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 The
past few months must have been pretty eventful for Aussie rockers Wolfmother.
In September bassist Chris Ross’ partner gave birth to their son, which meant
they had to reschedule some dates on their US tour. A month later, the trio pick up three gongs
at the prestigious ARIA music awards for Best Rock Album, best Breakthrough
Album, for their eponymous debut album, and Best group.
“That kind of put us solidly into the
mainstream I think After we won those awards, we were on the news, like,
‘tonight on the news, Wolfmother rockers win three ARIA awards’ says leader
of the ‘fro pack Andrew Stockdale. “I’d
go into cafes and there’d be this 70 year old couple and they’d be like ‘Oh,
there’s the mother wolf!’’”
The
trio (Andrew, Chris and drummer Myles Heskett) has also made progress in Britain
since their first visit two years ago. 2006 saw them play the main stage at the
Reading and Leeds festivals, as well as playing
a sell out show at the Astoria
and making an appearance at T in the Park.
Tonight they top the bill on the MTV2 Spanking New Music Tour alongside
the Maccabees, Fields and Forward Russia.
“It’s been cool. The last the last headline
tour we did was in January and they were all 150, 200,300 capacity venues, plus
a 2,000 seater in London”,
notes Andrew. “It was in the middle of winter, it was dark and it was tough, this one
feels more fun. It costs a fortune just
to come here. As soon as you come over here, you really want to get busy
because it took so long and costs so much to get here, so you don’t want to
stuff about.”
It
turns out that Andrew had in fact spent quite a bit of time in England, having lived in London for a year.
“I went to school over here. I went Wimbledon Middle School,
learned French and supported Wimbledon when
they won the FA Cup. My dad’s from
England and he got a job here so the family moved here for a year,” he remembers.
“I grew up with George and Mildred, the
Two Ronnies, The Benny Hill Show, you name it we watched it all”.
It
was the blues that ignited an eighteen year old Andrew’s passion for music,
having witnessed a performance from Aussie rock group Rocket Science. As he
recalls: “I just had to get that
chaos. For me that was first glimpse of
a different kind of live act. From there, it just opened all these other
influences. As far I was concerned, coming out of that whole grunge thing, that
seemed like the next step forward”.
Rock
‘n’ roll has its roots in blues so it’s inevitable that they are instantly compared
to Led Zeppelin, who they will be paying tribute to when the legendary rockers
are inducted into the UK Music Hall Of Fame, and Black Sabbath. “You can’t get
around it inrock and roll," Andrew insists. "It’s a sound people love, ever since Elvis Presley,
Chuck Berry”.
The
weird and wonderful lyrics about white unicorns and gnomes, as Andrew explains,
was a reaction to what was happening musically in the ‘90s, from the ‘urban
lyricism’ of Oasis or Blur, to the moody, angsty, self hate rantings of Nirvana’s
Kurt Cobain.
“Somewhere along the line I just stared this
escapist, mythological, lyricism, it just seemed fresh, and to me it seemed
new. And it was like once I got started with that it all just started flowing
out, as I was discovering it. I wasn’t trying to do something that I didn’t
really feel,” he explains. “I think
the first song people sang along to was Apple Tree, and it was like Man! Because I seriously thought at the start when
I listened to the demo ‘this is weird sh*t. This was either going to work or it
was going to fail miserably. It was like, this is f*cked up! Songs about white
unicorns? This could be like mental asylum stuff. But people just seemed to
roll with it, they want to go there”.With
a young daughter back home, Andrew admits that it’s been difficult juggling the
roles of family man and rock star.
“Well at the start I was maybe a little bit,
‘well this isn’t good for the rock ‘n’ roll image’, but now it’s like people
don’t care man. I think we’re in an era now where people can see guys in bands
are people with lives as well. They’re not these messiahs that have descended
down from another planet who have this mystique,” he says candidly. “Every time my girlfriend gives me a call and
says ‘she woke up in the morning and said dada, or daddy, or she started to do
this, and she’s playing with people and she’s crawling’ or whatever, and it’s
like I don’t want to know because I can’t about it too much”.
They’ve
barely stepped off a tour bus in 2006, but Andrew says they’ve been working on
some ideas for album number two. “I wrote a song in Japan
which we played in Atlanta,
which I’d like to demo by the end of the tour. I’ve got heaps of other songs as
well that I’ve been playing whilst I’m at home on the acoustic,” he says. “I’ve got this one that is like a glimpse, I
know it’s going to be a good ballad. I know it’s going to harness the spirit of
something like Meatloaf. Hopefully it’ll be the most amazing power ballad of
all time! I just don’t want it to become to predictable or boring. When we
started we wanted to do everything differently”.
Their
single Joker And The Thief is out on 20th November
For more info: www.wolfmother.com Words: Helen Duong
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