took place shortly before the release of the Gorillaz album The Mountain, the band's ninth since their debut, Demon Days, in 2001. Gorillaz were then and continue to be a project conceived as a way to bring together artists

• 4:09Adam Buxton?

  who might not otherwise ever meet, to make music with Damon, unified behind Jamie Hewlett's illustrations and animations of the four fictional band members of Gorillaz. That is, lead vocalist and keyboardist 2D, guitarist Noodle, bassist Murdock, and drummer Russell Hobbs. The Gorillaz Mountain Tour kicked off on March 20 in Manchester, and it wraps up at London's Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on June 20.

• 4:42Adam Buxton?

  Going to try and get along to that one. There will be support there from Argentine rapper and singer Trueno, and Sparks, no less. They are two of the guest artists who appear on the new album alongside idols, Johnny Marr, Black Thought, Indian music legend Asher Bosley, Anushka Shankar, Gruff Rees, and in posthumous vocal form, using hitherto unheard recordings from previous Gorillaz sessions, Dennis Hopper, Mark E. Smith of The Fall, Bobby Womack, and other non-living legends to chime with the album's theme of making peace with mortality. My conversation with Damon and Jamie,

• 5:24Adam Buxton?

  neither of whom I had properly met before, was recorded in the downstairs control room of Damon's Studio 13 recording complex in West London towards the end of January this year, 2026. And, as you'll hear, it was a conversational fun house, at times thoughtful and deep, delivered in the lovely smoky vocal tones of Albarn and Hewlett. But it was also occasionally quite childish and even chippy, albeit in an enjoyable way, I hope you'll agree. When we'd finished recording, I was treated to a short tour of the studios, a little of which you'll hear

• 6:06Adam Buxton?

  as a short bonus at the end of the main conversation. And Damon correctly assumed that I would be impressed by various items of gear he had amassed that once belonged to Florian Schneider, one of the founders of German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk. All in all, I was made to feel thoroughly welcome for a good old-fashioned, no-holds-barred, indiscreet ramble fest. And it began with me setting up my mics, wondering what to expect while my backup recorder was running, and telling Damon and Jamie about my cycle ride from East London that day, during which I had listened, not for the first time, to the new Gorillaz album

• 6:50Adam Buxton?

  and had been, in every sense, transported. It's a really lovely record. Back at the end for a bit more of a catch-up, but right now, with Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn, here we go.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  I hear you cycled.

• 7:45Adam Buxton?

  I cycled from Brick Lane and it's the exact length of your new record.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 7:53Adam Buxton?

  Fifty something minutes.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Really? And how was it listening to the mountain while dodging the perilous London traffic?

• 7:59Adam Buxton?

  It was good, actually. It centered me.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 8:03Adam Buxton?

  Because it's very stressful rush hour traffic on a bike, especially as biking now is totally lawless.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Well, and also when it's wet.

• 8:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I got lucky with the weather. It didn't actually rain on me.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  No, but it's the leaves and...

• 8:19Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay. And also, people don't seem to know on the tow path.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Left or right?

• 8:23Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Oh, fucking Christ, man. If I see, if I see, if I see a tourist coming, I'm going to keep on the left-hand side.

• 8:33Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  I'm not going to. I'm going to run you down if you don't move.

• 8:37Adam Buxton?

  Do you use your bell?

• 8:38Speaker 03

  I haven't got a bell.

• 8:39Adam Buxton?

  Ah, you need a bell. I've got a very piercing bell.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  I don't have a helmet, a bell or lights.

• 8:45Adam Buxton?

  Fucking hell.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  I never have had, ever.

• 8:47Adam Buxton?

  Is that an ethical choice? Why?

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Because, um, I don't subscribe to... I don't like, I don't clean my yoga mat after yoga.

• 9:04Adam Buxton?

  Why is that?

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Because I just think it's fucking...

• 9:09Speaker 03

  That's part of modern life is rubbish, you know, it's an old kind of sort of saying of mine.

• 9:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, sure.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Um, it's just, no one cleaned their mats before, before Covid.

• 9:23Adam Buxton?

  Uh-huh.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  And now it's just sort of arbitrary fucking detergent everywhere.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Great for detergent producers, but also just systematically devaluing our, our immune system.

• 9:39Adam Buxton?

  But I would argue that helmets are a different, are doing a different job.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Shall I tell you the problem with helmets?

• 9:46Adam Buxton?

  We're on helmets, uh, on bikes, Jamie.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  You're really, really, really aware, aware if you don't wear a helmet.

• 9:52Adam Buxton?

  You're really aware.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Way more aware. Your spatial balance is better. Um, no headphones. I mean, you were doing the worst thing is listening to music on.

• 10:01Adam Buxton?

  Well, you see, I argue exactly what you argue with the helmets. I argue that listening to music at not too loud a volume. So you can still hear if people yell at you or beep at you or whatever. But I do find that it sort of blocks things out in a useful way. I don't get too, I get more centered and I can concentrate. And also it's like the most enjoyable.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  No, it's great. I love it. But what I'm saying is not.

• 10:29Adam Buxton?

  Sure. From a safety point of view.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  If you're wearing a helmet and you're listening to music, you're, it's like.

• 10:35Adam Buxton?

  You may as well just ride straight into the traffic is what you're saying.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, it's like, it's like, yeah, it's, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I just.

• 10:44Adam Buxton?

  No, look, I'm on shaky ground. I know that it's frowned upon to have headphones in while you're cycling.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  Well, no, everyone does. I mean.

• 10:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. But I do stop at the lights. I'm, I try. It's, I'm not saying I stop at every single one.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  I'm never.

• 10:57Adam Buxton?

  Do you not?

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Ever. Can you ever lock your bike up either, do you? Uh, not so much, no. I park wherever I like.

• 11:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  In my car.

• 11:06Adam Buxton?

  Fucking hell, man. You're living the dream.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't care. I don't have a telephone.

• 11:13Adam Buxton?

  This is what we want.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  I have no social media. You know, I, sometimes I don't even really wipe my bum properly. Oh God, here we go. Gone from helmets to your shitty bum. No, it's not all the time, but I'm saying, you know what I mean? I'm never letting, I'm never letting. Someone would do a photo.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  I I I I just don't allow many of the conventions that slow the the day down to get in my way.

• 11:44Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Ever.

• 11:46Adam Buxton?

  And you've constructed a life that accommodates that way of living.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Yes, within certain parameters, I can do what the fuck I like.

• 11:53Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  I I have the sort of taste and interest of of someone like maybe in their early twenties who has a penchant for secondhand things.

• 12:04Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  So with my fiscal position, I'm equivalent to a kind of student billionaire.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  So, you know, I've never wanted fancy cars or anything and, you know. But we're we are like that, both of us really are.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  Quite a fancy car, though.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  Anyway, no, we don't have, we don't take.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  I have one, I I I've got a G bag. That's not a fancy car.

• 12:30Speaker 04

  And jewellery and have our.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  I I live in Devon, so I have to travel a lot. I can't cycle down to Devon. You haven't recorded that, have you?

• 12:37Adam Buxton?

  All that stuff, yeah, that's going in.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:39Adam Buxton?

  The stuff about you not wiping your bum and doing what you want, that's gold.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  This is what the fans want to know.

• 12:47Adam Buxton?

  That's what you want from a rock star.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  I don't say I don't, I it's it's more of the principle of the thing. If I'm in a hurry.

• 12:54Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  I won't waste extra time doing something that not necessary to do at that moment.

• 12:59Adam Buxton?

  Sure. And also, it should be noted that while you're not stopping at lights, you are not menacing pedestrians.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Oh, no, not at all. Oh, no, no, no, I'm not. I if there's people, I'm not going to run someone over.

• 13:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I'm not like that. I'm not aggressive at all. I just get on with it.

• 13:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  You know?

• 13:16Adam Buxton?

  Jamie's got a a patient, knowing expression on his face. Is that fair to say?

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, patient, all-knowing expression on his face. Well, especially where you're concerned, dear boy.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  You got up on an interesting side of the bed this morning.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  Same side as my bed's against the wall.

• 13:37Adam Buxton?

  This is a warning which should be considered pressing. In this next bit, there is something you may find distressing. You can hear the sound of someone eating. Munch, no, chop, yuck, slurp, ugh, num num num, crunch, chew, ugh, smack, yuck, uh. I've been Googling traits of Aries people. Ah, you're not Aries, are you? I don't really subscribe to all that stuff. I don't either. I'm a Gemini. Oh, I like Gemini.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  You're a Gemini.

• 14:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  That's a classic Gemini.

• 14:15Adam Buxton?

  What's that?

• 14:16Speaker 03

  You're not subscribing to it if you can't make your mind up, can you?

• 14:20Adam Buxton?

  That's true, actually, yeah. There you go, see? I mean, the thing is that they do have the ring of truth, a lot of the traits that are ascribed to different star signs.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  We're not reading that shit, but there are similarities in people determined by the year they're born and the time of year they're born. Similarities enough that you can discover the tiniest amount about somebody.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  For someone who wants it presented to them in a purely empiric way. The universe is comprised of atoms. And because of our relationships to other masses of atoms like planets and stars, there's movement all the time. So depending on what time of the year and the position of everything within the cosmos, there's a difference. Subtle, but there. So it's irrefutable that the time of year you're born has some effect on the outcome, I think.

• 15:16Adam Buxton?

  Hmm, have you always been cosmic like that?

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 15:19Adam Buxton?

  I've never really appreciated that. He's a pagan. Aha, it comes through a lot more in Gorillaz stuff than it did in Blur songs, for example. Although there was a cosmic element, obviously, to songs like Universal and there was sort of cosmic references.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Strange news from another star.

• 15:35Adam Buxton?

  Well, exactly. Anyway, Damon, you've chosen to eat grapes.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  Is that, is that?

• 15:44Adam Buxton?

  That is something that I get so much shit for from listeners. Yeah, they go absolutely nuts. Like, if I say something incredibly racist, that's fine, but if people eat.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Okay, I just finished this one.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  It's the sloshing and the juicy chewing.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  They're not particularly good grapes.

• 16:05Adam Buxton?

  If people eat on podcasts, you get immediately cancelled in the podcast.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  What about people smoke on podcasts?

• 16:11Adam Buxton?

  Smoke away, smoke it up.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Great, I intend to.

• 16:14Adam Buxton?

  Would you, are you gonna smoke in this room?

• 16:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is his studio, we can do what the fuck we want here.

• 16:19Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 16:21Adam Buxton?

  No bum wiping, no helmets.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  I wish I hadn't meant to do that.

• 16:24Adam Buxton?

  Smoking, grape.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  I really wish I hadn't.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  I can't believe you said that out loud, isn't it?

• 16:31Adam Buxton?

  I was just having a laugh.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  That's the inner circle of trust thing that is doing.

• 16:35Adam Buxton?

  Yogamat covered in a thick layer of grime.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  I can't believe all of that stuff. That's not. Next time I go to a yoga class, everyone's gonna look at me because they've listened to your fucking podcast and they know that I don't do that. And I'm gonna be exiled from the yoga community.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  You do sweat a lot when you do yoga.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Not that much.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  I'm just kind of, you know, creating an even more vulgar picture of you.

• 17:01Adam Buxton?

  It's nice, it's very earthy and sexy.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. All of these things need to be clarified.

• 17:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Before Covid.

• 17:07Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  People did not clean their yoga mats.

• 17:10Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  So why do they clean them now?

• 17:16Adam Buxton?

  I agree with you, everyone's got to.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  Exactly, that's all I'm saying. It's like, you know.

• 17:21Adam Buxton?

  I think I did clean, no, I mean, I cleaned mats, exercise mats, like periodically. If they start to build up.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Periodically is different, but like every day is ridiculous.

• 17:33Adam Buxton?

  It is ridiculous.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  I think it leans the other way then. I think things become over sterile and I think it's not good for people to have all that detergent on their hands all the time, you know?

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Well, you know, we were raised in the seventies when, you know, we were kids in the seventies when you'd eat a worm or eat mud or fall out of a tree or.

• 17:51Adam Buxton?

  I'm one year younger than you guys. I was born in June sixty nine.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Oh, okay, so you're a sixties kid?

• 17:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, just got in there.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Best decades ever, right? A kid in the seventies, teenager in the eighties.

• 18:03Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  Young person in the nineties.

• 18:06Adam Buxton?

  It was a very privileged upbringing that I had in lots of ways, but yeah, very privileged to be a carefree kid in the eighties. Especially nowadays, I look back and it just seems like a dream.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  Out on your bike all day.

• 18:19Adam Buxton?

  That you were just.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Well, I was out on my bike in the seventies in East London.

• 18:23Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Like seventy six, summer of seventy six, which we all remember.

• 18:29Adam Buxton?

  Queen pulled down her knicks in the summer of seventy six. She licked her bum and said yum yum. That was all nineteen seventy six.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  It's the kind of thing I was doing and still do.

• 18:41Adam Buxton?

  As we've heard.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Didn't she suffocate the ants as well?

• 18:44Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no. What do you do if you wanna go a poo? In an English country garden.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Pull down your pants.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Suffocate the ants.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  In an English country garden. Oh, good old days.

• 18:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. So you were painting a picture though of cycling around on your, on your chopper.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  No, I didn't have a chopper. I had nothing, nothing so kind of mainstream as that.

• 19:07Speaker 04

  You had a penny farthing. That hand me down.

• 19:10Adam Buxton?

  Were you cycling around, Jamie?

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Oh my God, all I did was like, oh, my grifter, I had a grifter.

• 19:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  My brother had a chopper.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  His family were more middle class than mine, I think, because I never had anything like that.

• 19:20Adam Buxton?

  Being class shamed very early on in this.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Not middle class at all.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Even allowed to have DMs.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  My family were butchers.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but probably butchers earned more than art teachers.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  Possibly.

• 19:32Adam Buxton?

  High end butchers, but they were violent, Damon. They were, they were notorious.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  They were violent people. I mean, I got the slipper, the ruler and the cane.

• 19:43Adam Buxton?

  Like from your parents or teachers?

• 19:44Speaker 03

  No, not from my parents. No, no.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  Which teacher gave you the slipper, the home economics?

• 19:51Speaker 03

  No, it was actually.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  I got the wet lettuce.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  I got my, yeah, I got the slipper at primary school and the cane at primary.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  I got the cane. I got the cane on my hand.

• 19:59Adam Buxton?

  What did you get the cane for?

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Ruler was on the hand.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  And bunking off school.

• 20:04Adam Buxton?

  Cane for smoking.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  And playing truant, going down to the graveyard all day and hanging out and sniffing Tippex thinner.

• 20:10Adam Buxton?

  Ah, in the graveyard? Blimey.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I got the cane twice on my hand and one on the back of my legs.

• 20:17Adam Buxton?

  Damon, what did you get beaten for?

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Um, firstly, I used to put my hand up to every question, whether I knew it or not.

• 20:27Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh, just to be a dick?

• 20:30Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 20:31Speaker 04

  Just to be a dick. That was the reasoning in his head at the time.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't the reasoning in my head at the time, but with hindsight.

• 20:39Adam Buxton?

  That's what was happening.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  That probably was what was, but you know, to be fair, I did know at least half.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Alright, so you got the questions right most of the time?

• 20:48Speaker 03

  No, about half.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  Half?

• 20:50Speaker 03

  But that wasn't enough for it not to be kind of considered idiot behaviour. And I don't know, um, just wasn't very popular at school. In fact, I was popular, I was actually really popular at school in Leightonstone. And then my parents moved to rural Essex and from that point onwards, I was considered a complete outsider. I suppose it didn't really help that the first week I went to a new primary school, because I moved there when I was ten, so I had one more year of primary school. Um, for some reason, I got everyone in my year to come and watch me eat ladybirds.

• 21:29Adam Buxton?

  Oh, what made you do that?

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Stayed with me for the whole of my secondary education.

• 21:34Adam Buxton?

  Did that make you more or less popular?

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Less.

• 21:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, really, they just thought.

• 21:39Adam Buxton?

  Ladybird boy.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  Very strange. And I played the violin.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  Oh dear, arson crafts.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 21:45Speaker 04

  That explains your lovely red lips.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Essex in the early eighties was not a.

• 21:50Adam Buxton?

  Don't eat ladybirds and don't play the violin. Ladybirds are so bitter.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  In Essex.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  Have you tried the ladybird?

• 21:56Adam Buxton?

  No, I don't want to eat them because just picking them up.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  No, I would never do that now and I won't even kill a fly or a mosquito. I'm actually quite militant about that.

• 22:10Adam Buxton?

  Yes, we were talking about the fact that you're both Aries, the typical traits of the Aries, direct, sometimes blunt, values honesty over tact.

• 22:24Adam Buxton?

  Protective of friends and loved ones, prefers passion and intensity to subtlety. Are all these ringing bells?

• 22:33Speaker 04

  I mean, it depends on the context, doesn't it?

• 22:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  Does it say really, really, really, really great as well?

• 22:39Adam Buxton?

  It does, it says really cool, fun, interesting, creative. It does say bold and energetic, confident and assertive, independent, courageous, enthusiastic.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  I mean, was there not to like about Aries?

• 22:51Adam Buxton?

  Those are the core strengths, common challenges faced by your people. Impulsive, impatient, hot tempered, competitive, restless.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 23:04Adam Buxton?

  So you said no to hot tempered, Jamie?

• 23:06Speaker 04

  I'm not hot tempered.

• 23:07Adam Buxton?

  No.

• 23:07Speaker 04

  No, I, I, I keep my cool, unless I'm really pushed.

• 23:10Adam Buxton?

  When was the last time you lost it?

• 23:12Speaker 04

  Well, I guess that would be if somebody was um messing with family members or people I loved or in intruding on my personal space.

• 23:21Adam Buxton?

  Yep.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  But I don't, my father was very angry. He spent his whole life being angry, so I grew up with a lot of shouting in the house. So I didn't really like the sound of raised voices.

• 23:31Adam Buxton?

  Why was he angry?

• 23:33Speaker 04

  Well, because his mother was angry. It's kind of passed down into the next generation and I don't think he ever really thought about why or how to sort that out. So I was a little bit like him to begin with and I got it out of my system really early because I just didn't want to repeat that, you know?

• 23:49Speaker 03

  I think, looking back on our fathers, I think you have to really take into account the fact that they were born either in the middle or at the end of the Second World War.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  And I don't think people in this country have any understanding of the devastation of Second World War and how that formed people, you know, very different. And um, you know, this country is unrecognizable to that country now. I mean, in some, many very positive ways, but also, you know, I think the sense of entitlement people have now is kind of, people back then looked and they just go, you are, you've lost your mind, you know? What people expect as opposed to what they expected. And I think, you know, the dissonance of those sixty, seventy years is, is hard really to.

• 24:42Adam Buxton?

  Overstate.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Overstate, yeah.

• 24:44Adam Buxton?

  We, us three, grew up at a time in the late sixties, where there were many parallels to things that are going on now. Lots of tumultuous things happening.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  But, but I mean, in East London, there were still bomb sites that hadn't been fixed when I went in the early seventies.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  I think when we were at school, we were taught duck and cover, nuclear war.

• 25:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  Then we became teenagers and the AIDS virus appeared and we were told lots of bullshit about that.

• 25:09Adam Buxton?

  Did that scare you?

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Well, until I realised that it was over exaggerated and the information we were getting wasn't true.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know if it was over exaggerated.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  No, the whole thing about if you even go in a room with somebody who has.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, all of that, all of that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The scaremongering aspect, of course.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  Then it was IRA bombings, then it was, uh, then it was, uh.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  I think the IRA bombings came before AIDS.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  I'm just saying that from an early age up until probably in my thirties, we lived in fear of something. There was always something we were supposed to be afraid of.

• 25:40Adam Buxton?

  I mean, every generation does, don't they?

• 25:42Speaker 03

  But it was, it was bombings, nuclear, AIDS.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  Nuclear war, when you're ten years old at school, being taught in assembly, duck and cover, is terrifying.

• 25:52Adam Buxton?

  My mum used to say, it's not gonna happen. That was her, um, answer to that whole problem. She would deflect it.

• 25:59Speaker 04

  Well, she was right, up until a point.

• 26:01Adam Buxton?

  So far, she's been right.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  So far, so good, touch wood.

• 26:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  You got on with enjoying a racing round on your bicycle in the park without the fear of that hanging over you like a dark cloud, you know? So that was good she said that to you.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  I think comparatively, that anxiety has been magnified so acutely since social media.

• 26:22Adam Buxton?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  I don't think, I don't think we.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  Time to get me started, time.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  No, but I honestly don't think we even understand how difficult it is for kids now. That the amount of things that they're having to carry and assimilate.

• 26:35Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  It's.

• 26:36Adam Buxton?

  Do you guys have kids?

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, our kids are grown up.

• 26:39Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  I have three.

• 26:41Adam Buxton?

  Are you aware of what their anxieties are in that way?

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 26:46Adam Buxton?

  Do they worry about war and things like that? I don't get the impression that mine do that much. They have other anxieties.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  They don't worry about war. They worry about other things.

• 26:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  They're all creative and they worry about how they're supposed to fit in.

• 26:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  Find their place. I think when we were younger, there were gaps for us to slot ourselves into, you know, I could see where I should be and what I could do, but they're all very creative, our kids, but they're like, where do we start? What do we do? How do we get into this? You know, we don't want to follow the same rules as, you know, we have a designer, a photographer, a documentary maker and a musician amongst our kids. But they're like, they don't know how to get off the starting blocks.

• 27:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do they like being with you guys? Do they like being with their family?

• 27:33Speaker 03

  I think so, yeah.

• 27:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I just asked because much as I loved my parents, I didn't really want to hang out with them.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  No, they hang out with us. Yeah, no.

• 27:42Adam Buxton?

  And I think a lot of people of our generation, when we were growing up in the eighties, you want to get out of the house, right?

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, we all got out very early.

• 27:49Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  It's not quite the same now.

• 27:51Adam Buxton?

  No, it's not. I mean, we had the.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  But that's also to do with the fact that, you know, when I came back to London, um, when I was eighteen, there were squats.

• 28:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  I lived in squats for years.

• 28:02Adam Buxton?

  Did you?

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, everyone lived in squats. It was brilliant.

• 28:06Adam Buxton?

  I certainly didn't live in squats, David. I lived in a nice cozy room.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  My point is, young people could live in London.

• 28:13Adam Buxton?

  Sure. In a way that they can't now.

• 28:16Speaker 04

  They can't now, exactly.

• 28:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's extremely expensive city London, so that's why, you know, I live in France, but I have my apartment in London, which I kept because once you get a place in London, you don't get rid of it.

• 28:29Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 28:29Speaker 04

  Both my sons were there for years. One's moved on, but the other one's still there. Because where else is he gonna live? It's impossible to afford the rent.

• 28:39Adam Buxton?

  Yes, and you know, we are, I hope, all parents that love our kids. We wanna protect them. We want them to be okay. But at the same time, what you were saying before, Damon, about the grime and not avoiding the grime too much because you cut an important part of what it is to be alive out if you do that. How do you navigate that with your own children? How do you tread the line between protecting them from the worst and and just exposing them to things, the knocks, the things that they are?

• 29:07Speaker 04

  You mean making it too easy for them?

• 29:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm I'm.

• 29:11Adam Buxton?

  Do you worry about that?

• 29:11Speaker 04

  Be a bit guilty of that.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  Um, I I probably am a bit guilty of that in some ways, but I also have been very hard on my daughter as far as kind of culture and education and.

• 29:28Adam Buxton?

  Stop listening to that terrible album. Is that the kind of?

• 29:31Speaker 03

  No, no, no, not at all, not at all. But like, family holidays in North Korea.

• 29:36Adam Buxton?

  Okay, right.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  That kind of thing.

• 29:38Adam Buxton?

  Did you really go for a family holiday in North Korea?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  With my daughter, yeah.

• 29:41Adam Buxton?

  Really?

• 29:42Speaker 03

  I did, really. I've always travelled with him, so maybe my daughter's a bit more politically aware than a lot of people of her generation. I know that for a fact because she's always telling me how frustrated she is when she says, no one seems to care what's happening.

• 29:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  It's definitely one thing we've done with our kids is they've travelled with us. So they've seen a lot of the world from an early age, and now they go off and travel themselves. And my son just got back from Chicago. He's making a documentary there. My other son's just been to Japan. They like to go and travel. They have that bug, which I think is one of the best educations.

• 30:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's a massive privilege. That's amazing.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Well, it wasn't, it wasn't a privilege, but they're not flying first class. I mean, they're just, they're getting on a plane like anybody else can, but the fact they have the bug to go and discover and and see something new and get out of.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  They are privileged, so there's no getting around it.

• 30:34Adam Buxton?

  But also, I don't know how travel itself is gonna change.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  Well, yeah.

• 30:40Adam Buxton?

  In the years coming with the climate crisis and how that has to change.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I I I grapple with that, but I I also know that I spent uh thirty years just cycling.

• 30:54Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  I I I only got my licence in my mid fifties because I was started living down in Devon and I'm just impossible. You can't you can't live in the middle of nowhere in Devon if you don't drive.

• 31:07Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  And it's so hilly where I live that my, you know, I mean, literally going to get a pint of milk is an hour and a half.

• 31:18Adam Buxton?

  On the bike.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:19Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. But what a workout.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Same as a bit like the Forrest Gump of the music scene.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  I don't see anything in what I just said that would bring that.

• 31:27Speaker 04

  It's the cycling for thirty years.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, but not in this one direction.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  The walking for four years or.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  It was a it was a weak comparison, but I felt we needed a joke at this point.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, this is a very long, interesting, philosophic position that cannot be explained within an hour.

• 31:48Adam Buxton?

  Cars are terrible. I think we agree that cars.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  I prefer trains by far.

• 31:52Adam Buxton?

  I prefer trains.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Trains.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Sleeper trains as well, good.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Not so much in this country.

• 31:58Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  But the principle of the train.

• 32:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  I mean, you know.

• 32:03Adam Buxton?

  Trains and bikes.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Let us mourn for a minute the old rolling stock of British Rail where.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  The buffet car.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Windows that you could pull down, the buffet car.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Buffet car.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  The the fabric.

• 32:17Adam Buxton?

  That's slightly rose tinted spectacles, though. I mean, British Rail back in the day was the butt of every single joke.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  Oh, as opposed to.

• 32:23Adam Buxton?

  Because, yeah, of course, it's not better now and it's different now.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  Can't be bothered to make the joke anymore because it's so ridiculous.

• 32:29Adam Buxton?

  But the trains never ran on time.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  I always thought I always thought what uh an extraordinary admission of failure, mind the gap.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Is.

• 32:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  And it is like a mantra every morning, the whole of the workforce in Britain.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Mind the gap. Yes, I mind the gap. But what is the gap? It is the gap of failure altogether now.

• 33:05Adam Buxton?

  The platform is badly designed.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Fine.

• 33:08Adam Buxton?

  The platform is badly designed.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  As opposed to China, where trains speed through stations with a millimeter gap.

• 33:51Adam Buxton?

  Here's some of the things that were happening when you guys were born in March and April sixty eight. Damon, you were March. Jamie, you were April.

• 33:59Speaker 04

  April third.

• 34:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. So this is the time at the end of the sixties that really marked the end of the kind of peace and love part of the sixties hippie dream. Meili massacre happened in March sixty eight, Grosvenor Square anti Vietnam student protest outside the embassy.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  You had the Paris student protest, didn't you as well?

• 34:21Adam Buxton?

  Paris protests.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  That's a big one.

• 34:23Adam Buxton?

  Student protests in Germany and the US. They're protesting about all the same things that people are protesting about today. About capitalism, about war, about.

• 34:34Adam Buxton?

  Wealth inequality, Enoch Powell, Rivers of Blood speech, April 68. Assassination of Martin Luther King.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:43Adam Buxton?

  April 68. I mean, can you imagine how scary the world looked at that point and how out of control everything was?

• 34:51Speaker 03

  Then we we go into the Cuba crisis.

• 34:53Adam Buxton?

  Culturally, Van Morrison was recording Astral Weeks.

• 34:56Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 34:57Adam Buxton?

  So that's good, isn't it?

• 34:58Speaker 04

  That's good.

• 35:00Adam Buxton?

  Damon's not fussed.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  I mean, hasn't, uh, Van Morrison just sang the same song for 50 years?

• 35:07Adam Buxton?

  Come on.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  (singing) (mumbling).

• 35:11Adam Buxton?

  That is not a good Van Morrison impression.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  I'm glad he didn't sing that song over and over.

• 35:16Speaker 03

  (mumbling).

• 35:19Adam Buxton?

  What is that? That's not Van Morrison.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  I I think Morrison, Van Morrison has got some wonderful songs.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  He's got some growling.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Well, there's wonderful songs, but, uh, the limpest handshake of anyone I have ever met, ever.

• 35:34Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 35:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, just so non-committal.

• 35:36Speaker 04

  That's a real Aries comment as well. If you give a limp handshake, the Aries, oh, pathetic. It's gonna be a strong handshake.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Just the magnitude of his disinterest.

• 35:47Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  Was.

• 35:48Adam Buxton?

  He's not known for his personal charm.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  No.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  No. Our ex-manager used to manage Van.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  No, he didn't.

• 35:55Speaker 04

  Chris.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  No, he didn't.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Yes, he did.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  No, he didn't.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Yes, he did.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  No, he didn't.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Yes, he did.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  I think he did.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  He told me he did. So was he lying?

• 36:04Speaker 03

  He managed, uh, John Cale.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  And and Thin Lizzy?

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Thin Lizzy, Ultravox.

• 36:11Speaker 04

  I thought he did Van.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Dead or Alive.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  Dead or, okay. I'm pretty sure he told me he did Van and he told me he's not the nicest person in the world to look after because he's very, very grumpy.

• 36:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, everyone knows that about Van.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  No, uh.

• 36:23Adam Buxton?

  But Astral Weeks.

• 36:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, one. Come on, there's more than one. Anyway, let's not get hung up. I'm sorry.

• 36:29Adam Buxton?

  Name me a number one.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  Name you another good Van Morrison album. Are you joking? Moon Dance.

• 36:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  But that's a song. No, it's an album. Is it? Yeah. It's a brilliant album. What other songs have it got on it? Uh, it's got Brand New Day. Clearly you're a Van Morrison fan. I love him. I'm a Van, I love Van Morrison too. But you're both Van Morrison fans? Feed and Fleece. And he's never shook his hand. Yeah. No, listen, I'm not. I think, I think, okay, living within music every day. Yep. And understanding the mechanics of music, to a degree. I'll give you that. I find it quite rudimentary and consistently rudimentary. Are you bashing Van again? No, you brought him up. I'd never, I would never have mentioned Van Morrison, ever. You find Astral Weeks rudimentary?

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Somewhat, yeah. Fucking hell. You don't get into conversations about music. Just because it's called Astral Weeks doesn't mean that it's complicated. There's free jazz all over that thing. Free jazz is not complicated. Do you know how, have you ever played free jazz? No. Right then, so you don't know. You're impressed by free jazz, aren't you? I'm impressed by that free jazz. Clearly, clearly you're impressed by the word jazz. I'm not unimpressed by it. No, I love jazz. I love jazz. But, you know, Philonius Monk, now that's impressive jazz. That is good jazz. Yeah. I do love some of Van Morrison's songs. I just, I just, I'm not as big a fan as you are. Clearly. And it's, it is. Clearly. Because he gave you a limp handshake. Yes, I think so.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  At later with Jules or something, was it? Where was it? Where did you meet him? No, it wasn't later at Jules, actually. Well, that's where people meet. How would he know where it was? Where was it? That's, the fact that you, that you think that is everything I need to know. Come on, that's the most likely place you're gonna meet someone like Van Morrison. Why is it the most likely place? Because that's the genius of Jules. He gets them all together, all the greats. I love Jules, hon. He's a lovely person. I love him.

• 38:33Adam Buxton?

  Uh, who was it? Oh, it was The Fall that stipulated that if they went on later with Jules, part of their contract was Jules Holland was not allowed to play boogie woogie piano anywhere near them.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  That sounds very Marky Smith.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  But also, Marky Smith always used to send me a Christmas card.

• 38:50Adam Buxton?

  Did he?

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, in fact, the only people I get Christmas cards from who I've worked with are Elton John and the late Marky Smith. Actually, to be fair, Paulson has sent me a few over the years.

• 39:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Uh, what were you gonna say to him?

• 39:03Speaker 04

  I was just saying that we worked with Marky Smith and we had a pretty good relationship with him. I mean, for all of the sort of stories of, um...

• 39:11Adam Buxton?

  Irrascibility, speaking of...

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, we got on really well. We had a great time with him and he was really cool. We had a lot of fun, but yeah.

• 39:18Adam Buxton?

  Which album was that one?

• 39:19Speaker 03

  2010.

• 39:20Speaker 04

  Plastic Beach, wasn't it?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  We only worked with him once.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  He was sitting right here, in this studio.

• 39:25Adam Buxton?

  In the studio?

• 39:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, like, the hardest person to convince to do something was Lou Reed.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  We went to, off Union Square in New York in a studio and it was me, Damon and Remy, Remy Kabaka, who's the kind of the other third member of Cruelers. And Lou arrived and Damon said, "Hey Lou, nice to meet you. This is..." went to introduce me and Lou said, "You can fuck off." And then to Remy, "You can fuck off too."

• 39:48Adam Buxton?

  Literally?

• 39:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. So we fucked off to go and we left Damon alone with Lou. We fucked off to do some shopping, you know? And by the time we got back...

• 39:56Speaker 03

  Saw my little face in the window of the door, as you do.

• 39:59Speaker 04

  Don't leave me. And by the time we got back, they'd done this song. But he was, he was still a little bit, would never speak to me. Then I drew an image of him. And then suddenly he started to be nicer to me. Next time I met him, and then he wanted to meet the whole band. So he kind of, he went from being ice cold to being very warm.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's like a stone.

• 40:18Adam Buxton?

  In a nice way?

• 40:20Speaker 03

  He's a stone. Cold when you pick it up, you hold it close to you, warms up.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  Oh, that's lovely, Damon.

• 40:28Adam Buxton?

  Were you gonna tell me the rest of this information about the stone as soon as you said it?

• 40:32Speaker 03

  No, I was looking to see if you understood that basic metaphor.

• 40:36Adam Buxton?

  No, I didn't. All I was getting was that...

• 40:38Speaker 03

  That's why you like astral weeds, because it's like, you know...

• 40:41Adam Buxton?

  Because I'm not...

• 40:42Speaker 03

  It's lax metaphor.

• 40:43Adam Buxton?

  Oh my god.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  I feel a bit of Aries-Gemini competition building here.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  I'm only saying this because he clearly is such a fan.

• 40:51Adam Buxton?

  It's so perverse.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  I am perverse.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  Don't let him get under your skin.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Sorry, I've seen a weakness.

• 41:01Adam Buxton?

  This is the hill that I'm dying on is defending Van Morrison. That's not something I expected.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm only, I'm just being silly.

• 41:12Adam Buxton?

  Of course.

• 41:13Speaker 03

  Honestly.

• 41:13Adam Buxton?

  Marky Smith has been resurrected on this record.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, really. Like, I mean, truly. I mean, he's kind of sort of, and his words, shrunken china heads and peg leg slave traders and all these crazy visions that have been stored for 15 years and they, on the mountain, they've just been in a delirious outpouring.

• 41:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  They've, they've reemerged, um, which shows you that his mind and his visions were acute.

• 41:43Speaker 04

  Those kind of lyrics give birth to incredible illustrations. You get lyrics like that, you can't really go wrong, can you?

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Look behind you. Do you see that tape machine there?

• 42:06Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  That comes from Elvis's studio.

• 42:08Adam Buxton?

  No way.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  Oh, and you see that lamp over there?

• 42:13Speaker 03

  And, and I've just got.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  You've got some of Florian's stuff in here.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. In the, uh, upper room there, there's, um.

• 42:19Adam Buxton?

  You've got Kraftwerk gear.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. A Kraftwerk synthesizer from Quiet.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  And a typewriter with covered in DNA.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  I've got Florian's typewriter.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's upstairs, I think.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 42:30Adam Buxton?

  You've got a Kraftwerk synthesizer?

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just got it, yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 04

  Holy shit. There was a big auction of his stuff.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  I'll show you it later.

• 42:37Adam Buxton?

  I'd love to see it.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:38Adam Buxton?

  And when you play it, can you hear what songs they would have recorded with it?

• 42:43Speaker 04

  He's programmed stuff into it. It's bespoke.

• 42:46Adam Buxton?

  Wow.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  I suppose for some people, they consider it to be a museum piece, but I really wanna just play it and, you know, use it.

• 42:53Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  There's one button you press and it goes dum, dum dum dum dum dum dum.

• 43:00Adam Buxton?

  If only.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  If only.

• 43:03Adam Buxton?

  That was the first single I ever bought.

• 43:05Speaker 04

  I'm dusting those keys to get some Florian DNA.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  But, you know, do you remember the Casio Vial tone?

• 43:10Adam Buxton?

  Of course I do.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  So that was the first.

• 43:13Adam Buxton?

  Da, da, da.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  But that was the first time. It was like a kid like me who's obsessed with synthesizers could, for Christmas, get a Casio Vial tone, switch it on and press a button.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Just the preset that they'd used on that song by Trio, wasn't it?

• 43:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. A German combo.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  You know, that happened again with a Suzuki Omni chord, which I switched on and I got the beat for Clint Eastwood immediately. You know, it doesn't happen very often. I mean, maybe amongst the Kraftwerk synthesizers I have acquired that there's that moment again, but maybe not.

• 43:54Adam Buxton?

  Do you think that there's a song in every single new bit of gear?

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:58Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  That's why I've got so many synthesizers. I've got a lot now. Not as many as Jean-Michel Jarre, but I think by the time I'm Jean-Michel's age, I will.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  We went to Jean-Michel's studio just outside of Paris on the Seine to record with him. And he has a huge, kind of almost like a warehouse room next to the studio, filled with keyboards. Damon's face when he walked in there is, oh my god, you're like a child in a sweet shop.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  I mean, I've got two buildings now full of keyboards.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  But you don't have as many as Jean. You can't compete on keyboards with Jean-Michel Jarre.

• 44:36Adam Buxton?

  No one has as many as Jean-Michel.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  I think I will have eventually. His keyboard collection is extraordinary. It's JJ, you know.

• 44:44Adam Buxton?

  And?

• 44:45Speaker 03

  Who is a lovely human being.

• 44:47Adam Buxton?

  Is he? Jean-Michel. How's he doing these days?

• 44:50Speaker 03

  Firm handshake.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  Good firm handshake. Very young and he's still very busy. He's a very prolific man.

• 44:57Adam Buxton?

  Not enough free jazz on his records. That's the only thing I, that's what I would say about Jean-Michel Jarre. It's all good. Yeah, that's fine, but.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  No, no, I think, I think free jazz is not the.

• 45:10Adam Buxton?

  It's gonna be your next album.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  I would say Twelve Bar Blues.

• 45:14Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  Was more what I was alluding to.

• 45:50Adam Buxton?

  It's the AI question.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  Uh oh.

• 45:53Adam Buxton?

  Uh oh. How are you guys accommodating that into your lives if you are?

• 45:57Speaker 04

  We're not using it in our work at all. And in terms of does it worry us? I think we're in a lucky position that we're established enough that people want to hear our version of gorillas and not an AI version of gorillas. But if I was 20 years old wanting to make a career as an artist, I would be stressing a little bit right now. But I think, you know, we were talking the other day that we're doing CDs for this album, which we haven't done for years because no one was buying CDs. And now they're very much back.

• 46:30Adam Buxton?

  Are they?

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Because kids are demanding a better sounding version of a record because streaming platforms condense music. So they've made that decision. They want to have CDs. So I think like anything, you know, AI in terms of the entertainment industry from music to art will have a moment and then it will die off because people will want to see stuff made here and listen and see stuff made by people. And then maybe it'll be used for something more important like medicine or the stuff that maybe it should be used for. But in terms of creativity, I'm hoping.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  I'm concerned about it with medicine as much as I am within the world of creativity, to be honest with you. I've just bought myself a 300 CD random selector because I've got a lot of CDs and I haven't really listened to them for many, many years. In fact, I don't really feel like I've listened to music in that kind of way for over a decade because I just have, because I've never really embraced the digital world. I've never streamed anything.

• 47:30Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 47:31Speaker 03

  No, apart from kind of Netflix.

• 47:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. But you're not on Spotify?

• 47:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 47:35Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 47:36Speaker 04

  No.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  I've never been on that. I wouldn't know how to do that. And I'm not on Instagram. I'm not on X.

• 47:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Not on Facebook. I'm not on anything.

• 47:46Adam Buxton?

  So how do you listen to music then? Before you got your 300 CD changer?

• 47:51Speaker 03

  Uh, I just listen to it, you know? I mean, I've got, I've got an old jukebox.

• 47:56Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Got a record player.

• 47:58Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  In that way.

• 47:59Adam Buxton?

  Very retro.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Not really. Just, I mean, it's not retro if you never stop doing it.

• 48:04Adam Buxton?

  I mean, it is if everyone else stops doing it.

• 48:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I'm, as you've.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  Oh, here we go. Come on, enough you two.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  I'm not, I'm not, I'm not necessarily someone who, you know, is a slave to sort of fashionable behaviour.

• 48:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. I was gonna ask you how the symbiosis of visual art and musical art works. Is it a process that's changed a lot over the years with Gorillaz?

• 48:35Speaker 04

  It's quite, it's quite a relaxed process. We just hang out together.

• 48:38Adam Buxton?

  So talk me through how this album came together then, for example. What's the first thing that happens with a project like this?

• 48:45Speaker 04

  This one's got quite a specific tale to it. It starts on November the 28th in Belgrade. We were shooting the live action parts for the Silent Running video from the last album.

• 48:59Adam Buxton?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  And my wife was in Jaipur with her mother. They'd been there for a month. And they were about to jump in taxis to the airport and come home when my mother-in-law, Ammo, is her name, had a massive stroke. And was rushed to hospital and went into a coma. So four days later, I was on a plane to Jaipur. I was there from the 4th of December until, I don't know, 15th of January, dealing with that. Trying to get a home in a coma, which was not easy. She would have been having the most traumatic experience of my entire life, which I was, but at the same time, I kind of really fell in love with Jaipur and the people. And there was a lot of warmth and kindness and support.

• 49:42Speaker 04

  And I just, we would go off and have adventures in Jaipur and it was just incredible. So when we finally got back to England, I saw Damon and said, we have to go to India to do something because it's incredible. And then a year later, we were in India, having our first trip, which we travelled around and we explored and we worked with musicians and. Had a fantastic experience and then in between trips. Damon's father died and then my father died ten days later, which is the distance between when we were born. So by that point, we were like, okay, well, we know what this is about and we're a better place to deal with that kind of a subject than than India.

• 50:25Speaker 04

  And their take on death and and reincarnation. As opposed to the way we see it over here, which is.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  Some hope in a hopeless situation.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  You know, India is a very open book for that, you know, many of the kind of ideas about reincarnation and the cosmos of find their origins in ancient Indian culture. Um, and you use the word Indian, it's a very broad church that is. I always find that difficult, it's like, say, Africa, you know, India is the same, but there's so much. Particularly Viranasi, though, I mean, it's like, nothing can prepare you for Viranasi.

• 51:05Speaker 04

  Whereabouts is Viranasi?

• 51:06Speaker 03

  It's on the Ganges. Central.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  It's like this spiritual epicenter, isn't it? It's where they have the funeral pyres.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  There's been a uh, some kind of community there for five thousand years and they've been cremating bodies there for that long. Uh, so if you're there, you have a whole different feeling about death and rebirth. It just sort of seems to be so obvious.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  My experience of being in this hospital for this time was that people were were crying and sad about the fact that that person was. They weren't going to see that person anymore in that form, but also there was a celebration of the fact that they were coming back. But they won't see each other again. So it was a very different sort of attitude towards death and it kind of gave me a little bit of hope. Or made me feel a little bit better about the whole thing. That that you are coming back, but.

• 52:03Speaker 03

  The possibilities.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  Of me bumping into you are a million to one, but good luck in your new life and sorry not to to see you like this again.

• 52:11Adam Buxton?

  Was that part of your kind of spiritual sense before that time?

• 52:15Speaker 03

  I've been interested in Indian culture through my parents since I was super young, really, I mean, and I'm I'm not exaggerating here. I listened to Ravishankar before I listened to the Beatles.

• 52:27Adam Buxton?

  Because your parents were playing him?

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Have you seen the Monterey Pop film?

• 52:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:33Adam Buxton?

  D A Pennebaker, yeah, that ends with that extraordinary Ravi Shankar.

• 52:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:38Adam Buxton?

  Performance.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you know, and then the opportunity to work with Anushka.

• 52:43Adam Buxton?

  Who is Anushka?

• 52:43Speaker 03

  Anushka Shankar.

• 52:45Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  His daughter.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  Who's on this album.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  Who's on this record and is obviously in that lineage and grew up playing with her father. Felt very special to me. So these weird connections that weren't manufactured just sort of fell into place. And so this record ended up having this, this element to it about what happens when you die. And how is that something we can believe in? What makes that possible in our imagination and our heart?

• 53:21Adam Buxton?

  Did you respond in similar ways after your dads died?

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Um, we had different relationships with our dads.

• 53:26Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay. What was your dad like, Jamie?

• 53:29Speaker 04

  Um, pretty tough. I didn't have a great relationship with him growing up at all. I think it got better later in life when he chilled out. But I've still felt like I had to give some kind of tribute to him in some way. Which is kind of within this album. But I'm kind of thinking beyond that now, I'm thinking about me.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  What's gonna happen to me?

• 53:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, well, that's the freedom.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  And other family members and friends.

• 53:58Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  You know, that's, this, it's in the past now and it's a moment. But it's that thing when, as a man, losing your father, you kind of, you move up to that position. You become the patriarch and you don't have that. Well, I say safety net, I didn't really have the safety net, but you know what I mean by the, the father figure's gone. So I guess the trip to India helped me with all of that to, you know, to, to, I'm not afraid anymore.

• 54:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, do you feel that?

• 54:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm kind of living in the moment and enjoying each day as it comes and making the most out of every day and not really concerning myself with what's to come, so.

• 54:39Adam Buxton?

  Did you feel literally fearful before though? Did you feel like that was part of?

• 54:43Speaker 04

  No, it's just that thing you learn when you're young and then, you know, as you get older, that little voice in the back of your head that reminds you of that thing gets louder and louder.

• 54:51Adam Buxton?

  Of death?

• 54:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I'm not worrying about it at the moment. That voice has gone quiet again for a while.

• 55:01Adam Buxton?

  What was your dad like, Damon?

• 55:02Speaker 03

  Um, complex.

• 55:06Speaker 03

  I mean, I was hugely kind of influenced by my dad's ideas. My dad was a very interesting thinker.

• 55:15Adam Buxton?

  Was he a teacher?

• 55:16Speaker 03

  He was a teacher, he was a writer, he was a Artist. An artist, a kind of strange, abstract mathematician. But I was very lucky, both my parents were super creative and gave me an irrepressible creative itch.

• 55:35Adam Buxton?

  And confidence?

• 55:37Speaker 03

  Uh, and confidence, I suppose. But I mean, confidence is fantastic, but hard work is golden. I thought you were going to slip into a line from Blood. Confidence is a preference, actually, for the habitual voyeur of what is known as.

• 55:55Adam Buxton?

  You have a confidence that comes, this is my interpretation of what someone like you is like. You have a confidence that comes from your abilities, your musical abilities, and that is an incredibly valuable bedrock, but then informs the way you look at the world.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  I have, I have worked at my musical ability almost daily for nearly forty years.

• 56:17Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  So it's not, it's not something that was

• 56:19Adam Buxton?

  You're honing it.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Honing it, yeah, no, no, but, but, but you see, I see it more of why have I wanted to do that every day? Because I must love it, you know, and I do have the capacity to work hard at it. I'm very single minded when it comes to that, I, you know.

• 56:35Adam Buxton?

  Well, you're evidently incredibly industrious and you can hear the work in a good way, that I'm not saying that it's over wrought, your stuff, but listening to The Mountain, there's so much care and detail and

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I can do other stuff much more loose.

• 56:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, sure.

• 56:52Speaker 03

  Um, it's just guerrillas in particular, because it is a kind of soundtrack to an ongoing cartoon. It's a different mindset, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm playing, playing, playing, playing, playing, which I love doing as well, but it's not necessarily turns into records.

• 57:09Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  There's been a lot of stuff, good stuff made in this studio over the years.

• 59:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 04

  Many, many sessions.

• 59:18Speaker 03

  Yes, many, many, many sessions. Although this isn't the original carpet. When I left, they changed the carpet. Because of the blood stains. Blood stains, effluence, effluence imaginable was on that floor.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  The grime from your yoga sessions.

• 59:33Adam Buxton?

  Who have you had in here then?

• 59:35Speaker 03

  Who haven't we had?

• 59:36Adam Buxton?

  Who haven't we had? Marky Smith's been in here. Did you do Sean Ryder in here?

• 59:40Speaker 03

  No, that was in the.

• 59:41Speaker 04

  That was in the last studio, the one with Sean Ryder.

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, people like Grace Jones.

• 59:45Adam Buxton?

  Grace Jones, has she been in here?

• 59:47Speaker 03

  Been in here. She did the handstand, just there.

• 59:51Adam Buxton?

  Aged, what, like?

• 59:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:52Adam Buxton?

  Hundred.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Aged a hundred.

• 59:55Adam Buxton?

  What's she like?

• 59:56Speaker 03

  Still looking amazing.

• 59:57Speaker 04

  She was in her mid to late sixties. She's incredible.

• 1:00:01Adam Buxton?

  What do you chat to Grace Jones about?

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Anything.

• 1:00:04Speaker 04

  It started in Jamaica, that, didn't it? Then she came here.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. She had quite a lot to actually say about Donald Trump, who she'd known socially in New York.

• 1:00:13Adam Buxton?

  Right, back in the.

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Studio fifty-four.

• 1:00:15Adam Buxton?

  Yes, yes. What was she saying about Trumplestiltskin? Did she think that he was unfairly maligned?

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  Is that, is that one of yours, Trumplestiltskin?

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  She wasn't necessarily the biggest fan.

• 1:00:32Adam Buxton?

  No.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

• 1:00:34Adam Buxton?

  He gets too much publicity.

• 1:00:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's not talk about it.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  I had a really.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  We're just off to America soon, you know.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  I had quite an involved dream about Trump.

• 1:00:42Adam Buxton?

  People do dream about, my wife dreamt about him the other day.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, and he was a really nice guy. I liked him in my dream.

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  He's everywhere, even in our dreams.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  You got along well with him in your dream, really?

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  I did. Honestly, it was weird.

• 1:00:55Speaker 04

  It's not like you.

• 1:00:56Speaker 03

  I actually found myself really going, I quite like this guy, I get it.

• 1:00:59Adam Buxton?

  People, everybody who meets him, not everybody, but people who meet him often say, he's, he's good fun. He's nice to hang out with. That's the problem with the guy, is that he's, he's got some sort of affability.

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 1:01:12Adam Buxton?

  That really, combined with power, does a number on people. But anyway, yeah. David Bowie died ten years ago.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:21Adam Buxton?

  Did you spend much time with him?

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  A bit, yeah.

• 1:01:24Adam Buxton?

  Did you ever work on anything with him?

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  We were going to make a record together. That was his idea, which I got obviously somewhat excited about. Um, but it never happened. He started, he, he was supposed to start and then he was on a tour and it, and it was doing very well. And he said, well, I'm not going to stop until the tour, people don't want to come and see me. I don't know.

• 1:01:46Adam Buxton?

  This is Bowie we're talking about, yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 04

  Do you remember when we lived together, we had an answering machine?

• 1:01:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:52Speaker 04

  And we had a lot of messages from, we had one from Pete Townsend. Hello, Damon. It's Pete. We had one from Chrissie Hyne and we had one from David Bowie. Do you remember?

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 04

  Hello, Damon. It's David Bowie, yeah. And we never kept that tape, did we?

• 1:02:07Adam Buxton?

  I always remember an episode of The Ozone. Do you remember The Ozone?

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:02:11Adam Buxton?

  With Jane Middlemiss and Jamie Thigston?

• 1:02:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, Jamie Thigston.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, we've got stories about any, anywhere, anyone who was like in, uh, light entertainment in the nineties.

• 1:02:23Adam Buxton?

  Did you go nuts with Jamie Thigston?

• 1:02:25Speaker 04

  And, and Ant and Dec.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  And Ant and Dec.

• 1:02:28Adam Buxton?

  And Ant and Dec.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  And the Spice Girls.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  I think you made one of them cry, didn't you?

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  Huh?

• 1:02:34Speaker 04

  You were so mean to them. We went out with them.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  This idea that I'm mean to people.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  The true story is we had an idea. We wanted to do like a remake.

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  Why do you say that? But I made someone cry because I was mean.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  I was there. We had an idea of remaking Derek and Clive with Ant and Dec. And we went to have dinner with them. We said, get you in the studio, get a few drinks down. And they said, we love the idea, but we're off to Australia tomorrow because we have a new TV programme called I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. And we had a bit of a night with them. We ended up getting quite trashed, I seem to remember. But maybe it was somebody else. Maybe, but I remember a heated debate where somebody burst into tears. Maybe it wasn't one of the, the, the boys.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Dec is the smaller one, isn't he?

• 1:03:18Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, Dec was much more together than Ant. And Ant stayed and hung out with us. And I think Dec was a bit upset. He stayed and arrived and blamed it on us, which obviously is not fair.

• 1:03:31Speaker 04

  Got on the plane to Australia with quite a hangover.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know the story. I don't know the story.

• 1:03:36Adam Buxton?

  Should get into a studio and record in the same way that Derek and Clive did.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  The same impulse that made us sing a cartoon band could be a good idea, probably. I don't know, we were just, we were trying to be subversive and they were kind of into the idea, but they said, look, we're busy for a while. We'll get back to this maybe. And then of course, we never did because that program's been going for, I don't know, 25 years.

• 1:04:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's something I would like to hear. I'd like to hear Ant and Dec doing Peter.

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  No, because we have, they were fun to hang out with, you know, that's like the rest of us, a few drinks and it was fun. We had a fun night.

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  Then there was the occasion where we asked the Spice Girls if they would like to participate in a new rendition of Stockhausen's Contact.

• 1:04:20Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm. I just want to hear what Contact by Stockhausen sounds like.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Love it.

• 1:04:38Adam Buxton?

  What would the Spice Girls do though? Those noises.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  Exactly. What would they do? Well, it's intriguing, right?

• 1:04:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. To bring it back to Javies, you were quite rude about him in The Ozone in 1995. I felt very

• 1:04:52Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 1:04:53Adam Buxton?

  indignant on his behalf.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Was I having a go at Tim Machine?

• 1:04:57Adam Buxton?

  Uh, I did an impression of what you said. This is exactly what you said, but it's me doing an impression of you.

• 1:05:03Speaker 04

  1995.

• 1:05:04Adam Buxton?

  Saying.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Hang on, I want to hear your impression of Damon.

• 1:05:06Adam Buxton?

  Right, here we go.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  To be honest with you, I don't think what he's doing now is particularly important. People who watch The Ozone don't even know who he is.

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  That's very good impersonation of Damon. You've even got that little whistle at the end.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  Bless you.

• 1:05:21Adam Buxton?

  I did work on it.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  I love the way you prepared that.

• 1:05:28Adam Buxton?

  That was in my audiobook.

• 1:05:30Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I, I mean, there was something about the Tim Machine that was just particularly rubbish.

• 1:05:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  You know, I don't know what it was, but you know, God, compared to the mountain of genius, I think, you know. But it's true. The Ozone was for kids, so they didn't know who David Bowie was at that point, you know. The world of the internet didn't exist then. You couldn't just saw something, you know, so. But everyone knows who David Bowie is now, and quite rightly, because, and you know, massive, massive, massive influence on me, you know. Um, so I don't feel bad about saying that.

• 1:06:08Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  But thanks for bringing it up nonetheless.

• 1:06:11Adam Buxton?

  Reenacting it so superbly.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Adam Buxton?

  And of course Bowie's last statement.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was heartbreaking. Yeah. Bit of free jazz. That's not free jazz. What do you actually know what free jazz is? No. Because it's not that.

• 1:06:27Adam Buxton?

  Is it not? Does Donny McCaslin not play any free jazz?

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  But free jazz is free jazz. It's where there's no chord structure. There's no destination. It's just totally and utterly free. Everything else is not strictly free jazz. It's considered and, you know, charted and. To me, free jazz is just.

• 1:06:49Adam Buxton?

  Scronking, atonal.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you could, free jazz is the same as free pop. Free classical is the same thing.

• 1:06:57Adam Buxton?

  What's free pop? I'd like to hear some free pop.

• 1:07:00Speaker 03

  I can show you some later if you want to participate in it.

• 1:07:04Adam Buxton?

  Let's do some free pop.

• 1:07:09Adam Buxton?

  We've created a new genre.

• 1:07:15Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back. So that was the main conversation there. Hope you enjoyed that. We had to vacate the control room where we were recording. We ran out of time. Someone else was booked in there after us. By the way, I've posted a couple of pictures from that day on my website. In case you're interested in seeing some gnarly old guys. I bought a hat for Damon with the word cool written on the front. He very gamely posed with it, which I was happy about. And by this point, at the end of that main conversation,

• 1:07:51Adam Buxton?

  I was beginning to relax. I had been quite nervous. I didn't know what to expect.

• 1:07:58Adam Buxton?

  Damon's reputation precedes him and I wasn't sure how the thing was going to go. And it's always difficult when you're interviewing two people at the same time, especially if they have the kind of rapport that Damon and Jamie do, talking over each other a little bit and having digs at each other every now and again.

• 1:08:19Adam Buxton?

  It's hard to navigate in the moment when you're recording. Also, not that easy to mix when you're editing. But I felt like it was a really fun chat that we had had. And I was really pleased because I've got a huge amount of admiration for both Damon and Jamie. Yeah, Jamie was very nice about the podcast and he was talking to me about some of his favourite episodes. And that's where you join us here as I was packing up my stuff. And once again, I had my dictaphone running to capture our conversation. And then I took it along with me for a short tour of the studios with Damon. Here we go.

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  I listened to the one you did with Louis.

• 1:09:04Adam Buxton?

  I've done lots with Louis.

• 1:09:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I listened to one of them, which was very funny.

• 1:09:08Adam Buxton?

  He's always funny.

• 1:09:09Speaker 04

  Louis came to see us at Copper Box and he came backstage and we were very excited to meet him. We had a nice chat and then he announced that, "Oh, tomorrow I'm going to see Coldplay." And we were like, "Get out of the dressing room."

• 1:09:21Adam Buxton?

  Coldplay, I, I feel like I, I stand up for Coldplay. I was so, I was so impressed. I was so impressed by him at Glastonbury and his crowd work and his thing where he improvises songs.

• 1:09:37Adam Buxton?

  You don't look convinced. Have you seen him doing that?

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  What do you mean improvises songs?

• 1:09:41Adam Buxton?

  He gets the cameraman to focus on someone in the audience.

• 1:09:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Adam Buxton?

  And their face goes up on the jumbotron.

• 1:09:47Speaker 04

  And then he says, "Oh, you're having an affair."

• 1:09:49Adam Buxton?

  And then he, well, he did that, yeah. But he serenades the person or he, he makes up a song based on what they're wearing. Obviously, the cameraman's-

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  Anyone can do that.

• 1:10:00Adam Buxton?

  Do it then.

• 1:10:01Speaker 04

  You want me to sing a song about you? "Oh, Adam, by the way, you've dropped your zip to the bottom."

• 1:10:13Speaker 03

  I can see that within you are truly rotten.

• 1:10:17Adam Buxton?

  This is not as good as the stuff Chris Martin was doing at Glastonbury. He was doing like properly formed songs.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  And you think that that hadn't been pre-prepared?

• 1:10:29Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 1:10:32Adam Buxton?

  I think.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  You're a fool.

• 1:10:34Adam Buxton?

  Simon Pegg.

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  You're a naive fool.

• 1:10:35Adam Buxton?

  Simon Pegg is a friend of mine and a friend of Chris Martin's and he was there at that Glastonbury show and I said to Simon, does he prep the songs beforehand? And Simon says, no, he doesn't.

• 1:10:47Speaker 03

  Well, if Simon says.

• 1:10:51Speaker 03

  What, that he doesn't have chord sequences?

• 1:10:53Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, he might have chord sequences. Sure, sure. Have you seen, um, Marty Supreme?

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  Not yet.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Not yet, but I mean, I'm a massive table tennis person.

• 1:11:02Adam Buxton?

  Because I know you boasted about beating Donald Glover at table tennis.

• 1:11:06Speaker 04

  Donald Glover? I've never played Donald Glover at two. Where did you get that from?

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  You told me that story. Charles Gambino.

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Not Danny Glover.

• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  Donald Glover, yes.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  Anyone can beat Danny Glover. He's like eighty five. I thrashed him. I thrashed him at table tennis.

• 1:11:20Speaker 04

  I'm not answering that.

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  I would like to play Tim.

• 1:11:24Adam Buxton?

  Someone at the door, Rick. You would like to play Timothy Chalamet?

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I almost had a chance. Well, he was going to come here and there are a couple of occasions I've very nearly played Drake, who claims he's really good as well.

• 1:11:37Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  I like, I like that. I mean, uh, Les, uh, no, Rio Ferdinand, Rio Ferdinand thrashed me. But he's like, he was playing, still playing for Man U then. He was like a top athlete. They beat me on fitness.

• 1:11:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Um, but I don't get. Who is the best hip hop artist, table tennis player?

• 1:11:57Speaker 03

  Well, it was Kano, but I can beat him.

• 1:11:59Adam Buxton?

  Kano?

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, but he's pretty good. And you're really good, are you? I'm very street. In my style, I'm, you know, unorthodox.

• 1:12:09Adam Buxton?

  What does that mean? Are you like, jumping up and down and going way back like they do in Martin's.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I, I, but you know, all of those really good shots in there were all choreographed. They're not from open play.

• 1:12:23Adam Buxton?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  I did used to go to a club, Table Tennis Club in New York, where there were a few kind of ex-pros there. Who would humiliate you.

• 1:12:31Adam Buxton?

  Susan Sarandon.

• 1:12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, we played like with a spoon or something.

• 1:12:35Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  And trash you, it's so humiliating. Do you like table tennis?

• 1:12:41Adam Buxton?

  Uh, I can't play it. My, my sons like it.

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  That, right.

• 1:12:44Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, they're good.

• 1:12:45Speaker 03

  They really competitive. I mean, you, you can't not be, if you like it.

• 1:12:48Adam Buxton?

  They've had big rows. Their, their table tennis rows, my sons are like my Monopoly rows used to be with my sister.

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.

• 1:12:58Adam Buxton?

  Really quite bitter. Okay, will you show me some of your gear?

• 1:13:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:13:05Adam Buxton?

  Walking down the red corridors. What are these studios called?

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  It's called Studio thirteen.

• 1:13:12Adam Buxton?

  What about your bells?

• 1:13:14Speaker 03

  My bells?

• 1:13:15Adam Buxton?

  Your brass bells?

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had, I had three bells made for the notes of the, uh, keyboard hook on Melancholy Hill with dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Cause there's only three notes.

• 1:13:29Adam Buxton?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  And I had them made, uh, they're like, like sort of six thousand pounds each to get a, uh, I, cause I was born in, uh, London Hospital. In the sound of Bow Bells. So I went to the Bow Bell Foundry, which had started in sixteen thirty or something like that. And they still got all the old, old tools. So I had these three amazing bells made, but I don't think there's one of them's here. Um.

• 1:13:54Adam Buxton?

  So you are an actual Cockney?

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  I'm a Cockney, yeah.

• 1:13:57Adam Buxton?

  So when people were accusing you of being a Mockney in the nineties, that must have really made you just angry.

• 1:14:03Speaker 03

  When people accused me of going to public school, which is ridiculous.

• 1:14:07Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 1:14:09Speaker 03

  I went to Stoneway Comprehensive, which, believe me, was a very average state school.

• 1:14:18Adam Buxton?

  Should I be following you?

• 1:14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, please.

• 1:14:22Speaker 03

  So when you come here to work, you get to look in all of these cupboards, which are just packed full of keyboards.

• 1:14:33Adam Buxton?

  Oh wow, beautifully labelled.

• 1:14:36Speaker 03

  Beautifully labelled. There's a bit of Russian stuff left here, but I've got a lot of Russian synthesizers, but most of them are in Devon at the moment, working on this score that I'm... You know, so I take different periods and different kind of sounds.

• 1:14:52Adam Buxton?

  The Moog Little Fatty.

• 1:14:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:14:54Adam Buxton?

  The Chroma Polaris.

• 1:14:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Adam Buxton?

  The Ensonic ASR 10 number 1.

• 1:14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Adam Buxton?

  The Tesco... No, it's not Tesco, it's Tayco.

• 1:15:04Speaker 03

  The Rhythm 6 Mark 700. The Casio, oh lovely, Casio, god I love Casio.

• 1:15:10Adam Buxton?

  And each of these you have recorded with?

• 1:15:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they're all different. They've all got a different story in a...

• 1:15:16Adam Buxton?

  Look at that.

• 1:15:17Speaker 03

  One of two. This is where, when I'm in London, I work up here. Hi guys.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  Hi Joe.

• 1:15:27Adam Buxton?

  Hello.

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  Adam Buckson is doing a podcast with us.

• 1:15:30Adam Buxton?

  Hello, sorry to interrupt.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  That's alright, Adam, how nice to meet you.

• 1:15:33Adam Buxton?

  Nice to meet you.

• 1:15:34Speaker 03

  Um, now, this is a keyboard from the Kraftwerk studio.

• 1:15:39Adam Buxton?

  Oh really?

• 1:15:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Adam Buxton?

  Holy Moses, this thing?

• 1:15:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Adam Buxton?

  Wow.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  Do you want to hear it?

• 1:15:44Adam Buxton?

  Yes, please.

• 1:15:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:15:50Adam Buxton?

  Ooh.

• 1:15:55Adam Buxton?

  Oh my god, that sounds amazing.

• 1:16:10Adam Buxton?

  So that's a bass synth keyboard. Yes, please.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  Touch it.

• 1:16:14Adam Buxton?

  Touch it. Whoa, that guy, I like that guy.

• 1:16:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:22Adam Buxton?

  Amazing.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 1:16:25Adam Buxton?

  Fantastic, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  Wait, continue. Mind the gap, yes, I mind the gap. But what is the gap? It is the gap of failure. All together now.

• 1:16:59Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back. That was Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz. A reminder that their tour details are in the description. I think there's still some tickets left for that London show in June at the time of recording. I've got a note here from Fact Checking Santa that says Gorillaz ex-manager did not manage Van Morrison. Perhaps because his name is Chris Morrison, Jamie was thinking that perhaps he had managed Van. He used to manage Blur, Elastica, More Chiba, Midjour and John Cale, but not Van.

• 1:17:39Adam Buxton?

  Van, if you're listening, I hope you appreciate how hard I fought for you and you're welcome on the podcast anytime. You can sing some Astral Weeks, I'll do some free jazz and you can slag off Damon. Thank you so much to Damon and Jamie for their hospitality and waffle skills. Speaking of live music, I do hope I get to see some of you at a few of the shows that we're doing. Me and the Adam Buxton Band, which includes various members of Metronomy. We kick off in Liverpool on the 1st of May, then we go to Leeds, although I think that is sold out.

• 1:18:20Adam Buxton?

  Exeter, Cardiff, Bath, Brighton, Margate, Buxton, Manchester, Leicester. That's all in May. And then in June, we play two nights in London, 23rd and 24th at Hoxton Hall. And we have support for every show, as far as I'm aware. I'm very pleased to say we're being joined by up and coming musicians Anna B Savage, Clementine March. Bristol band, The Cindys and Talia Ble, or Talia Blay, who describes herself as a rising North London-based dysfunctional rapper and visual artist. They're all great. I've met Talia and Clementine before, but I'm looking forward to meeting Anna and The Cindys.

• 1:19:03Adam Buxton?

  And just being in the world of live music with, of course, some great inter-song bands. From A Buckles and I'll be hanging out after the shows, signing things if you want to get things signed. Selling a bit of merch, you know, generally behaving like a music guy, which is my, which has been my dream all my life. How have you been anyway, podcasts? Hope you've been doing okay in quite extreme global circumstances. I haven't been too bad, probably looking at the news a little bit too much.

• 1:19:45Adam Buxton?

  While I'm at my computer, but I've also been having a lot of fun doing success pod. Rosie is doing very well, although we had a bit of a wobble earlier this year, didn't we, Rosie?

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  I was punished for wanting to get the most out of the day.

• 1:20:01Adam Buxton?

  Well, I mean, you started waking up at five o'clock every morning and scratching at the bedroom door. And then when we'd let you out, you didn't want to go for a pee or like you didn't seem to want anything. You'd just hang around outside the bedroom door and then start scratching again if we went to sleep.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  And so for that terrible crime, I was forced to sleep in the kitchen.

• 1:20:23Adam Buxton?

  Which is where you used to sleep perfectly happily before things got altogether too lax and you started sharing our bedroom.

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  Well, I no longer wish to sleep in the kitchen. The kitchen's fine for afternoon sleep time on the sofa. But not for night time.

• 1:20:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I know. Well, you were yowling every night when we put you down there earlier this year. We were worried about you, so I got some advice from a dog therapist. And she said that you would get used to it, but we had to be consistent. And not waver from the plan. But it was really tough because you obviously weren't enjoying it and we felt bad about it. Rosie is straining at the lead because she has spotted some deer action and wants to go for a little run. Hang on a second Rosie. Well, there's no one around, so I'll let you off. Hang on. Anyway, my wife, my wife reckoned that one of the reasons Rosie

• 1:21:24Adam Buxton?

  was upset down in the kitchen was because she's now quite hard of hearing in her old age, like maybe pretty much deaf. So I think she wants to just make sure that we're around, especially at night. So my wife brilliantly built a special Rosie platform over on her side of the bed. Previously, she had just been in a nice comfy dog box, but a bit lower over in the corner of the room. Now she has a special, my wife built platform over on her side of the bed so that Rosie can lie right there next to her at the same height as us. So my wife can,

• 1:22:08Adam Buxton?

  depending on how she's feeling, she can turn one way and snuggle with Rosie face to face, or with the old guy on the other side. But it's done the trick. Rosie is no longer waking up at 5am and scratching at the door. She stays in her bed until we get up now. Anyway, so that's Rosie news. Okay, that's it for this week's episode. Thank you so much once again to Damon and Jamie and the whole Gorillaz team, especially Breed, for enabling the conversation to happen. Thank you very much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support. Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork for this podcast. Thanks to everybody at Acast who helps liaise with

• 1:22:51Adam Buxton?

  my sponsors and keeps the show on the road. But thanks most of all to you. Hey, thank you so much for coming back. I hope you enjoyed that. And if you would like to be kept more or less up to date with what I'm doing with my very occasional newsletters, then visit my website, scroll to the bottom of the front page and sign up. There's a link to my website in the description of today's episode. How about a creepy spring hug? Come here.

• 1:23:23Adam Buxton?

  Oh yeah, spring fresh. Until next time, we share the same sonic space. Please go carefully, and if it's at all helpful, please bear in mind that I love you. Bye!