GORILLAZ: The Complete Backstory (PHASES 1-4)

hey guys welcome to found flicks the virtual band Gorillaz are back after a seven-year hiatus with the new album human their music is consistently innovative and creative but I've been equally fascinated by the fictional band story 2d Russell Murdock and Moodle has their own rich unique backstory that develops over the course of the album even has a huge gorillas fan there's so much story to each phase that it's impossible to keep straight that's why in this video I'm going to compile the entire backstory of the band in one video all the way from the beginning to today and if there's one phase you're looking for in particular check in the description below where I have links to each phases sections all right guys let's kick things off we're where everything all began the origin of the gorillas can be traced back to a fateful encounter on August 15th 1997 to D then known as stewpot a mentally deficient keyboard enthusiast works part-time at an instrument shop uncle norms organ Emporium meanwhile local hoodlum and Satanist Murdoch Nichols had dreams of creating a chart-topping band and was willing to do anything to make it happen in desperate need of equipment he crashed his Vauxhall Astra into uncle norm store driving through the building and crashing directly into Stew pops head permanently damaging his left eye Murdoch was sentenced to 30,000 hours of community service including taking care of the now catatonic stew not long after Stu's other eye was damaged when Murdoch was trying to impress some girls by doing 360-degree turns in a Tesco parking lot stew was thrown from the car hitting his head on the curb damaging his other eye but waking him from his catatonic state after this Murdoch recruited stew into his band impressed with his black eyes look dubbing him 2d for the two dips in his head Judy's eyes have what are called 8-ball fractures where the iris of the eye is filled with blood he can still see but his vision is blurry then in September of 1998 Murdoch acquired Kong studios a sprawling building with a strange history built atop a hill within a run-down cemetery and landfill and Essex Murdoch discovered the building on the website giant disused haunted studios in the middle of nowhere calm well that sure is specific the owners were looking for a caretaker to look after the building the offseason it was only supposed to be for a few months but when Murdoch arrived for the interview the owners threw the keys at him and ran down the hill screaming Murdoch and Tootie instantly knew they found the perfect place to call home Murdoch then found a drummer for the group Russell Hobbs a middle-class New York native with a troubled history he was expelled from a private school for suffering from demon possession and the trauma of his possession left him in a four-year coma he was finally awoken by an elaborate exorcism after recovering Russell began attending Brooklyn High School where he made friends with a group of rappers deejays emcees and street musicians they introduced Russell to hip hop which he says saved his soul unfortunately his friends were all gunned down in a drive-by shooting by gangbangers who all wore red hooded tops one was wearing a black hood and Dusty Russell called him the Grim Reaper who plays into Russell's story later Russell was the only survivor of the shooting and surprisingly he became the receptacle for all of his slain friends Souls including the blue phantom and spirit of his best friend del the funky homosapien with the power of their spirits in him Russell gained impressive skills and crafting hip hop music but also left him with the side-effect of glowing eyes his parents shipped him off to the UK for his own safety and to hopefully move on from all the trauma he suffered but he was unknowingly put right into the path of Murdock and its quest for superstardom Russell got a job at big black's record shack in Soho where he first encountered Murdock when Murdock asked for an obscure record he slipped a bag over Russell taking him away to Kong studios fortunately Russell like the music Murdock was working on and decided to stay now they just needed a guitarist although technically they did have one for a bit in 2ds ex-girlfriend Paula cracker Toodee liked her but Russell caught Paula and Murdock having an affair in the Kong studios toilets romantic Russell being two DS best friend at the time was furious breaking Murdock's nose in five places which gave it is signature strange appearance though his nose was actually broken a few times before this as well so Paula was let go and the guys did what any normal band would do when needing a guitarist put an ad in NME literally the same day the ad went out a FedEx package arrived on Kong studio steps a small ten-year-old Japanese girl with memory loss busted out of the crate wielding a Gibson Les Paul and performed a shredding guitar solo which Toodee described as two hundred demons screaming in Arabic brilliant she ended the solo with a 20 foot karate kick then bowed saying only the word noodle which became her moniker going forward and is her only known name how she wound up at Kong studios and her mysterious past will be explored in Phase two the band now assembled they changed her name to gorillas and recorded their first song ghost train at Kong studios they played their first live show on November 5th 1998 at the Camden Brown house which ended prematurely due to a riot breaking out during their song punk but it was worth it in the end as EMI a and our man Whitney smithy signed the band immediately to the label after discharging several shotgun rounds to disperse the crowd they released their first collection of music with the tomorrow comes today EP in November 2000 then their full-length debut album gorillas was released on March 26 2001 featuring the singles Clint Eastwood 19 2000 the house and tomorrow comes today at the beginning of 2002 gorillas embarked on an 11 month tour of North America after the tour they took a six-month break in LA where they attempted to get a gorillas movie project off the ground that Halloween Kong studios was shut down by law enforcement the police kept the area secure while they investigated the strange paranormal activity of the area and gorillas spent this time working on their movie while renting a house in the Hollywood Hills but the movie ran into problems due to the band over partying and disagreements with producers and directors the movie fell apart and things came to a head when Murdoch almost killed 2d and the band width their separate ways on a year-and-a-half hiatus Doody went back to Eastbourne and worked at his father's funfair where he got better and came to terms with his newfound pop icon status Murdoch headed to Mexico to get drunk in Tijuana brothels getting himself arrested for using bad checks in the process in jail his only companions where his raven cortez and two mexican mobsters who later helped him break out of prison Russell remained in LA but became increasingly haunted by the grim reaper who eventually ripped the soul of del from his body and even though Russell is free of his possession his glowing eyes still remain as a permanent side-effect this led to Russell having a big breakdown but luckily I Turner Letta stay in his basement where Russell started working on an album but he had trouble completing it as he was plagued by hallucinations of demons flying out of the speaker's during the hiatus a lot happened to each member but most notably noodle she had been suffering from nightmares and visions on the guerrillas tour and so she returned to Japan in hopes of learning about her forgotten past she visited a sushi bar in Osaka where she heard a waiter tell the chef that he needed an order of ocean bacon upon hearing this phrase noodle regained all of her memories of her past including her ability to speak English and in fact every other known language she reunited with her mentor mr. Kyoto and learned that she was part of a secret government super-soldier project and was the only survivor after the project was scrapped she was forced to kill the others but couldn't bring himself to hurt noodle he erased her memories with the words ocean bacon and sent her to England in a FedEx crate now we know what led noodle to Kong studios in the first place with a newfound result after regaining her memories noodle returned to Kong which he found in a state of disrepair in the band's absence and even worse the studio had become infested with hordes of zombies using Kong surveillance room as a safe house noodle slowly cleaned Kong studios of the undead inhabitants during this time noodle decided to record her own album and she laid out the concept for the 2005 album Demon Days and after ridding the building of zombies noodle set out to reunite with her bandmates demon days was released on May 23rd 2005 featuring the singles feel-good incorporated Dirty Harry and the double a-side of kids with guns and el manana near the end of his phase Neal was considering taking a break from the band for a while and planned to leave after filming the final music video for el mañana but things went south when two heavily armed helicopters appear and gunned down the island it seems that the helicopters were part of the video and supposed to shoot down the island but the plan was for noodle to parachute off the island to safety and it appears that noodle perished in the crash and all that we see less is a used parachute everyone was devastated that is everyone except for Murdock who knew what was really going on what really happened here was quite a surprising turn of events and tie it all the way back to the very beginning of the band what we saw was in fact part of a plan Murdock put in action to get rid of Jimmy Manson a three-foot-tall hippy that auditioned years ago to be the guitarist for guerrillas but was turned down by Murdock after noodle took the job years late there Jimmy became the head of the gorillas music label stateside but he has been harboring a grudge for years planning to kill off the gorillas and cash in on their success he approached Murdoch to help him put this plan into action and Murdoch agreed Murdoch was to secretly stash guns in the windmill Tower and Jimmy was to hide inside and wait until the helicopters started firing as filming begin and the helicopters fired jimmy realized that Murdoch had double-crossed him locking him in the tower with no guns noodle did parachute off the island safely while the island crashed and exploded killing Jimmy Manson in the process when discussing the matter in the gorillas autobiography Rises the ogre Murdoch had this to say on the matter there's no way I'm killing noodle she's noodle I'm not having some 2-bit loudly despot record company not killing off my band he set himself up and burned all the evidence in the process Instant Karma from mr. Jimmy Manson though for now it still appears that noodle is missing and Toodee and Russel set off in search of her and the band goes their separate ways once more now on his elemér Knox spent the next few years on a bender around the world until 2008 running low on funds he burned down the ruins of Kong studios cashed in on the insurance money blamed the fire on some kids who were arrested and fled the country Oh Murdoch he also mentioned that part of his motivation to flee was him being pursued by a deadly underground network of pirates referred to as the black clouds who are out to kill Murdoch after a failed business deal he searched the world for a new hideout discovering an island in the middle of the ocean made entirely out of landfills stuck together he painted the island bright pink and used the insurance money to build a new gorillaz HQ on top naming the island Plastic Beach Murdoch had the band's belongings shipped to the island and begin production for the third gorillas album after demon days 2d was said to be on vacation on a Jamaican Beach and according to texts in G side he was said to be completing a law degree it's hard to say for sure as we only first see him in an apartment and Beirut where he is gassed and shipped to plastic Beach in a suitcase Toodee believes that it was Murdoch that took him and who could blame him but it was actually a new villain a demon wearing a gas mask that is the embodiment of all evil the boogey man the boogey man has seen prominently throughout phase 3 but it does appear that the boogey man is working with Murdoch for now at least more on him in a moment meanwhile noodle is still presumed dead or is Italy still missing and according to Murdock he searched the el manana crash for her remains only finding some bits of DNA he used this DNA to construct a cyborg noodle to act as guitarist on the album and his bodyguard as for Russell Murdock did seek him out but said he had essentially dropped off the face of the earth and Murdock was forced to build a drum machine from Russell's equipment to provide percussion for the album Plastic Beach was released on March 3rd 2010 featuring the single stylo superfast jellyfish on melancholy Hill and rhinestone eyes so noodle and Russell were not involved with the making of Plastic Beach but we do discover their whereabouts over the phases music video storyline in 2010 Russell embarked on a journey to an unknown destination which we find out it's Plastic Beach by diving off a dock and into the Pacific Ocean the band's journey to Plastic Beach begins in the stylo video with Murdock 2d and cyborg noodle driving a 1969 Camaro SS called stylo they have obviously been through some stuff already as 2d is seen bruised and cyborgs noodle has a bullet hole in her head they evade the police and then Bruce Willis as a bounty hunter pursuing them in an El Camino on a stretch of highway in the California desert there's also a large black cloud that appears overhead and soon after the boogeyman appears manifesting from the ground surrounded by similar clouds taking a police officer and disappearing Bruce loses track of the three when they drive off the road into the Pacific Ocean and as they descend into the water silo transforms into a shark like submarine then in on melancholy Hill we have the return of noodle four years after her disappearance she is aboard an ocean liner the M Harriet which is under attack by two planes most likely the black clouds noodle retrieves a Thompson machine gun and fires on the planes taking one out but she doesn't have enough time to shoot the other which dropped a bomb on the ship as the ship sinks Neal makes it to a lifeboat with only her guitar and some supplies meanwhile cyborg noodle regains consciousness inside of the shark sub and the trio continues towards Plastic Beach now joined by the album's various collaborators in a fleet of underwater craft they rise to the surface where a large manatee is sitting atop a tall plateau Murdock spies the boogie man on top through his telescope and orders cyborgs noodle to open fire the boogie man retreats grabbing the manatee and diving into the ocean as the fog clears Plastic Beach is revealed they made it but back to noodle who floating aimlessly in her lifeboat a gigantic version of Russell Rises out of the water underneath her boat ending up with her on top of his head but how did Russell get so big during his long swim across the ocean Russell ingested so much pollution trash and toxic waste that it actually transformed him into a giant and he is seriously huge and the fall of 2010 gorillas embarked on the first world tour but unfortunately Murdoch 2d and cyborg noodle spent the entire tour locked in the dressing room while an impostor gorillas live band played in their place Murdoch suspected that when he refused to give his soul to Satan for making gorillas successful he made it to the live band would get all of gorillas glory and it is reneging on the same deal with Satan it causes the boogey man to track down Murdoch to claim his soul as we see throughout the phase we would have seen this and the phages story come to an epic climax in the Rhinestone eyes video but sadly it was cancelled all that remains are story boards but we can still piece together what happened it starts by showing us Russell and noodle continuing their trek across the ocean on the roof of plastic beach the boogey man is waiting Murdoch and cyborgs noodles join him and Cyborg noodle opens fire on the boogey man the boogey man escapes again and Toodee sees him swim by from his underwater room from his ship the boogey man summons the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse apparently the boogey man is a rejected fifth Horseman who is called flatulence noodle emerges outside just as the boogeyman summons pirates who we have to conclude are the black cloud led by the boogey man and considering he can turn into a black cloud it seems to make the most sense all hell breaks loose as a black cloud leader final assault on Plastic Beach and Murdock hides inside fearing for his life cyborg noodle leads a retaliation with the collaborators all now armed and ready for battle meanwhile underwater 2d watches as a giant whale makes its way toward his room but just then giant Russell appears grabbing the whale by his tail hurling it into the air and taking out a black cloud plane the video is as giant Russell leans over the side of the island he opens his mouth revealing the real noodle inside and we see under her cat mask she has a facial scar from the el mañana incident now from here there's a bit of a divergence between the into Phase three and the beginning of phase four where things go back in 2011 doesn't quite add up chronologically to the members new backstories recently revealed so I will continue with the original timeline and for the revised story in the phase four section soon after the video in the black clouds bombarded the island and in the chaos the whale breaks through two DS wall any a swallowed whole while this was happening cyborgs noodle suffered a malfunction and tried to kill Murdock but she was put offline permanently by noodle Russell manages to rescue noodle and to D escapes the whale the boogey man search Plastic Beach for Murdock but Murdock faked his death leaving a shoddy fake Murdock behind and escaped while the boogie man collected the wrong soul shortly afterwards the Evangelist the polar opposite of the boogey man appeared and wiped him out Murdock left in a rowboat saying he was caught up in a typhoon and landed in Hawaii where he began to record a new radio show to celebrate gorilla ten year anniversary but it turns out he wasn't in Hawaii at all but in a ransacked house in London and the other members were able to track him down we don't know what happens when they reunite but as of October 2011 the four members were living at 2-1 to wobble Street London seen in the do you think video and the boogie man is still alive he's now the band's roommate apparently this is the last we've seen the boogie man so far and it's definitely a weird way for the story to play out but considering several plots were more or less canceled this is probably all we will ever get Russell still huge sleeps on the roof and chained to the house we see the damage windmill island floating in the sky there's also the silo car out front crashed into a light post two DS and receives a letter stating the band is being evicted from the residence which he actually seems happy about and this is the end of phase 3 though what we learn about phase 4 changes what happens during the attack on Plastic Beach retconning the story from there now on to phase 4 as the phase is only beginning there is sure to be a lot more to come especially with the TV series coming next year but the story for phase 4 began years ago back on the attack on Plastic Beach most of what we find out comes from each member's respective books that fill us in on what they've been up to the black cloud laid waste to the island and Murdock escaped and a rusty submarine with cyborg noodle in tow for company which Murdock describes as the perfect shipmate for him as she didn't speak she didn't judge and she had absolutely no sense of smell eventually Murdock drank all the cases of psycho jiriz rum on board and he made it to the surface for a whiz as he was emptying his dangerously enlarged black a giant shadow loomed over him the battleship Ringo which is owned by music industry giant EMI and gorillas record label EMI sent a fleet of ships in search of Murdock and at last they had him he was captured slapped around and taken to a secret prison in London for three years Murdock lived in dungeon Abbey beneath Abbey Road Studios until one day he was offered a deal by Entertainment internal affairs with the music industry going down the toilet they desperately needed Murdoch's help in exchange for his release Murdock agreed to write a new gorillaz album and moved immediately to a new studio home in West London next up to thee during the attack on Plastic Beach he hid in his underwater room we're not realizing it he put himself in danger of a far fiercer foe mass's dick a great white whale the Beast swallowed two T in one bite swimming into the deep but a lifetime of eating ocean garbage and now 2d took his toll on the whale who died his carcass washed up on a desert island where 2d was finally free too bad he has no survival skills whatsoever so he has no option but to eat his former host several months later 2d spotted a plane flying along the coast moved to tears by the sight of help he set off after the plane a mere 23 minutes later he was in the middle of a full-scale beach race it turns out 2d wasn't ruined at all but he had in fact landed in Guadalupe off the Mexican coast 2d joined the beach party ate some strange tasting brownies and came in third in the wet t-shirt contest as he claimed his prize 2d had a Eureka moment he would take a year to find himself which was actually really easy as he was right there but he stayed the whole year anyway until he got sacked from his job weaving friendship bracelets and it was time to go home at Heathrow Airport a man in arrivals held up a sign saying wanker wish TD of course knew was for him the car took him back to West London and Murdoch's new HQ Russell escaped from the pirate attack cradling noodle in his giant mouth and swimming away they ran into trouble off the coast of Japan when Russell was mistaken for a whale in harpooned he managed to wriggle free but noodle was locked swept away in the blood-red waters wounded and delirious Russell struggled through the ocean humming all by myself until he lost consciousness eventually he drifted into the Yellow Sea washing up on a North Korean beach giant Russell was taken by the North Korean leaders where he was put on exhibition the leader declared he has captured pulgasari the legendary noir Kurian Godzilla Russell quickly became the country's biggest attraction but in time the country's meager food rations caused Russell to shrink back to normal size realizing he was just a man the leader proclaimed that he has personally defeated pulgasari and Russell was released he was sent back to England where he wandered the streets of London until musician and gorillas collaborator Jeff Wooten let him crash on its futon a few days later Jeff got a call from Murdoch and Russell immediately moved into Murdoch's new place asked for noodles she awoke days after the plastic beach attack in a Japanese fishing village she'd been nursed back to health by an old pearl diver named Kyoko and to repay his kindness she took a job as his apprentice one day while beneath the waves noodle opened a giant pearl shell accidentally releasing an ancient hell demon called ma Xue Mazo is a shape-shifting devil of unimaginable evil that can take human form noodle set out to destroy it and she spent years pursuing Mizzou across Japan finally tracking it down to Tokyo where it had risen to the top of the criminal underworld noodle disguised herself as a Geisha and infiltrated Mizzou's headquarters the demons Lodge while Mazda was distracted by heated bout of drink while you think noodle lopped his head off ending its earthly existence she escaped in sumo bodyguards packing herself into a FedEx crate with dry fish bottled water and a copy of Moby Dick her package was addressed to Murdoch in London the band finally had made it back together after all going through their separate trials after the Plastic Beach attack and began to record the newest Gorillaz album human humans was released on April 28th 2017 featuring the singles hallelujah money Saturn's bars we got the power ascension and dromeda let me out and The Apprentice wow that's a lot so we only see the gorilla story continue in the video for Saturn's bars it features the band moving into spirit house what we assume is this phase is HQ as the band make their way there we see this creepy face in a window maybe this is the first appearance of this phases villain or just something to be creepy the spirit house is aptly named not only is it decrepit and spooky but it's haunted by some weird looking spirits the band try to relax and each have strange encounters with the inhabitants of the house most notably Murdock who goes on an interstellar psychedelic journey the haunting comes to a climax and the spirit seemed to vanish the next morning the band leaves the house for pancakes and as they drive off there's suffocated highway seen overhead there's also signs all over the place for new developments around the area the city is swallowing everything around it that's all we know so far about phase four story but this is only the beginning the guerillas have had one interesting complicated journey so far and I'm excited to see what happens next that will do it for my breakdown of the gorillas backstory thank you so much for watching guys if you have any other videos you'd like to see me do let me know down in the comments thanks for watching conflicts see you next time I'm off for a bath

Channel: FoundFlix

Views: 4,638,685

Rating: 4.9583907 out of 5

Keywords: gorillaz, gorillaz history, humanz, new album song, new album, history, backstory, phase 4, phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, kong studios, noodle, 2d, 2d eyes, plastic beach story, plastic beach, demon days, gorillaz 2001, murdoc, russel, the gorillaz, clint eastwood, feel good gorillaz, gorillaz saturnz, saturnz barz, gorillaz apprentice, let me out, gorillaz human, humanz gorillaz, boogieman, jimmy manson, el manana, black clouds, black, clouds, stylo, bruce willis

Id: EAXWR7umFvY

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 29 2017