Damon Albarn OBE is an English musician. He is the leader and primary lyricist of the rock band Blur and the co-creator and main musical collaborator of the virtual band Gorillaz.

Early life

Albarn was born on 23 March 1968; he is the elder child of artist Keith Albarn and his wife Hazel, née Dring. He has some Danish descent through his mother. Their daughter Jessica, born in 1971, also went on to become an artist. Hazel Albarn, originally from Lincolnshire, was a theatrical set designer for Joan Littlewood's theatre company at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London, and was working on the satirical play Mrs Wilson's Diary just before Damon was born. Keith Albarn, originally from Nottinghamshire, was briefly the manager of Soft Machine and was once a guest on BBC's Late Night Line-Up. He was head of the Colchester School of Art at Colchester Institute.

Acting appearances

Albarn starred in Antonia Bird's 1997 film Face alongside Ray Winstone and Robert Carlyle. Albarn was also featured in Gunar Karlsson's 2007 film, Anna and the Moods, along with Terry Jones and Björk. Albarn played "Bull" in Joe Orton's Up Against It, a Radio 4 play originally written for the Beatles broadcast in 1998.

Personal life

Albarn had a long-standing and publicized relationship with Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann from 1991 to 1998. This relationship profoundly influenced his songwriting, notably on the Blur album (1997) on the track "Beetlebum" – said to be about their experiences with heroin – and a number of tracks on 13 (1999), such as "Tender" and "No Distance Left to Run", said to be about their break-up in 1998.

Albarn began a relationship with artist Suzi Winstanley in 1998. Winstanley gave birth to their daughter, Missy, named after hip hop artist Missy Elliott, on 2 October 1999. Albarn described becoming a father as "witnessing a life force" and saying:

It massively changes you. It slowly sort of shaves off the unpleasant thorny bits and hopefully creates a nicely rounded... I don't know, having a kid, you just become far more, inevitably you look to the future far more and, you know, it's desperate sometimes when you have a particularly bad few weeks of the newspaper just reminding you about this is wrong, this is wrong. We've got ten more years everyone.