It's just like everything else on this record. Not even Charles Barkley, the basketball player? 'The name doesn't have anything to do with anything.' A Mouse who likes cheese - no surprises there. 'There's no story behind it,' he says, reaching for the cheesecake. A High Plains drifter, I might add.'ĭanger Mouse grins. 'The name Gnarls Barkley isn't anchored down. He's hunched over a burger in a hotel suite in Burbank, California, talking about the group for the first time. 'You ask me why we're called Gnarls Barkley and I'm asking you "why not?",' says Cee-Lo. Heavy and bald with buggy eyes and a raspy laugh, Cee-Lo also has a rich soul tenor, a voice that Andre 3000 of OutKast must envy. Now the Mouse Man has a new muse - Green, aka 31-year-old Thomas Calloway, formerly of the Atlanta-based rap group, the Goodie Mob. If there's a moral to his story so far, it's that rules really are there for the breaking. And much to EMI's chagrin, their own Damon Albarn was so impressed - 'I loved the idea,' he said, 'that you can take the past and present and make something futuristic" - that he hired Danger Mouse to produce the Gorillaz next album, Demon DaysĪnd again, reviewers hailed it as innovative, dazzling and one of the most important records of the year and Danger Mouse won a Grammy nomination, although he very much remained a shadowy figure. Mainstream reviewers hailed it as innovative, dazzling and one of the most important records of the year. On Grey Tuesday - Febru170 websites put the Grey Album up online to protest the label's actions, and 100,000 copies were immediately downloaded. Sure enough, word spread and then the Beatles's record label, EMI, filed a 'cease and desist' order because none of the samples that Danger Mouse used had been cleared. Originally, 3,000 copies were pressed for friends and friends of friends, as a kind of remixer's calling card. Three years ago, the little-known DJ mixed the Beatles's White Album with Jay Z's Black Album to create the now legendary Grey Album. Although no-one really knew who Gnarls Barkley were, even the Financial Times wrote about this success, and as such 'Crazy' has been a pretty effective curtain-raiser for St Elsewhere, the debut album.ĭanger Mouse - aka 28-year-old American Brian Burton - is responsible too for an earlier crossing of the digital Rubicon. Given that Gnarls Barkley made musical history earlier this month when their song 'Crazy' became the first to top the UK charts based on the sale of downloads alone, this is pretty rich.
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