John Lydon on why Gorillaz are “shit”
There aren’t many people in the music industry as brutally honest as John Lydon. From his early days leading Sex Pistols to becoming one of the leading figures in post-punk with Public Image Ltd, Lydon was known not to mince words on any kind of rock star that came his way, dismissing anyone that he saw as crap or chastising the biggest names in the industry for not being in it for the right reasons. Although Lydon may have seen punk get twisted in different directions as the years went on, he had no tolerance for when rock and roll met the digital age.
When the punk movement first started, though, Lydon was already bent on making art that was intended to be destructive. Compared to the sounds of progressive music dominating the airwaves at the time, he wanted to make deliberately chaotic work, causing a stir on Nevermind the Bollocks because of how cutthroat his lyrics were on tracks like ‘God Save the Queen’ or ‘Anarchy in the UK’.
Having moved on from his punk roots in the 1990s, Lydon saw that his first musical incarnation started to take on a different form. In the wake of grunge taking over the world, other niche genres started to come out of the woodwork to become the most celebrated on the planet, including the sounds of pop-punk and power pop.
Although Lydon had no tolerance for up-and-coming artists like Green Day and Blink-182, the next phase of British rock knelt at the altar of Sex Pistols. Forming from the ashes of grunge, Britpop brought a more optimistic attitude to rock and roll, with bands like Oasis wearing their love for Lydon on their sleeve when tearing through songs like ‘Bring It On Down’.
While Oasis may have loved the sounds of punk, Blur were a different breed of band, formed with the intention of expanding their horizons on every album. Even though Damon Albarn had various moments of the genre bombast across albums like Parklife and The Great Escape, he found the makeup of Blur to be too stifling, leading to him forming the basis for what would become Gorillaz.
Taking the sounds of trip-hop, hip-hop, and any other genre he could think of, Albarn created one of the first virtual bands, depicting the group as strange cartoon personas and inviting various artists into the fold to create the zany atmosphere. As much as Albarn may have wanted to break down genre boundaries, Lydon was less than impressed with what they were doing.
When speaking to NME, Lydon singled out Gorillaz as one of the examples of music taking a massive downward slide, saying, “I really don’t wanna talk about shit like the Gorillaz, you know what I mean? Come on, I’m the originator don’t toss us with that. I think there’s less original talent now than 30 years ago. It’s much more manufactured.”
Even though what Gorillaz does seems manufactured, Albarn intended it to be the exact opposite. When putting together the foundations of the band with illustrator Jamie Hewlett, Albarn envisioned an outfit that would be a mockery of the kind of manufactured groups that were popping up on MTV every single day. Gorillaz may use the same tools as them, but Albarn always intended the virtual collective as a way to use marketing stunts against themselves.
