The air backstage at this Gorillaz one-off stadium show smells less of ego and more of ozone, as if Damon Albarn has been generating a small personal thunderstorm in his dressing room. I am here, gin in hand (airport variety, naturally), to witness the circus that precedes the digital apocalypse. The vibe, as the kids say, is ‘ridiculous’. And by ridiculous, I mean it feels like the inside of a fever dream where a committee of cartoon ghosts are trying to unionise.
Let us be clear: Gorillaz are not a band. They are a concept that has learned to walk and now demands its own tax bracket. The genius, or the curse, of this project is that it strips away the tedious human element of celebrity and replaces it with pure, unfiltered artifice. Backstage, this means a distinct lack of the usual rock star detritus. No shattered minibars or weeping groupies. Instead, there is a hushed reverence, a sense that we are all extras in a very expensive commercial for nihilism.
Albarn himself drifts past, looking like a man who has just solved a complex equation involving a B-flat minor chord and the gross national product of a small nation. He offers a nod, the kind a duke might give a particularly well-trained spaniel. I resist the urge to ask him about the 'vibe'. To be honest, I am afraid he might answer with a philosophical treatise on the semiotics of digital performance in a post-truth era. I am not paid enough for that. I am barely paid at all.
The stage is a cathedral of screens. Monoliths of light that will soon project the animated antics of 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel. These are the real stars. They do not need to be here. Their puppeteers, however, do. And so the backstage area becomes a strange blend of tech wizards in black T-shirts and the kind of assistants who look like they could forge a passport in under an hour. They all speak in hushed tones, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter that sounds like static.
I corner a sound engineer, a man who has the hollowed-out look of someone who has spent too long in a dark room making cartoons sound like they are real. 'The vibe,' I say, 'is it ridiculous?' He stares at me for a long moment, as if I have asked him to explain the plot of a James Joyce novel. 'It's a bit mental,' he finally concedes. 'But that's the point, isn't it?' He gestures towards the empty stage. 'They're not real. They can do anything. We're just trying to keep up.'
And there is the rub. In a world where reality is a currency that has been devalued to the point of worthlessness, a band of fictional musicians feels more authentic than any flesh-and-blood act could ever hope to be. They are the perfect mirror for our fractured times: a collection of digital avatars who can be anything, say anything, and never have to face a hangover or a tax audit.
The gin is running low, and the crowd outside is beginning to roar. A primal sound, like a beast demanding to be fed. The screens flicker to life, and the cartoon caper begins. I take one last look at the chaotic serenity of the backstage. The vibe is indeed ridiculous. It is also, I suspect, a glimpse into the future of all entertainment. God help us all.
