Gorillaz: This Band Is No Longer Just a Diversion

Where do million-selling Gorillaz go next?

Wherever they want, of course. But that’s not a joke punch line. It’s the happy reality for artist-animator Jamie Hewlett, the man behind the curtain of the biggest cartoon pop band since the Archies.

Gorillaz was born three years ago as a side-project collaboration of Hewlett, singer Damon Albarn and record producer Dan “The Automator” Nakamura. Assisted by such guests as rapper Del tha Funky Homosapien and octogenarian Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer, they gave musical identity to four cartoon characters: the scruffy misfits Murdoc, D-2, Noodle and Russell. The resulting album, released last April on Virgin Records, is an invitingly loping mix of hip-hop and reggae dub music and lyrical celebrations of a carefree life in a dark, urban world.

With the success of “Gorillaz”--impressive sales in the U.K., Europe and Japan and more than 1.3 million in the U.S.--the venture took on a life of its own. Now it’s well beyond being a mere diversion, as evidenced by the brief North American concert tour that comes to the Hollywood Palladium on Friday and Saturday.

Though the entire concept would seem to have a lot of built-in limitations, Hewlett doesn’t believe that he and his partners have painted themselves into a corner, either career-wise or creatively.

“I don’t think [the success] has dictated a path for us,” says the 33-year-old Englishman, who first came to fame a decade ago as the creator of the edgy “Tank Girl” comic series. “We’ve set up these characters who are becoming stars in their own right. We’ve done a lot of stuff with this album, but the one problem has been technology. We’ve been slightly ahead of the technology with our ideas and haven’t done all we want to do.”

Now, though, Hewlett says, the horizons are expanding. The Gorillaz Web site (www.gorillaz.com) is an ongoing project elaborating the group mythology and expanding in terms of interactive capabilities to flesh out the characters.

An album of outtakes and remixes, “G-Sides” has just been released in the U.S., with a DVD collecting all the visual elements and a dub album both in the works. Work on a full-length animated film and a second album of new songs is set to begin later this year.

The biggest challenge so far has been in presenting the act live. A debut performance in London took place shortly before the album’s U.K. release, with sporadic shows in England, Europe and Japan preceding the current tour. With Hewlett’s animation projected on a screen, the idea is to maintain the conceit that the animated urban hoodlums are real-- without getting corny or pretending that the audience is not aware of who’s really making the music.

“When we came up with this we got every base covered, but one thing we weren’t sure about was the live show,” Hewlett says. “How do you tour with an animated band? What we really wanted to do would cost millions of pounds, and we’d last about two shows. We had to find a way to do it as best as possible.

“A certain amount is scripted, but we have to be spontaneous with people coming in along the tour. It’s been quite exciting. Strange things have happened. But things behind the scenes we’re not allowed to talk about. Maybe someday we will and spoil what we’re doing.”

He does acknowledge that Albarn, former Specials leader Terry Hall and rapper Jamal are regular performers. Among the guests so far has been Detroit hip-hop team D12, which joined in for an encore in New York last week. Nakamura is also on board, DJing as the opening act and contributing to Gorillaz’s performances as well.

But to maintain the mystique, Albarn (from the English band Blur) is not doing interviews in connection with the tour, and journalists--if they don’t find it too silly--can e-mail questions that will be answered in the supposed words of the characters.

“Damon is on stage, but you don’t see him,” says Hewlett. “It’s hard to explain. There’s a giant screen and below it a see-through screen we project images on, and you get to see silhouettes and images. But Damon doesn’t at any point come around and take a bow.”

Hewlett is happy to take his metaphorical bows for this production, though. That wasn’t the case in the early ‘90s when “Tank Girl” went from hot-list franchise to Hollywood disaster in the form of a 1995 bomb of a movie.

“The ‘Tank Girl’ movie happened when I was 23, so young enough to get shafted,” Hewlett says. “I was dazzled with stretch limos and flying first-class. And [the movie] looked good to me on the set. But it got royally screwed up by Hollywood. It could have been a great film if they’d done what I said, but they didn’t.”

Not surprisingly, Hewlett now insists on creative control, and Gorillaz has given him the leverage. He’s developing a series for British television titled “Phoo Action,” about an odd pair of superheroes.

“It’s sort of an English version of the old ‘Batman’ series,” he says. “It’s dark, with zombies--my usual thing. When we first proposed it, I wanted to write and direct the whole series. People said, ‘Nah,’ but now with the success of Gorillaz people take it more seriously.”

The new project raises the question of how long Hewlett will continue with Gorillaz.

“I’m into coming up with things and, if they’re successful, playing with them and then destroying them,” he says. “I can’t bear to do things for years and years. I was going to kill Tank Girl, but then we got the call from Hollywood.”

Gorillaz may prove the exception, though, at least for a while.

“You can’t really kill Gorillaz,” he says. “There’s a lot left to go. Noodle--we’ve played her as a 10-year-old Japanese girl, but no one knows her story. So we’ll do this as long as we have things to say, and then we’ll stop. I don’t see them having a 15-year career and end up playing Shea Stadium. But it really is just about the fun.”

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Gorillaz, Friday and Saturday at the Hollywood Palladium, 6215 Sunset Blvd., L.A., 8 p.m. Sold out. (323) 962-7600.