On The Mountain, Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz explore life after death

This story is originally published in Huck 83: Life Is a Journey – The 20^th Anniversary Issue. Order your copy now.

You know the hardest thing is to say goodbye to someone you love

That is the hardest thing

And when the curtains rise and the party begins

Do you laugh?

Do you break down inside

Wondering how

How you got to the afterlife?

Discussing the cracked, mournful, heavily emotive lyrics to Gorillaz track ​‘The Hardest Thing’ from their latest album The Mountain (Kong, 2026), was how I was going to start this interview with the band’s co-creator and artist Jamie Hewlett. But a screw fell out of my chair handle when I was waiting for the band’s publicist to connect us. Quietly singing Apollo 440’s 1997 rave anthem ​‘Ain’t Talkin’ ​‘Bout Dub’ as I fixed it I was interrupted with ​“Hello… Josh?” My screen had flickered to life while I was looking away. 

“Oh, hello Jamie.”

• Read next: Huck’s 20^th Anniversary Issue, Wu-Tang Clan is here

I look up to make eye contact with a familiar face – the extremely talented visual artist who, as well as being responsible most notably for the iconic Tank Girl comic and Gorillaz, is successful in his own right. He’s in his studio in France, sitting in front of black shelves covered in objet d’art, wearing a brown cardigan and sucking on a liquorice-papered rollie. Luckily, I’ve met Hewlett several times before – the last time at his impressive solo show at London’s Saatchi Gallery, but the very first time was while working part-time at seminal screen print house Pictures on Walls, which sold his art, in 2005. Having been out the night before, I was in the toilet being sick when he came in and invited the small team to the launch party of Demon Days (Parlophone) – their sophomore album – later that night at west London hotspot Neighbourhood.

He laughs when I remind him of this. ​“Neighbourhood!” he exclaims. ​“Under the Westway! I forgot about Neighbourhood. That was a fun place. It’s such a London thing to do, isn’t it, to party under a motorway?”

We exchange some nostalgia for the mid-’00s creative scene, but I’m wary we don’t have lots of time, and there are some deep subjects to get through. Death hangs heavy over The Mountain. So, thinking on my feet, I tell him I’m changing the lyrics to that Apollo 440 song to ​“We’re Talkin’ ​’bout De-eeaath” and jump right in.

• Read next: On the road with roaming Tamasha performers in rural India

An extended period of extreme grief was the genesis of The Mountain. Hewlett’s mother-in-law suffered a brain aneurysm while travelling in India with her daughter, and he rushed to be by their sides. ​“I was in Belgrade with Damon [Albarn, co-creator of Gorillaz] in Serbia when I found out,” he says. ​“So I was on a flight to Jaipur as soon as I could get a visa. It was a really traumatic experience to be in a very, very different world, in one big hospital during a pneumonia epidemic. The corridors were filled with people coughing and feeling sick. But at the same time, I was really amazed at the generosity of people and the kindness of people.” 

Hewlett spent eight weeks in Jaipur and, when not at the hospital, he went out and absorbed the city. The heat, the noise and the colour, the fact that every type of animal in that region just roams the streets free. ​“The place blew my mind,” he says. ​“They have a saying there, which is: ​‘The animals have as much right to be here as us. So why would we move them?’ If there’s a cow asleep in the road, you just drive around it.” This made total sense to the artist and the city began to worm into Hewlett’s brain, setting a course for where Gorillaz were headed next. ​“We were finishing off the last album campaign,” he explains. And I was literally delivering the last few pieces of artwork while I was with my mother-in-law, who sadly didn’t make it. The last thing I drew was in my hotel room. So I put the characters in India, kind of seeding the next album with an idea that maybe that’s where we would pick up on the story with the characters.”

• Read next: Graham Sayle opens up

On his return to the UK he encouraged his Gorillaz partner Damon Albarn, saying that they should both visit Jaipur. The first trip was a success but, as they were planning another foray to India, both their fathers died within 10 days of each other. Albarn is 10 days older than Hewlett and this shared experience poured into the latest Gorillaz journey. ​“I had a difficult relationship with my dad, and Damon had his relationship with his dad, which is his story,” he explains, sincerely. ​“As a man, when your father goes, you kind of move up a level in the grand computer game of life. You become the patriarch – not that I ever relied on my father for any help in my life. I took care of myself because of my poor relationship with him, but all the same, it left me with a very unusual feeling. I was a little bit lost and not sure how to find closure, or I don’t know, I needed some kind of an answer. Then I felt maybe I need to rise above my relationship with him, and make a tribute as a way of showing that I’m capable of doing that. I had a shit relationship with him but I felt I needed to honour the fact that I’m here because of him.”

Something that stuck with Hewlett from his experiences in the Jaipur hospital was the fact that he’d see people crying, but for different reasons than you’d see in the UK. The tears were because they wouldn’t see their loved one in that form any more – because in Hinduism it’s believed that in death, the soul sheds its physical form and is reborn into a new entity. So those grieving were saying farewell to that version of their uncle or mother, but also celebrating the fact that they would be returning. Crying to say goodbye, but celebrating the fact that it’s not final, they just wouldn’t see them again. ​“It’s like saying goodbye to a friend who’s going to go live in Australia,” he says. ​“I won’t fucking see you again. I found that really interesting and quite uplifting. Of course, I don’t know what happens, but I think the further you go East in the world, they have a better understanding about the planet we live on – the food we eat, what happens to us when we pass on the spirit, the soul, everything seems to be far more understood and thought out than what we have in the West. I think there’s something inherently wrong in the West, in the way we think about mortality, death, and the way we take care of ourselves, the way we live our lives. There’s a lot to be learned from going East.”

• Read next: Exploring the weird, wonderful worlds of Jamie Hewlett

As a child, Hewlett was brought up in the Church of England, ​“Henry VIII’s excuse for religion,” with the western idea of the finality of death. But his experiences over the last few years have made him more philosophical about life and less concerned about thinking of death in the depressing western, end of the road way. As we’re talking about mind expansion, I wonder (half-joking) if he and Albarn had any Beatles style transcendental moments while they travelled around India. ​“We didn’t fall for any of that bullshit,” he laughs through a cloud of smoke. ​“We went to an ashram in Rishikesh. You go over a bridge into where all the ashrams are, and if you take a left, there’s a road full of Beatles paintings on the walls, and the ashram where the Beatles went. We took a right, and we ended up with a guru. We spent a whole day and evening with them, and there’s a reason why there’s a song on The Mountain called ​‘The Plastic Guru’. We sussed that one out. We weren’t going to become tourists, we weren’t looking for some spiritual awakening, but just looking for something.” 

And Hewlett found it in a most unlikely place. Their fixer for both trips to India, a friendly man named Aneesha, put up with the pair for weeks in the back of a van, and the non-judgmental way he treated others and did certain things on the trips opened their eyes. For instance, the time they were stuck in an airport for hours and he danced and sang to entertain a group of stranded students, simply because he felt sorry for how bored they looked. ​“At the end of the second trip, I said: ​‘He could be my spiritual guru,’” Hewlett enthuses. ​“Just by the pure fact that he was a very lovely human being, and didn’t judge anybody, and was there for everybody, and understood everyone. He said that in his house, when his wife and his daughter have an argument, he has a dance room, and they go and dance together to their favourite music to solve the problems. He did many things during the trip that made me think I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody that generous, that understanding, and that lovely before.”

It can be easy to forget that the Hewlett body of work is long and deep – Gorillaz is just one outlet for his work and his career has genuinely defined aspects of pop culture. His zine Atom Tan spawned the global dominatrix Tank Girl – an anarchic cult comic that was famously turned into a blockbuster film, and continues to find relevance and inspire youth culture today. He also, somewhat less famously, drew the animated characters for the title sequence of huge hit UK TV programme SMTV Live – a Saturday morning must see three hours of chaos, which ran from 1998 to 2003, and hosted by now UK TV institutions Ant and Dec. ​“I forgot I did that,” he laughs when I ask him if he mentions it to any of the Gorillaz collaborators who’d have been teenagers in that era. ​“That was a very long time ago. I remember me and Damon taking Ant and Dec out one night. We had an idea to do a modern day version of [famous ​’70s drunken alter egos of comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore] Derek and Clive, but with those two. We had this idea to get them in the studio, get them pretty drunk and just let them go. We took them out for a drink, and they were like: ​‘Yeah, it’s a great idea, but we can’t, because we’re leaving tomorrow for Australia. We’ve got this new TV show called I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.’ Then, of course, we never saw them again.’”

• Read next: The zine uncovering London’s underground graffiti scene

Around 2006, I got a phone call from Hewlett. He told me that for part of his record deal, the label gave him a photocopier for his Zombie Flesh Eater Studio in west London, and asked if I wanted to print my art zine Pavement Licker there ​’til the ink ran out. I took him up on the offer. It was an immaculate space and his pencils were all lined up on his desk, neatly sharpened. I tell him I remember his studio manager Kirsti letting me in, who then slept on the sofa the whole time I was there. ​“That was between Demon Days, going into Plastic Beach. She was probably asleep because we used to party,” Hewlett chuckles. ​“We had three Xboxes set up with big screens, and we would spend most of the day playing Halo death matches, smoking a lot of weed, and there was a bar downstairs. So at the end of the day, everyone would go down to the bar and then back up to the studio at midnight for another party. That was three or four times a week, and we still got all the work done. Banksy used to come and use that photocopier. He would come and hang out in my studio to draw, and then just be photocopying stuff. He got the most use out of my photocopier, that’s for sure. But we were younger then, so I guess we could tolerate the hangovers, but it was a good time. Can’t do that anymore, you have to be a little bit smarter about how you cut loose.”

I recount someone telling me that ​‘the tide comes in until you hit 46, then the tide starts going out and there’s nothing you can do about it’. He laughs at this analogy of getting old and continues doing so when I mention that there are Reddit forums discussing which of the Gorillaz characters are most likely to be killed off. ​“Well, they can’t die because they’re cartoon characters,” Hewlett exclaims. ​“I think Murdoch’s had his head chopped off a few times, and I think Murdoch killed 2D but they don’t die. But in this album, they could experience the afterlife on our behalf, and come back and tell us what it’s like. Actually, we had an idea for the next album, and we’re both getting quite excited about that, so there will be more Gorillaz, but how it appears next is to be decided.” One of the beautiful things about creating a virtual band for Hewlett is that he can do exactly what he wants with the characters, with whole new looks and colour palettes for each record.

As I eye the clock, knowing I’m coming to the end of the allotted time with him, I suggest that Hewlett’s creations with Atom Tan, Tank Girl famously, SMTV probably less famously, and the world conquering Gorillaz, are just stepping stones to wherever your career will take you. Is that how he sees it? ​“My biggest dream was to be a comic artist, and I achieved that quite quickly,” he replies. ​“And then the comic industry sort of fell to pieces in England, and my only alternative was to go to America and do DC Comics, which I did a very short stint on. A few things I did, I think it was Shade, the Changing Man, and I did some Doom Patrol, maybe, some Judge Dredd. I didn’t really want to work for DC or the American comics industry. I didn’t really feel free. So there was a kind of a wilderness period, which is probably when I did those things that you’re discussing. I did some stuff for Smash Hits magazine and stuff like that, just to earn some money. I was broke. Certainly didn’t turn to my father for any help. So I had to do that kind of stuff. And then I did the comic strip Get the Freebies for THE FACE magazine, which turned into [TV show] Phoo Action. Then I started hanging out with Damon, and we came up with Gorillaz.
And that’s kept us busy for 25 fucking years.”

• Read next: Kola Bokinni: ​“With dementia, you grieve for the person before they die”

This 25^th anniversary seems like a good time to finish the interview with a question about the journey he’s been on – this is the 20^th anniversary issue of Huck, after all. I ask him what’s different between The Mountain’s Jamie Hewlett and the Jamie behind their debut single ​‘Clint Eastwood’. ​“I’m 57 years old now,” he replies before launching into a hearty answer. ​“I was talking with Damon about this the other day about the longevity of Gorillaz and how it’s most definitely a multi-generational band. Now, we still have young kids coming into it, and it starts with the cartoons, because there is an age you reach when, when you’re very young, where you get into animation. That’s something we all do. Some of us continue to love it their whole lives, and some of us grow out of it, which is a shame, but it starts with that. And I think young kids see that. They see the characters somewhere online, they check it out, and then they hear the music, then they’re in. So they’re listening to Bobby Womack, Ibrahim Ferrer, and, you know, like Ike Turner and Dennis Hopper. So it becomes like a cultural education into music, because we’ve been lucky enough to have worked with so many amazing people. And so the difference between ​‘Clint Eastwood’ Jamie and The Mountain Jamie is a long life of experiences, a lot of crazy experiences with Damon travelling around the world, getting into trouble in certain places, not getting into trouble in other places. And the characters end up being a conduit for our own stories. They tend to be slightly exaggerated for comic effect, but they get up to the stuff that we might have. All that stuff that definitely feeds into the narrative, and in terms of the way it looks, I guess I got better at drawing. And also, I’ve had this kind of issue the whole time, which is about legitimacy. When we started the first album, at the end of the ​’90s, for us to come along with a cartoon band at that time, a lot of people were like: ​‘What’s this fucking shit?’ People were not buying into it, and I was suddenly in the music industry – and I didn’t feel legitimate. I guess I’ve been trying ever since to really make these characters feel like they belong there. And luckily for us, with the birth of social media and the explosion of the internet, even animation – which is a real, legitimate art form now – is everywhere and everybody watches it and appreciates it. So I think this album, for me, might be the first time I actually feel legitimate in an industry that I have nothing to do with. So I feel like it makes sense to me now. I’m comfortable with it. Now.”

And with that, the most entertaining talk about death I’ve had, comes to an end and Hewlett bids me adieu. I go back to humming rave lyrics and try to fix my chair.

The Mountain by Gorillaz is out now.

Josh Jones is Huck’s editor. Follow him on Instagram.

Buy your copy of Huck 83 here.

Enjoyed this article? Follow Huck on Instagram for more from the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture.

Support stories like this by becoming a member of Club Huck.