Pod Insights THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST EP.269 - JAMIE HEWLETT & DAMON ALBARN AKA GORILLAZ About this episode 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/
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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)
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Transcript 13,346 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 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.
0:31 Adam 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,
1:15 Adam 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
1:59 Adam 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
2:39 Adam 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.
3:25 Adam 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
4:09 Adam 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.
4:42 Adam 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,
5:24 Adam 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
6:06 Adam 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
6:50 Adam 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.
7:05 Speaker 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.
7:44 Speaker 03 I hear you cycled.
7:45 Adam Buxton? I cycled from Brick Lane and it's the exact length of your new record.
7:51 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
7:53 Adam Buxton? Fifty something minutes.
7:54 Speaker 03 Really? And how was it listening to the mountain while dodging the perilous London traffic?
7:59 Adam Buxton? It was good, actually. It centered me.
8:02 Speaker 03 Oh, my God.
8:03 Adam Buxton? Because it's very stressful rush hour traffic on a bike, especially as biking now is totally lawless.
8:11 Speaker 03 Well, and also when it's wet.
8:13 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I got lucky with the weather. It didn't actually rain on me.
8:17 Speaker 03 No, but it's the leaves and...
8:19 Adam Buxton? Right, okay. And also, people don't seem to know on the tow path.
8:22 Speaker 03 Left or right?
8:23 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
8:24 Speaker 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.
8:33 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
8:34 Speaker 03 I'm not going to. I'm going to run you down if you don't move.
8:37 Adam Buxton? Do you use your bell?
8:38 Speaker 03 I haven't got a bell.
8:39 Adam Buxton? Ah, you need a bell. I've got a very piercing bell.
8:42 Speaker 03 I don't have a helmet, a bell or lights.
8:45 Adam Buxton? Fucking hell.
8:46 Speaker 03 I never have had, ever.
8:47 Adam Buxton? Is that an ethical choice? Why?
8:51 Speaker 03 Because, um, I don't subscribe to... I don't like, I don't clean my yoga mat after yoga.
9:04 Adam Buxton? Why is that?
9:05 Speaker 03 Because I just think it's fucking...
9:09 Speaker 03 That's part of modern life is rubbish, you know, it's an old kind of sort of saying of mine.
9:16 Adam Buxton? Yeah, sure.
9:17 Speaker 03 Um, it's just, no one cleaned their mats before, before Covid.
9:23 Adam Buxton? Uh-huh.
9:24 Speaker 03 And now it's just sort of arbitrary fucking detergent everywhere.
9:32 Speaker 03 Great for detergent producers, but also just systematically devaluing our, our immune system.
9:39 Adam Buxton? But I would argue that helmets are a different, are doing a different job.
9:44 Speaker 03 Shall I tell you the problem with helmets?
9:46 Adam Buxton? We're on helmets, uh, on bikes, Jamie.
9:48 Speaker 03 You're really, really, really aware, aware if you don't wear a helmet.
9:52 Adam Buxton? You're really aware.
9:53 Speaker 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.
10:01 Adam 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.
10:25 Speaker 03 No, it's great. I love it. But what I'm saying is not.
10:29 Adam Buxton? Sure. From a safety point of view.
10:30 Speaker 03 If you're wearing a helmet and you're listening to music, you're, it's like.
10:35 Adam Buxton? You may as well just ride straight into the traffic is what you're saying.
10:37 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, it's like, it's like, yeah, it's, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I just.
10:44 Adam Buxton? No, look, I'm on shaky ground. I know that it's frowned upon to have headphones in while you're cycling.
10:49 Speaker 03 Well, no, everyone does. I mean.
10:51 Adam 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.
10:57 Speaker 03 I'm never.
10:57 Adam Buxton? Do you not?
10:58 Speaker 03 Ever. Can you ever lock your bike up either, do you? Uh, not so much, no. I park wherever I like.
11:05 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
11:05 Speaker 03 In my car.
11:06 Adam Buxton? Fucking hell, man. You're living the dream.
11:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, I don't care. I don't have a telephone.
11:13 Adam Buxton? This is what we want.
11:14 Speaker 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.
11:34 Speaker 03 I I I I just don't allow many of the conventions that slow the the day down to get in my way.
11:44 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
11:45 Speaker 03 Ever.
11:46 Adam Buxton? And you've constructed a life that accommodates that way of living.
11:50 Speaker 03 Yes, within certain parameters, I can do what the fuck I like.
11:53 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
11:54 Speaker 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.
12:04 Adam Buxton? Mm hmm.
12:05 Speaker 03 So with my fiscal position, I'm equivalent to a kind of student billionaire.
12:13 Speaker 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.
12:20 Speaker 04 Quite a fancy car, though.
12:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that.
12:23 Speaker 04 Anyway, no, we don't have, we don't take.
12:25 Speaker 03 I have one, I I I've got a G bag. That's not a fancy car.
12:30 Speaker 04 And jewellery and have our.
12:31 Speaker 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?
12:37 Adam Buxton? All that stuff, yeah, that's going in.
12:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:39 Adam Buxton? The stuff about you not wiping your bum and doing what you want, that's gold.
12:44 Speaker 03 Okay.
12:45 Speaker 04 This is what the fans want to know.
12:47 Adam Buxton? That's what you want from a rock star.
12:49 Speaker 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.
12:54 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
12:54 Speaker 03 I won't waste extra time doing something that not necessary to do at that moment.
12:59 Adam Buxton? Sure. And also, it should be noted that while you're not stopping at lights, you are not menacing pedestrians.
13:05 Speaker 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.
13:11 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
13:11 Speaker 03 No, no, no, I'm not like that. I'm not aggressive at all. I just get on with it.
13:15 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
13:15 Speaker 03 You know?
13:16 Adam Buxton? Jamie's got a a patient, knowing expression on his face. Is that fair to say?
13:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, patient, all-knowing expression on his face. Well, especially where you're concerned, dear boy.
13:29 Speaker 03 You got up on an interesting side of the bed this morning.
13:33 Speaker 04 Same side as my bed's against the wall.
13:37 Adam 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.
14:12 Speaker 03 You're a Gemini.
14:13 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
14:14 Speaker 03 That's a classic Gemini.
14:15 Adam Buxton? What's that?
14:16 Speaker 03 You're not subscribing to it if you can't make your mind up, can you?
14:20 Adam 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.
14:29 Speaker 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.
14:40 Speaker 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.
15:16 Adam Buxton? Hmm, have you always been cosmic like that?
15:18 Speaker 03 Yes.
15:19 Adam 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.
15:34 Speaker 03 Strange news from another star.
15:35 Adam Buxton? Well, exactly. Anyway, Damon, you've chosen to eat grapes.
15:43 Speaker 03 Is that, is that?
15:44 Adam 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.
15:58 Speaker 03 Okay, I just finished this one.
16:00 Speaker 04 It's the sloshing and the juicy chewing.
16:03 Speaker 03 They're not particularly good grapes.
16:05 Adam Buxton? If people eat on podcasts, you get immediately cancelled in the podcast.
16:09 Speaker 04 What about people smoke on podcasts?
16:11 Adam Buxton? Smoke away, smoke it up.
16:12 Speaker 04 Great, I intend to.
16:14 Adam Buxton? Would you, are you gonna smoke in this room?
16:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, this is his studio, we can do what the fuck we want here.
16:19 Adam Buxton? Yes.
16:21 Adam Buxton? No bum wiping, no helmets.
16:23 Speaker 03 I wish I hadn't meant to do that.
16:24 Adam Buxton? Smoking, grape.
16:27 Speaker 03 I really wish I hadn't.
16:29 Speaker 04 I can't believe you said that out loud, isn't it?
16:31 Adam Buxton? I was just having a laugh.
16:32 Speaker 04 That's the inner circle of trust thing that is doing.
16:35 Adam Buxton? Yogamat covered in a thick layer of grime.
16:38 Speaker 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.
16:53 Speaker 04 You do sweat a lot when you do yoga.
16:55 Speaker 03 Not that much.
16:57 Speaker 04 I'm just kind of, you know, creating an even more vulgar picture of you.
17:01 Adam Buxton? It's nice, it's very earthy and sexy.
17:02 Speaker 03 Yeah. All of these things need to be clarified.
17:05 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
17:05 Speaker 03 Before Covid.
17:07 Adam Buxton? Yes.
17:07 Speaker 03 People did not clean their yoga mats.
17:10 Adam Buxton? Okay.
17:11 Speaker 03 Okay.
17:13 Speaker 03 So why do they clean them now?
17:16 Adam Buxton? I agree with you, everyone's got to.
17:18 Speaker 03 Exactly, that's all I'm saying. It's like, you know.
17:21 Adam Buxton? I think I did clean, no, I mean, I cleaned mats, exercise mats, like periodically. If they start to build up.
17:29 Speaker 03 Periodically is different, but like every day is ridiculous.
17:33 Adam Buxton? It is ridiculous.
17:34 Speaker 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?
17:44 Speaker 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.
17:51 Adam Buxton? I'm one year younger than you guys. I was born in June sixty nine.
17:55 Speaker 03 Oh, okay, so you're a sixties kid?
17:57 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, just got in there.
17:59 Speaker 04 Best decades ever, right? A kid in the seventies, teenager in the eighties.
18:03 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
18:04 Speaker 04 Young person in the nineties.
18:06 Adam 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.
18:18 Speaker 04 Out on your bike all day.
18:19 Adam Buxton? That you were just.
18:20 Speaker 03 Well, I was out on my bike in the seventies in East London.
18:23 Adam Buxton? Right.
18:23 Speaker 03 Like seventy six, summer of seventy six, which we all remember.
18:29 Adam 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.
18:37 Speaker 03 It's the kind of thing I was doing and still do.
18:41 Adam Buxton? As we've heard.
18:42 Speaker 04 Didn't she suffocate the ants as well?
18:44 Speaker 03 No, no, no, no. What do you do if you wanna go a poo? In an English country garden.
18:49 Speaker 04 Pull down your pants.
18:50 Speaker 03 Suffocate the ants.
18:52 Speaker 04 In an English country garden. Oh, good old days.
18:56 Adam Buxton? Yeah. So you were painting a picture though of cycling around on your, on your chopper.
19:01 Speaker 03 No, I didn't have a chopper. I had nothing, nothing so kind of mainstream as that.
19:07 Speaker 04 You had a penny farthing. That hand me down.
19:10 Adam Buxton? Were you cycling around, Jamie?
19:12 Speaker 04 Oh my God, all I did was like, oh, my grifter, I had a grifter.
19:15 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
19:15 Speaker 04 My brother had a chopper.
19:17 Speaker 03 His family were more middle class than mine, I think, because I never had anything like that.
19:20 Adam Buxton? Being class shamed very early on in this.
19:22 Speaker 04 Not middle class at all.
19:24 Speaker 03 Even allowed to have DMs.
19:25 Speaker 04 My family were butchers.
19:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, but probably butchers earned more than art teachers.
19:31 Speaker 04 Possibly.
19:32 Adam Buxton? High end butchers, but they were violent, Damon. They were, they were notorious.
19:37 Speaker 03 They were violent people. I mean, I got the slipper, the ruler and the cane.
19:43 Adam Buxton? Like from your parents or teachers?
19:44 Speaker 03 No, not from my parents. No, no.
19:46 Speaker 04 Which teacher gave you the slipper, the home economics?
19:51 Speaker 03 No, it was actually.
19:52 Speaker 04 I got the wet lettuce.
19:53 Speaker 03 I got my, yeah, I got the slipper at primary school and the cane at primary.
19:56 Speaker 04 I got the cane. I got the cane on my hand.
19:59 Adam Buxton? What did you get the cane for?
20:01 Speaker 03 Ruler was on the hand.
20:02 Speaker 04 And bunking off school.
20:04 Adam Buxton? Cane for smoking.
20:05 Speaker 04 And playing truant, going down to the graveyard all day and hanging out and sniffing Tippex thinner.
20:10 Adam Buxton? Ah, in the graveyard? Blimey.
20:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, and I got the cane twice on my hand and one on the back of my legs.
20:17 Adam Buxton? Damon, what did you get beaten for?
20:20 Speaker 03 Um, firstly, I used to put my hand up to every question, whether I knew it or not.
20:27 Adam Buxton? Uh huh, just to be a dick?
20:30 Speaker 03 I mean.
20:31 Speaker 04 Just to be a dick. That was the reasoning in his head at the time.
20:35 Speaker 03 No, it wasn't the reasoning in my head at the time, but with hindsight.
20:39 Adam Buxton? That's what was happening.
20:40 Speaker 03 That probably was what was, but you know, to be fair, I did know at least half.
20:45 Speaker 04 Alright, so you got the questions right most of the time?
20:48 Speaker 03 No, about half.
20:49 Speaker 04 Half?
20:50 Speaker 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.
21:29 Adam Buxton? Oh, what made you do that?
21:31 Speaker 03 Stayed with me for the whole of my secondary education.
21:34 Adam Buxton? Did that make you more or less popular?
21:36 Speaker 03 Less.
21:37 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
21:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, really, they just thought.
21:39 Adam Buxton? Ladybird boy.
21:40 Speaker 03 Very strange. And I played the violin.
21:42 Speaker 04 Oh dear, arson crafts.
21:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly.
21:45 Speaker 04 That explains your lovely red lips.
21:46 Speaker 03 Essex in the early eighties was not a.
21:50 Adam Buxton? Don't eat ladybirds and don't play the violin. Ladybirds are so bitter.
21:54 Speaker 03 In Essex.
21:55 Speaker 04 Have you tried the ladybird?
21:56 Adam Buxton? No, I don't want to eat them because just picking them up.
21:59 Speaker 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.
22:10 Adam 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.
22:24 Adam Buxton? Protective of friends and loved ones, prefers passion and intensity to subtlety. Are all these ringing bells?
22:33 Speaker 04 I mean, it depends on the context, doesn't it?
22:35 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
22:36 Speaker 04 Does it say really, really, really, really great as well?
22:39 Adam Buxton? It does, it says really cool, fun, interesting, creative. It does say bold and energetic, confident and assertive, independent, courageous, enthusiastic.
22:48 Speaker 04 I mean, was there not to like about Aries?
22:51 Adam Buxton? Those are the core strengths, common challenges faced by your people. Impulsive, impatient, hot tempered, competitive, restless.
23:02 Speaker 04 Yep.
23:04 Adam Buxton? So you said no to hot tempered, Jamie?
23:06 Speaker 04 I'm not hot tempered.
23:07 Adam Buxton? No.
23:07 Speaker 04 No, I, I, I keep my cool, unless I'm really pushed.
23:10 Adam Buxton? When was the last time you lost it?
23:12 Speaker 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.
23:21 Adam Buxton? Yep.
23:21 Speaker 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.
23:31 Adam Buxton? Why was he angry?
23:33 Speaker 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?
23:49 Speaker 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.
24:01 Speaker 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.
24:42 Adam Buxton? Overstate.
24:43 Speaker 03 Overstate, yeah.
24:44 Adam 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.
24:55 Speaker 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.
25:00 Speaker 04 I think when we were at school, we were taught duck and cover, nuclear war.
25:04 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
25:04 Speaker 04 Then we became teenagers and the AIDS virus appeared and we were told lots of bullshit about that.
25:09 Adam Buxton? Did that scare you?
25:10 Speaker 04 Well, until I realised that it was over exaggerated and the information we were getting wasn't true.
25:15 Speaker 03 Well, I don't know if it was over exaggerated.
25:17 Speaker 04 No, the whole thing about if you even go in a room with somebody who has.
25:20 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, all of that, all of that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The scaremongering aspect, of course.
25:24 Speaker 04 Then it was IRA bombings, then it was, uh, then it was, uh.
25:29 Speaker 03 I think the IRA bombings came before AIDS.
25:32 Speaker 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.
25:40 Adam Buxton? I mean, every generation does, don't they?
25:42 Speaker 03 But it was, it was bombings, nuclear, AIDS.
25:45 Speaker 04 Nuclear war, when you're ten years old at school, being taught in assembly, duck and cover, is terrifying.
25:52 Adam Buxton? My mum used to say, it's not gonna happen. That was her, um, answer to that whole problem. She would deflect it.
25:59 Speaker 04 Well, she was right, up until a point.
26:01 Adam Buxton? So far, she's been right.
26:02 Speaker 03 So far, so good, touch wood.
26:04 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:05 Speaker 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.
26:14 Speaker 03 I think comparatively, that anxiety has been magnified so acutely since social media.
26:22 Adam Buxton? Oh, God, yeah.
26:22 Speaker 03 I don't think, I don't think we.
26:24 Speaker 04 Time to get me started, time.
26:25 Speaker 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.
26:35 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
26:35 Speaker 03 It's.
26:36 Adam Buxton? Do you guys have kids?
26:37 Speaker 03 Yes. Well, our kids are grown up.
26:39 Adam Buxton? Right.
26:40 Speaker 04 I have three.
26:41 Adam Buxton? Are you aware of what their anxieties are in that way?
26:45 Speaker 04 Absolutely.
26:46 Adam 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.
26:52 Speaker 04 They don't worry about war. They worry about other things.
26:55 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
26:55 Speaker 04 They're all creative and they worry about how they're supposed to fit in.
26:59 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
27:00 Speaker 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.
27:28 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do they like being with you guys? Do they like being with their family?
27:33 Speaker 03 I think so, yeah.
27:34 Adam Buxton? Yeah, I just asked because much as I loved my parents, I didn't really want to hang out with them.
27:40 Speaker 04 No, they hang out with us. Yeah, no.
27:42 Adam 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?
27:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, we all got out very early.
27:49 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
27:49 Speaker 03 It's not quite the same now.
27:51 Adam Buxton? No, it's not. I mean, we had the.
27:54 Speaker 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.
28:00 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
28:01 Speaker 03 I lived in squats for years.
28:02 Adam Buxton? Did you?
28:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, everyone lived in squats. It was brilliant.
28:06 Adam Buxton? I certainly didn't live in squats, David. I lived in a nice cozy room.
28:10 Speaker 04 My point is, young people could live in London.
28:13 Adam Buxton? Sure. In a way that they can't now.
28:16 Speaker 04 They can't now, exactly.
28:17 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
28:18 Speaker 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.
28:29 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
28:29 Speaker 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.
28:39 Adam 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?
29:07 Speaker 04 You mean making it too easy for them?
29:09 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
29:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, I'm I'm.
29:11 Adam Buxton? Do you worry about that?
29:11 Speaker 04 Be a bit guilty of that.
29:13 Speaker 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.
29:28 Adam Buxton? Stop listening to that terrible album. Is that the kind of?
29:31 Speaker 03 No, no, no, not at all, not at all. But like, family holidays in North Korea.
29:36 Adam Buxton? Okay, right.
29:37 Speaker 03 That kind of thing.
29:38 Adam Buxton? Did you really go for a family holiday in North Korea?
29:40 Speaker 03 With my daughter, yeah.
29:41 Adam Buxton? Really?
29:42 Speaker 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.
29:56 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
29:57 Speaker 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.
30:17 Adam Buxton? Yeah, that's a massive privilege. That's amazing.
30:20 Speaker 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.
30:30 Speaker 03 They are privileged, so there's no getting around it.
30:34 Adam Buxton? But also, I don't know how travel itself is gonna change.
30:40 Speaker 03 Well, yeah.
30:40 Adam Buxton? In the years coming with the climate crisis and how that has to change.
30:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I I I grapple with that, but I I also know that I spent uh thirty years just cycling.
30:54 Adam Buxton? Mm hmm.
30:55 Speaker 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.
31:07 Adam Buxton? Mm hmm.
31:09 Speaker 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.
31:18 Adam Buxton? On the bike.
31:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:19 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah. But what a workout.
31:21 Speaker 04 Same as a bit like the Forrest Gump of the music scene.
31:24 Speaker 03 I don't see anything in what I just said that would bring that.
31:27 Speaker 04 It's the cycling for thirty years.
31:29 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, but not in this one direction.
31:31 Speaker 04 The walking for four years or.
31:34 Speaker 03 No, no.
31:34 Speaker 04 It was a it was a weak comparison, but I felt we needed a joke at this point.
31:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, this is a very long, interesting, philosophic position that cannot be explained within an hour.
31:48 Adam Buxton? Cars are terrible. I think we agree that cars.
31:51 Speaker 03 I prefer trains by far.
31:52 Adam Buxton? I prefer trains.
31:53 Speaker 03 Trains.
31:54 Speaker 04 Sleeper trains as well, good.
31:56 Speaker 03 Not so much in this country.
31:58 Adam Buxton? Yes.
31:59 Speaker 03 But the principle of the train.
32:01 Adam Buxton? Yeah, absolutely.
32:02 Speaker 03 I mean, you know.
32:03 Adam Buxton? Trains and bikes.
32:05 Speaker 03 Let us mourn for a minute the old rolling stock of British Rail where.
32:10 Speaker 04 The buffet car.
32:11 Speaker 03 Windows that you could pull down, the buffet car.
32:15 Speaker 04 Buffet car.
32:16 Speaker 03 The the fabric.
32:17 Adam Buxton? That's slightly rose tinted spectacles, though. I mean, British Rail back in the day was the butt of every single joke.
32:22 Speaker 03 Oh, as opposed to.
32:23 Adam Buxton? Because, yeah, of course, it's not better now and it's different now.
32:27 Speaker 04 Can't be bothered to make the joke anymore because it's so ridiculous.
32:29 Adam Buxton? But the trains never ran on time.
32:32 Speaker 03 I always thought I always thought what uh an extraordinary admission of failure, mind the gap.
32:42 Speaker 03 Is.
32:42 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
32:44 Speaker 03 And it is like a mantra every morning, the whole of the workforce in Britain.
32:52 Speaker 03 Mind the gap. Yes, I mind the gap. But what is the gap? It is the gap of failure altogether now.
33:05 Adam Buxton? The platform is badly designed.
33:07 Speaker 03 Fine.
33:08 Adam Buxton? The platform is badly designed.
33:10 Speaker 03 As opposed to China, where trains speed through stations with a millimeter gap.
33:51 Adam 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.
33:59 Speaker 04 April third.
34:00 Adam 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.
34:18 Speaker 04 You had the Paris student protest, didn't you as well?
34:21 Adam Buxton? Paris protests.
34:22 Speaker 04 That's a big one.
34:23 Adam 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.
34:34 Adam Buxton? Wealth inequality, Enoch Powell, Rivers of Blood speech, April 68. Assassination of Martin Luther King.
34:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:43 Adam Buxton? April 68. I mean, can you imagine how scary the world looked at that point and how out of control everything was?
34:51 Speaker 03 Then we we go into the Cuba crisis.
34:53 Adam Buxton? Culturally, Van Morrison was recording Astral Weeks.
34:56 Speaker 04 Ooh.
34:57 Adam Buxton? So that's good, isn't it?
34:58 Speaker 04 That's good.
35:00 Adam Buxton? Damon's not fussed.
35:01 Speaker 03 I mean, hasn't, uh, Van Morrison just sang the same song for 50 years?
35:07 Adam Buxton? Come on.
35:08 Speaker 03 (singing) (mumbling).
35:11 Adam Buxton? That is not a good Van Morrison impression.
35:14 Speaker 04 I'm glad he didn't sing that song over and over.
35:16 Speaker 03 (mumbling).
35:19 Adam Buxton? What is that? That's not Van Morrison.
35:22 Speaker 03 I I think Morrison, Van Morrison has got some wonderful songs.
35:26 Speaker 04 He's got some growling.
35:27 Speaker 03 Well, there's wonderful songs, but, uh, the limpest handshake of anyone I have ever met, ever.
35:34 Adam Buxton? Oh, really?
35:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, just so non-committal.
35:36 Speaker 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.
35:43 Speaker 03 Just the magnitude of his disinterest.
35:47 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
35:47 Speaker 03 Was.
35:48 Adam Buxton? He's not known for his personal charm.
35:50 Speaker 03 No.
35:50 Speaker 04 No. Our ex-manager used to manage Van.
35:54 Speaker 03 No, he didn't.
35:55 Speaker 04 Chris.
35:55 Speaker 03 No, he didn't.
35:56 Speaker 04 Yes, he did.
35:57 Speaker 03 No, he didn't.
35:57 Speaker 04 Yes, he did.
35:58 Speaker 03 No, he didn't.
35:59 Speaker 04 Yes, he did.
36:00 Speaker 03 I think he did.
36:01 Speaker 04 He told me he did. So was he lying?
36:04 Speaker 03 He managed, uh, John Cale.
36:06 Speaker 04 And and Thin Lizzy?
36:08 Speaker 03 Thin Lizzy, Ultravox.
36:11 Speaker 04 I thought he did Van.
36:12 Speaker 03 Dead or Alive.
36:13 Speaker 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.
36:20 Adam Buxton? Yeah, everyone knows that about Van.
36:22 Speaker 03 No, uh.
36:23 Adam Buxton? But Astral Weeks.
36:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, one. Come on, there's more than one. Anyway, let's not get hung up. I'm sorry.
36:29 Adam Buxton? Name me a number one.
36:31 Speaker 03 Name you another good Van Morrison album. Are you joking? Moon Dance.
36:34 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
36:35 Speaker 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?
37:21 Speaker 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.
38:03 Speaker 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.
38:33 Adam 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.
38:44 Speaker 04 That sounds very Marky Smith.
38:46 Speaker 03 But also, Marky Smith always used to send me a Christmas card.
38:50 Adam Buxton? Did he?
38:50 Speaker 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.
39:01 Adam Buxton? Yeah. Uh, what were you gonna say to him?
39:03 Speaker 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...
39:11 Adam Buxton? Irrascibility, speaking of...
39:13 Speaker 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.
39:18 Adam Buxton? Which album was that one?
39:19 Speaker 03 2010.
39:20 Speaker 04 Plastic Beach, wasn't it?
39:21 Speaker 03 We only worked with him once.
39:22 Speaker 04 He was sitting right here, in this studio.
39:25 Adam Buxton? In the studio?
39:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
39:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, like, the hardest person to convince to do something was Lou Reed.
39:31 Speaker 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."
39:48 Adam Buxton? Literally?
39:49 Speaker 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...
39:56 Speaker 03 Saw my little face in the window of the door, as you do.
39:59 Speaker 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.
40:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's like a stone.
40:18 Adam Buxton? In a nice way?
40:20 Speaker 03 He's a stone. Cold when you pick it up, you hold it close to you, warms up.
40:25 Speaker 04 Oh, that's lovely, Damon.
40:28 Adam Buxton? Were you gonna tell me the rest of this information about the stone as soon as you said it?
40:32 Speaker 03 No, I was looking to see if you understood that basic metaphor.
40:36 Adam Buxton? No, I didn't. All I was getting was that...
40:38 Speaker 03 That's why you like astral weeds, because it's like, you know...
40:41 Adam Buxton? Because I'm not...
40:42 Speaker 03 It's lax metaphor.
40:43 Adam Buxton? Oh my god.
40:44 Speaker 04 I feel a bit of Aries-Gemini competition building here.
40:47 Speaker 03 I'm only saying this because he clearly is such a fan.
40:51 Adam Buxton? It's so perverse.
40:52 Speaker 03 I am perverse.
40:55 Speaker 04 Don't let him get under your skin.
40:57 Speaker 03 Sorry, I've seen a weakness.
41:01 Adam Buxton? This is the hill that I'm dying on is defending Van Morrison. That's not something I expected.
41:10 Speaker 03 I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm only, I'm just being silly.
41:12 Adam Buxton? Of course.
41:13 Speaker 03 Honestly.
41:13 Adam Buxton? Marky Smith has been resurrected on this record.
41:15 Speaker 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.
41:35 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
41:35 Speaker 03 They've, they've reemerged, um, which shows you that his mind and his visions were acute.
41:43 Speaker 04 Those kind of lyrics give birth to incredible illustrations. You get lyrics like that, you can't really go wrong, can you?
42:03 Speaker 03 Look behind you. Do you see that tape machine there?
42:06 Adam Buxton? Yes.
42:06 Speaker 03 That comes from Elvis's studio.
42:08 Adam Buxton? No way.
42:10 Speaker 04 Oh, and you see that lamp over there?
42:13 Speaker 03 And, and I've just got.
42:14 Speaker 04 You've got some of Florian's stuff in here.
42:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. In the, uh, upper room there, there's, um.
42:19 Adam Buxton? You've got Kraftwerk gear.
42:20 Speaker 03 Yeah. A Kraftwerk synthesizer from Quiet.
42:23 Speaker 04 And a typewriter with covered in DNA.
42:25 Speaker 03 I've got Florian's typewriter.
42:28 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's upstairs, I think.
42:29 Speaker 03 Is it?
42:30 Adam Buxton? You've got a Kraftwerk synthesizer?
42:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, I just got it, yeah.
42:33 Speaker 04 Holy shit. There was a big auction of his stuff.
42:36 Speaker 03 I'll show you it later.
42:37 Adam Buxton? I'd love to see it.
42:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:38 Adam Buxton? And when you play it, can you hear what songs they would have recorded with it?
42:43 Speaker 04 He's programmed stuff into it. It's bespoke.
42:46 Adam Buxton? Wow.
42:47 Speaker 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.
42:53 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
42:55 Speaker 04 There's one button you press and it goes dum, dum dum dum dum dum dum.
43:00 Adam Buxton? If only.
43:02 Speaker 04 If only.
43:03 Adam Buxton? That was the first single I ever bought.
43:05 Speaker 04 I'm dusting those keys to get some Florian DNA.
43:08 Speaker 03 But, you know, do you remember the Casio Vial tone?
43:10 Adam Buxton? Of course I do.
43:12 Speaker 03 So that was the first.
43:13 Adam Buxton? Da, da, da.
43:14 Speaker 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.
43:27 Speaker 03 Just the preset that they'd used on that song by Trio, wasn't it?
43:31 Adam Buxton? Yeah. A German combo.
43:36 Speaker 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.
43:54 Adam Buxton? Do you think that there's a song in every single new bit of gear?
43:57 Speaker 03 Yes.
43:58 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
43:58 Speaker 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.
44:09 Speaker 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.
44:28 Speaker 03 I mean, I've got two buildings now full of keyboards.
44:31 Speaker 04 But you don't have as many as Jean. You can't compete on keyboards with Jean-Michel Jarre.
44:36 Adam Buxton? No one has as many as Jean-Michel.
44:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
44:38 Speaker 03 I think I will have eventually. His keyboard collection is extraordinary. It's JJ, you know.
44:44 Adam Buxton? And?
44:45 Speaker 03 Who is a lovely human being.
44:47 Adam Buxton? Is he? Jean-Michel. How's he doing these days?
44:50 Speaker 03 Firm handshake.
44:52 Speaker 04 Good firm handshake. Very young and he's still very busy. He's a very prolific man.
44:57 Adam 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.
45:06 Speaker 03 No, no, I think, I think free jazz is not the.
45:10 Adam Buxton? It's gonna be your next album.
45:12 Speaker 03 I would say Twelve Bar Blues.
45:14 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
45:16 Speaker 03 Was more what I was alluding to.
45:50 Adam Buxton? It's the AI question.
45:51 Speaker 03 Uh oh.
45:53 Adam Buxton? Uh oh. How are you guys accommodating that into your lives if you are?
45:57 Speaker 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.
46:30 Adam Buxton? Are they?
46:31 Speaker 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.
47:03 Speaker 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.
47:30 Adam Buxton? Oh, really?
47:31 Speaker 03 No, apart from kind of Netflix.
47:33 Adam Buxton? Yeah. But you're not on Spotify?
47:35 Speaker 03 No.
47:35 Adam Buxton? Okay.
47:36 Speaker 04 No.
47:37 Speaker 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.
47:43 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
47:44 Speaker 03 Not on Facebook. I'm not on anything.
47:46 Adam Buxton? So how do you listen to music then? Before you got your 300 CD changer?
47:51 Speaker 03 Uh, I just listen to it, you know? I mean, I've got, I've got an old jukebox.
47:56 Adam Buxton? Okay.
47:56 Speaker 03 Got a record player.
47:58 Adam Buxton? Yes.
47:58 Speaker 03 In that way.
47:59 Adam Buxton? Very retro.
48:01 Speaker 03 Not really. Just, I mean, it's not retro if you never stop doing it.
48:04 Adam Buxton? I mean, it is if everyone else stops doing it.
48:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I'm, as you've.
48:10 Speaker 04 Oh, here we go. Come on, enough you two.
48:12 Speaker 03 I'm not, I'm not, I'm not necessarily someone who, you know, is a slave to sort of fashionable behaviour.
48:20 Adam 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?
48:35 Speaker 04 It's quite, it's quite a relaxed process. We just hang out together.
48:38 Adam 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?
48:45 Speaker 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.
48:59 Adam Buxton? Mm-hmm.
49:00 Speaker 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.
49:42 Speaker 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.
50:25 Speaker 04 And their take on death and and reincarnation. As opposed to the way we see it over here, which is.
50:32 Speaker 03 Some hope in a hopeless situation.
50:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:36 Speaker 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.
51:05 Speaker 04 Whereabouts is Viranasi?
51:06 Speaker 03 It's on the Ganges. Central.
51:09 Speaker 04 It's like this spiritual epicenter, isn't it? It's where they have the funeral pyres.
51:13 Speaker 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.
51:35 Speaker 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.
52:03 Speaker 03 The possibilities.
52:04 Speaker 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.
52:11 Adam Buxton? Was that part of your kind of spiritual sense before that time?
52:15 Speaker 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.
52:27 Adam Buxton? Because your parents were playing him?
52:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:28 Adam Buxton? Yeah. Have you seen the Monterey Pop film?
52:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:33 Adam Buxton? D A Pennebaker, yeah, that ends with that extraordinary Ravi Shankar.
52:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:38 Adam Buxton? Performance.
52:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, you know, and then the opportunity to work with Anushka.
52:43 Adam Buxton? Who is Anushka?
52:43 Speaker 03 Anushka Shankar.
52:45 Adam Buxton? Right.
52:45 Speaker 03 His daughter.
52:46 Speaker 04 Who's on this album.
52:47 Speaker 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?
53:21 Adam Buxton? Did you respond in similar ways after your dads died?
53:24 Speaker 03 Um, we had different relationships with our dads.
53:26 Adam Buxton? Right, okay. What was your dad like, Jamie?
53:29 Speaker 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.
53:54 Speaker 04 What's gonna happen to me?
53:55 Adam Buxton? Yeah, well, that's the freedom.
53:56 Speaker 04 And other family members and friends.
53:58 Adam Buxton? Sure.
53:59 Speaker 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.
54:28 Adam Buxton? Yeah, do you feel that?
54:29 Speaker 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.
54:39 Adam Buxton? Did you feel literally fearful before though? Did you feel like that was part of?
54:43 Speaker 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.
54:51 Adam Buxton? Of death?
54:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, but I'm not worrying about it at the moment. That voice has gone quiet again for a while.
55:01 Adam Buxton? What was your dad like, Damon?
55:02 Speaker 03 Um, complex.
55:06 Speaker 03 I mean, I was hugely kind of influenced by my dad's ideas. My dad was a very interesting thinker.
55:15 Adam Buxton? Was he a teacher?
55:16 Speaker 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.
55:35 Adam Buxton? And confidence?
55:37 Speaker 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.
55:55 Adam 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.
56:11 Speaker 03 I have, I have worked at my musical ability almost daily for nearly forty years.
56:17 Adam Buxton? Sure.
56:17 Speaker 03 So it's not, it's not something that was
56:19 Adam Buxton? You're honing it.
56:20 Speaker 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.
56:35 Adam 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
56:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I can do other stuff much more loose.
56:52 Adam Buxton? Yeah, sure.
56:52 Speaker 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.
57:09 Adam Buxton? Yes.
59:12 Speaker 04 There's been a lot of stuff, good stuff made in this studio over the years.
59:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
59:17 Speaker 04 Many, many sessions.
59:18 Speaker 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.
59:30 Speaker 04 The grime from your yoga sessions.
59:33 Adam Buxton? Who have you had in here then?
59:35 Speaker 03 Who haven't we had?
59:36 Adam Buxton? Who haven't we had? Marky Smith's been in here. Did you do Sean Ryder in here?
59:40 Speaker 03 No, that was in the.
59:41 Speaker 04 That was in the last studio, the one with Sean Ryder.
59:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, people like Grace Jones.
59:45 Adam Buxton? Grace Jones, has she been in here?
59:47 Speaker 03 Been in here. She did the handstand, just there.
59:51 Adam Buxton? Aged, what, like?
59:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
59:52 Adam Buxton? Hundred.
59:53 Speaker 03 Yeah. Aged a hundred.
59:55 Adam Buxton? What's she like?
59:56 Speaker 03 Still looking amazing.
59:57 Speaker 04 She was in her mid to late sixties. She's incredible.
1:00:01 Adam Buxton? What do you chat to Grace Jones about?
1:00:03 Speaker 03 Anything.
1:00:04 Speaker 04 It started in Jamaica, that, didn't it? Then she came here.
1:00:07 Speaker 03 Yeah. She had quite a lot to actually say about Donald Trump, who she'd known socially in New York.
1:00:13 Adam Buxton? Right, back in the.
1:00:14 Speaker 03 Studio fifty-four.
1:00:15 Adam Buxton? Yes, yes. What was she saying about Trumplestiltskin? Did she think that he was unfairly maligned?
1:00:22 Speaker 04 Is that, is that one of yours, Trumplestiltskin?
1:00:28 Speaker 03 She wasn't necessarily the biggest fan.
1:00:32 Adam Buxton? No.
1:00:33 Speaker 04 Let's just leave it at that, shall we?
1:00:34 Adam Buxton? He gets too much publicity.
1:00:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, let's not talk about it.
1:00:37 Speaker 03 I had a really.
1:00:38 Speaker 04 We're just off to America soon, you know.
1:00:40 Speaker 03 I had quite an involved dream about Trump.
1:00:42 Adam Buxton? People do dream about, my wife dreamt about him the other day.
1:00:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, and he was a really nice guy. I liked him in my dream.
1:00:49 Speaker 04 He's everywhere, even in our dreams.
1:00:51 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:00:51 Speaker 04 You got along well with him in your dream, really?
1:00:53 Speaker 03 I did. Honestly, it was weird.
1:00:55 Speaker 04 It's not like you.
1:00:56 Speaker 03 I actually found myself really going, I quite like this guy, I get it.
1:00:59 Adam 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.
1:01:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, oh yeah.
1:01:12 Adam Buxton? That really, combined with power, does a number on people. But anyway, yeah. David Bowie died ten years ago.
1:01:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:01:21 Adam Buxton? Did you spend much time with him?
1:01:23 Speaker 03 A bit, yeah.
1:01:24 Adam Buxton? Did you ever work on anything with him?
1:01:26 Speaker 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.
1:01:46 Adam Buxton? This is Bowie we're talking about, yeah.
1:01:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:01:48 Speaker 04 Do you remember when we lived together, we had an answering machine?
1:01:51 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:01:52 Speaker 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?
1:02:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:02:02 Speaker 04 Hello, Damon. It's David Bowie, yeah. And we never kept that tape, did we?
1:02:07 Adam Buxton? I always remember an episode of The Ozone. Do you remember The Ozone?
1:02:11 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:02:11 Adam Buxton? With Jane Middlemiss and Jamie Thigston?
1:02:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, Jamie Thigston.
1:02:18 Speaker 03 Well, I mean, we've got stories about any, anywhere, anyone who was like in, uh, light entertainment in the nineties.
1:02:23 Adam Buxton? Did you go nuts with Jamie Thigston?
1:02:25 Speaker 04 And, and Ant and Dec.
1:02:28 Speaker 03 And Ant and Dec.
1:02:28 Adam Buxton? And Ant and Dec.
1:02:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:02:30 Speaker 03 And the Spice Girls.
1:02:31 Speaker 04 I think you made one of them cry, didn't you?
1:02:33 Speaker 03 Huh?
1:02:34 Speaker 04 You were so mean to them. We went out with them.
1:02:36 Speaker 03 This idea that I'm mean to people.
1:02:38 Speaker 04 The true story is we had an idea. We wanted to do like a remake.
1:02:41 Speaker 03 Why do you say that? But I made someone cry because I was mean.
1:02:44 Speaker 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.
1:03:16 Speaker 03 Dec is the smaller one, isn't he?
1:03:18 Adam Buxton? Yes.
1:03:19 Speaker 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.
1:03:31 Speaker 04 Got on the plane to Australia with quite a hangover.
1:03:34 Speaker 03 I don't, I don't know the story. I don't know the story.
1:03:36 Adam Buxton? Should get into a studio and record in the same way that Derek and Clive did.
1:03:43 Speaker 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.
1:04:00 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's something I would like to hear. I'd like to hear Ant and Dec doing Peter.
1:04:05 Speaker 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.
1:04:11 Speaker 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.
1:04:20 Adam Buxton? Mm hmm. I just want to hear what Contact by Stockhausen sounds like.
1:04:36 Speaker 04 Love it.
1:04:38 Adam Buxton? What would the Spice Girls do though? Those noises.
1:04:41 Speaker 04 Exactly. What would they do? Well, it's intriguing, right?
1:04:45 Adam Buxton? Yeah. To bring it back to Javies, you were quite rude about him in The Ozone in 1995. I felt very
1:04:52 Speaker 04 Ooh.
1:04:53 Adam Buxton? indignant on his behalf.
1:04:55 Speaker 03 Was I having a go at Tim Machine?
1:04:57 Adam 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.
1:05:03 Speaker 04 1995.
1:05:04 Adam Buxton? Saying.
1:05:04 Speaker 04 Hang on, I want to hear your impression of Damon.
1:05:06 Adam Buxton? Right, here we go.
1:05:08 Speaker 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.
1:05:15 Speaker 04 That's very good impersonation of Damon. You've even got that little whistle at the end.
1:05:20 Speaker 03 Bless you.
1:05:21 Adam Buxton? I did work on it.
1:05:25 Speaker 04 I love the way you prepared that.
1:05:28 Adam Buxton? That was in my audiobook.
1:05:30 Speaker 03 Um, yeah, I, I mean, there was something about the Tim Machine that was just particularly rubbish.
1:05:37 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:05:37 Speaker 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.
1:06:08 Adam Buxton? Mm hmm.
1:06:09 Speaker 03 But thanks for bringing it up nonetheless.
1:06:11 Adam Buxton? Reenacting it so superbly.
1:06:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:06:14 Adam Buxton? And of course Bowie's last statement.
1:06:17 Speaker 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.
1:06:27 Adam Buxton? Is it not? Does Donny McCaslin not play any free jazz?
1:06:31 Speaker 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.
1:06:49 Adam Buxton? Scronking, atonal.
1:06:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, you could, free jazz is the same as free pop. Free classical is the same thing.
1:06:57 Adam Buxton? What's free pop? I'd like to hear some free pop.
1:07:00 Speaker 03 I can show you some later if you want to participate in it.
1:07:04 Adam Buxton? Let's do some free pop.
1:07:09 Adam Buxton? We've created a new genre.
1:07:15 Adam 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,
1:07:51 Adam Buxton? I was beginning to relax. I had been quite nervous. I didn't know what to expect.
1:07:58 Adam 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.
1:08:19 Adam 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.
1:09:01 Speaker 04 I listened to the one you did with Louis.
1:09:04 Adam Buxton? I've done lots with Louis.
1:09:05 Speaker 04 Yeah, I listened to one of them, which was very funny.
1:09:08 Adam Buxton? He's always funny.
1:09:09 Speaker 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."
1:09:21 Adam 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.
1:09:37 Adam Buxton? You don't look convinced. Have you seen him doing that?
1:09:39 Speaker 04 What do you mean improvises songs?
1:09:41 Adam Buxton? He gets the cameraman to focus on someone in the audience.
1:09:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:09:45 Adam Buxton? And their face goes up on the jumbotron.
1:09:47 Speaker 04 And then he says, "Oh, you're having an affair."
1:09:49 Adam 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-
1:09:59 Speaker 04 Anyone can do that.
1:10:00 Adam Buxton? Do it then.
1:10:01 Speaker 04 You want me to sing a song about you? "Oh, Adam, by the way, you've dropped your zip to the bottom."
1:10:13 Speaker 03 I can see that within you are truly rotten.
1:10:17 Adam Buxton? This is not as good as the stuff Chris Martin was doing at Glastonbury. He was doing like properly formed songs.
1:10:25 Speaker 03 And you think that that hadn't been pre-prepared?
1:10:29 Adam Buxton? Yes.
1:10:32 Adam Buxton? I think.
1:10:32 Speaker 03 You're a fool.
1:10:34 Adam Buxton? Simon Pegg.
1:10:34 Speaker 03 You're a naive fool.
1:10:35 Adam 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.
1:10:47 Speaker 03 Well, if Simon says.
1:10:51 Speaker 03 What, that he doesn't have chord sequences?
1:10:53 Adam Buxton? Yeah, he might have chord sequences. Sure, sure. Have you seen, um, Marty Supreme?
1:10:59 Speaker 04 Not yet.
1:11:00 Speaker 03 Not yet, but I mean, I'm a massive table tennis person.
1:11:02 Adam Buxton? Because I know you boasted about beating Donald Glover at table tennis.
1:11:06 Speaker 04 Donald Glover? I've never played Donald Glover at two. Where did you get that from?
1:11:10 Speaker 03 You told me that story. Charles Gambino.
1:11:12 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
1:11:13 Speaker 03 Not Danny Glover.
1:11:14 Speaker 04 Donald Glover, yes.
1:11:15 Speaker 03 Anyone can beat Danny Glover. He's like eighty five. I thrashed him. I thrashed him at table tennis.
1:11:20 Speaker 04 I'm not answering that.
1:11:21 Speaker 03 I would like to play Tim.
1:11:24 Adam Buxton? Someone at the door, Rick. You would like to play Timothy Chalamet?
1:11:28 Speaker 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.
1:11:37 Adam Buxton? Uh huh.
1:11:37 Speaker 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.
1:11:51 Adam Buxton? Yeah. Um, but I don't get. Who is the best hip hop artist, table tennis player?
1:11:57 Speaker 03 Well, it was Kano, but I can beat him.
1:11:59 Adam Buxton? Kano?
1:12:00 Speaker 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.
1:12:09 Adam Buxton? What does that mean? Are you like, jumping up and down and going way back like they do in Martin's.
1:12:14 Speaker 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.
1:12:23 Adam Buxton? Mm-hmm.
1:12:23 Speaker 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.
1:12:31 Adam Buxton? Susan Sarandon.
1:12:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, we played like with a spoon or something.
1:12:35 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah.
1:12:36 Speaker 03 And trash you, it's so humiliating. Do you like table tennis?
1:12:41 Adam Buxton? Uh, I can't play it. My, my sons like it.
1:12:43 Speaker 03 That, right.
1:12:44 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, they're good.
1:12:45 Speaker 03 They really competitive. I mean, you, you can't not be, if you like it.
1:12:48 Adam Buxton? They've had big rows. Their, their table tennis rows, my sons are like my Monopoly rows used to be with my sister.
1:12:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.
1:12:58 Adam Buxton? Really quite bitter. Okay, will you show me some of your gear?
1:13:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, sure.
1:13:05 Adam Buxton? Walking down the red corridors. What are these studios called?
1:13:10 Speaker 03 It's called Studio thirteen.
1:13:12 Adam Buxton? What about your bells?
1:13:14 Speaker 03 My bells?
1:13:15 Adam Buxton? Your brass bells?
1:13:16 Speaker 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.
1:13:29 Adam Buxton? Uh-huh.
1:13:30 Speaker 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.
1:13:54 Adam Buxton? So you are an actual Cockney?
1:13:56 Speaker 03 I'm a Cockney, yeah.
1:13:57 Adam Buxton? So when people were accusing you of being a Mockney in the nineties, that must have really made you just angry.
1:14:03 Speaker 03 When people accused me of going to public school, which is ridiculous.
1:14:07 Adam Buxton? Yes.
1:14:09 Speaker 03 I went to Stoneway Comprehensive, which, believe me, was a very average state school.
1:14:18 Adam Buxton? Should I be following you?
1:14:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, please.
1:14:22 Speaker 03 So when you come here to work, you get to look in all of these cupboards, which are just packed full of keyboards.
1:14:33 Adam Buxton? Oh wow, beautifully labelled.
1:14:36 Speaker 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.
1:14:52 Adam Buxton? The Moog Little Fatty.
1:14:54 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:14:54 Adam Buxton? The Chroma Polaris.
1:14:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:14:56 Adam Buxton? The Ensonic ASR 10 number 1.
1:14:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:15:00 Adam Buxton? The Tesco... No, it's not Tesco, it's Tayco.
1:15:04 Speaker 03 The Rhythm 6 Mark 700. The Casio, oh lovely, Casio, god I love Casio.
1:15:10 Adam Buxton? And each of these you have recorded with?
1:15:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, and they're all different. They've all got a different story in a...
1:15:16 Adam Buxton? Look at that.
1:15:17 Speaker 03 One of two. This is where, when I'm in London, I work up here. Hi guys.
1:15:26 Speaker 02 Hi Joe.
1:15:27 Adam Buxton? Hello.
1:15:27 Speaker 03 Adam Buckson is doing a podcast with us.
1:15:30 Adam Buxton? Hello, sorry to interrupt.
1:15:31 Speaker 02 That's alright, Adam, how nice to meet you.
1:15:33 Adam Buxton? Nice to meet you.
1:15:34 Speaker 03 Um, now, this is a keyboard from the Kraftwerk studio.
1:15:39 Adam Buxton? Oh really?
1:15:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:15:40 Adam Buxton? Holy Moses, this thing?
1:15:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:15:42 Adam Buxton? Wow.
1:15:43 Speaker 03 Do you want to hear it?
1:15:44 Adam Buxton? Yes, please.
1:15:45 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:15:50 Adam Buxton? Ooh.
1:15:55 Adam Buxton? Oh my god, that sounds amazing.
1:16:10 Adam Buxton? So that's a bass synth keyboard. Yes, please.
1:16:13 Speaker 02 Touch it.
1:16:14 Adam Buxton? Touch it. Whoa, that guy, I like that guy.
1:16:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:16:22 Adam Buxton? Amazing.
1:16:24 Speaker 03 Anyway.
1:16:25 Adam Buxton? Fantastic, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
1:16:36 Speaker 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.
1:16:59 Adam 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.
1:17:39 Adam 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.
1:18:20 Adam 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.
1:19:03 Adam 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.
1:19:45 Adam 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?
1:19:58 Speaker 02 I was punished for wanting to get the most out of the day.
1:20:01 Adam 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.
1:20:19 Speaker 02 And so for that terrible crime, I was forced to sleep in the kitchen.
1:20:23 Adam Buxton? Which is where you used to sleep perfectly happily before things got altogether too lax and you started sharing our bedroom.
1:20:30 Speaker 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.
1:20:39 Adam 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
1:21:24 Adam 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,
1:22:08 Adam 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
1:22:51 Adam 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.
1:23:23 Adam 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!
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