Gorillaz talk favourite collabs, reveal Damon Albarn almost worked with David Bowie & Ray Davies
12 November 2025, 21:05
Gorillaz: Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett talk collabs and inspirations
Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett spoke to Radio X’s Dan O’Connell about some of their favourite collaborations and the ones that got away.
Gorillaz Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn, David Bowie and Ray Davies.
Picture:
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images, Lester Cohen/Getty Images, Richard Ecclestone/Redferns/Getty
Gorillaz almost worked with David Bowie and Ray Davies.
Co-creators of the animated band Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett spoke to Radio X’s Dan O’Connell about the band’s upcoming album The Mountain and looked back at some of their best collabs as well as what might have been.
“I nearly made a record with Ray Davies and David Bowie back in the late ’90s, admitted Albarn. “That didn’t happen, so…”
Elsewhere, the duo revealed that Dionne Warwick was so close to recording with the band twice, but didn’t like the band’s devilish title for their Demon Days record.
Hewlett recalled: “She was in the studio on the piano with Damon, saying ‘I’m not sure about the name of this album Demon Days. Why have you called it Demon Days?'”
“I think she just found some of the lyrics and some of the ideas a bit problematic, but an amazing person nonetheless”.
Watch our full interview with the band above.
Read more:
When it came to some of their favourite artists over the last 25 years, Albarn revealed: “I mean De La Soul obviously, Bobby [Womack], very very important to us, just as friends and kind of pre-Gorillaz as an inspiration. Just really important to the history of music, really.”
“There’s too many really,” added Hewlett.
“I mean, finding voices like that. Someone like Fatou[mata] Diawara from Mali, who I’ve worked with a lot. Wonderful artist, the list goes on.”
Speaking of Dennis Hopper – whose narration featured on the band’s Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head – Albarn revealed he first had the opportunity to meet him and ask to work with him during an event at the Hackney Empire but “chickened out” and hid behind a pillar instead.
“To be fair, I would have done the same, said Hewlett.”It’s Dennis Hopper”.
Giving a mention to the Happy Mondays frontman, who featured on their only number one single DARE, Albarn added: “I mean, Shaun Ryder… God bless him. He’s a force of nature.”
On the famous DARE “mistake,” Albarn mused: “It was a perfect example of using what you get and making the most of it.”
Jamie Hewlett, Radio X’s Dan O’Connell and Damon Albarn.
Picture:
Radio X
Speaking about their forthcoming album, The Mountain, the duo revealed how India came to be such a source of inspiration for the new album.
Hewlett explained: “We had some adventures in India and that sort of informed the whole idea of the record.It started off with my mother in law and my wife were in India in 2022 and my mother in law had a stroke and ended up in a coma and I spent 10 weeks in Jaipur with my wife and trying to get her home.
“And even though I was there for such a traumatic reason, I kind of really fell in love with Jaipur ’cause it’s just insane. A crazy place and I came back and said to Damon, ‘We have to go to India,’ and he said: ‘Yep. Absolutely’.
After the pair decided to go back to India, a bizarre ocurrence where their fathers died within 10 days of each other sent them back to the country.
“I took my dad’s ashes to the Ganges,” said Albarn. “And did that in Varanasi which is the centre of the spirital cremation in Hindu.”
“What we took from India is more of a positive approach to dying. So I said to Damon, ‘If we can make an album that would make people less afraid of what is essentially inevitable, wouldn’t that be cool?'”
Gorillaz – The Mountain album artwork.
Picture:
Press
Gorillaz’s The Mountain is set for release on 29th March next year.
So far from the record has come recent track, The God of Lying, featuring Bristol-formed rockers IDLES, The Manifesto ft. Trueno & Proof and the first taste of the record in the form lead single The Happy Dictator, which features Sparks.
Gorillaz – The Happy Dictator ft. Sparks (Official Visualiser)
The album also includes contributions from late musicians including Tony Allen, Mark E. Smith and Bobby Womack.
The Mountain follows Gorillaz’s 2001 self-titled debut, Demon Days (2005), Plastic Beach (2010), The Fall (2010), Humanz (2017), The Now Now (2018), Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez (2020) and Cracker Island (2023).
See the artwork and tracklisting for The Mountain below and pre-order the album here.
See Gorillaz – The Mountain tracklisting:
- The Mountain (feat. Dennis Hopper, Ajay Prasanna, Anoushka Shankar, Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash)
- The Moon Cave (feat. Asha Puthli, Bobby Womack, Dave Jolicoeur, Jalen Ngonda and Black Thought)
- The Happy Dictator (feat. Sparks)
- The Hardest Thing (feat. Tony Allen)
- Orange County (feat. Bizarrap, Kara Jackson and Anoushka Shankar)
- The God of Lying (feat. IDLES)
- The Empty Dream Machine (feat. Black Thought, Johnny Marr and Anoushka Shankar)
- The Manifesto (feat. Trueno and Proof)
- The Plastic Guru (feat. Johnny Marr and Anoushka Shankar)
- Delirium (feat. Mark E. Smith)
- Damascus (feat. Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bey)
- The Shadowy Light (feat. Asha Bhosle, Gruff Rhys, Ajay Prasanna, Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash)
- Casablanca (feat. Paul Simonon and Johnny Marr)
- The Sweet Prince (feat. Ajay Prasanna, Johnny Marr and Anoushka Shankar)
- The Sad God (feat. Black Thought, Ajay Prasanna and Anoushka Shankar)
Read more:
