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“Hey, you gotta hustle if you want things your way!” booms the obese American businessman checking into an upmarket Shepherds Bush hotel, after his near-abusive demands for feather pillows attracts a smattering of onlookers. The steely-eyed sharp dressers milling about behind him smile knowingly, having no doubt themselves hustled for far more than quality pillows. He’s preaching to the converted, and it’s clear from a cursory glance round the archly chic lobby that this is the place where predatory go-getters in need of a break from scaling the food chain go to regroup.
It’s shocking that Wolfmother actually fit into this at all, and none are more surprised than the band themselves. “Look at this hotel!” frontman Andrew Stockdale exclaims, as he sits back onto a luxurious leather sofa in the band’s expansive ensuite rooms. “Last time we toured here we were in a little van driving around, it was January, it was fucking freezing, now we’re in a better hotel, we’re in a bigger bus, it’s summer time, we’re playing festivals - it’s the good times. We made it through that tough stretch and now we’re reaping the rewards.”
Barely halfway through a year of relentless intercontinental touring in support of their first album, Wolfmother are already well on their way to surpassing all but the wildest predictions. And really, who could’ve imagined festival goers warming so quickly to Wolfmother’s funked-up parallel musical universe in which Prince goes nuts, kidnaps Black Flag, and surgically reconstructs them as a Led Zeppelin replica gone thrillingly awry? Well, non other than the same man who places himself somewhere between Superman and Beatrice Kiddo, the rampant death machine played by Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Explains Andrew with wide-eyed, borderline feral self-belief, “I was watching Kill Bill, and at the end of it (Bill) says this thing about Superman, that when Superman wakes up, he is Superman, and he has to make an effort to become everyday. And Bill tells (Uma Thurman), 'you're a born killer' - that even though she's tried to fit into society, have a baby, get married, she'll always be a killer. And in some ways that's the same for me. I feel like when I'm on stage, that's who I am. That's when I can realise what I want to do, and how I wanna exist, and dressing up, and fucking things around and kicking things over, that's where I feel like its my destiny or something like it,” he says with the glee of a kid who’s just been told he doesn’t ever have to grow up.
But the 29 year old adult who’s all too aware of his responsibilities - girlfriend and 5 month old daughter - is never far behind, and he quickly becomes introspective at the near impossibility of finding a satisfactory compromise between the two “different worlds” of parenthood and rock-stardom. “That's hard,” he says. “I feel this connection to (my daughter), but I can't be around her. This is a once in a life time opportunity to do what (Wolfmother) are doing now, so I've chosen to do this. She did come along last time, she came to LA, but it’s hard for her. She's five months old, and with the jet lag... Little babies need that routine. And (having her on tour) was too relaxing in some ways. I'd be in New York and I'd be holding this baby in my arms, just chilling out, and then I'd have to go rock out to a thousand people at the Bowery ballroom in New York.”
Reconciling the disparate worlds of expectation and reality is another mental skirmish that sends Stockdale’s bright eyes floorwards, and makes his normally sprightly afro go droopier than a kicked puppy. Simply put, touring the world with a rock and roll band isn’t the travelling celebration of music he imagined it would be and that confuses, angers, disgusts, and saddens him, all at once. “There’s a lot of depression around rock and roll,” he says, wincing at what strikes him as an insane combination of words. To a man so clearly thrilled to be playing the part of rock star, it’s unfathomable that some people view music simply a job, and he has nothing but disgust for the cynicism he sees in some crew members. “They have contempt for people in bands, they think we're full of shit and we'll be gone in the next six months, and they'll work with someone else,” he says. “I never really considered that kind of cynicism, I thought everyone would be like, ‘wow, we get to go here and do this’ and ‘look at this beautiful place where I am.’ Then you look at the way some of the crew carry on at these festivals.. ugh.. very aggressive, cynical... drugfucked!” He laughs dryly.
“They try to pull you down, man. They make fun of the clothes you wear, they make fun of your haircut, they make fun of your voice, they walk around going (high-pitched parody of their single) 'Wooomaaan!', they think you're a dick!” he spits indignantly, with the gusto of someone who likes nothing more than a good whinge. In all, he seems resigned to the fact that dealing with cynicism is the unfortunate flipside to living your dream, and seems aware it’s no real appraisal of his talent. “You see interviews with Hendrix’s tour managers,” he says, adding the Voodoo Chile to a reference list that already comprises Superman. “And it’s, [adopts near-catatonic drawl] 'Hendrix would go to fuck his amplifier, and while he was fucking his amplifier I had to stand behind his amplifier and hold it up whilst he was fucking it' They hated him. And that was Hendrix.”
As the conversation turns back to music, the responsibility-free 'Superman'/'Peter-Pan' persona reappears, and you get another glimpse of the manic creativity at the heart of the band, and what it’ll sound like when a hopefully unbroken and road-hardened Wolfmother returns to the studio to follow-up their debut. “I was listening to this George Harrison song called 'It's All Too Much'“ he enthuses conspiratorially as though describing the last time he snorted crystal meth. “And it's a Farfisa organ that’s totally distorted and there's just like a barrage of distorted guitars feeding back - It's like a mantra. So I want to create just a totally mind-altering massive noise, with these really nice vocal melodies.” Here’s hoping we get to hear this before the cynics brow-beat him into an indie-rock Mick Hucknell, cause if there’s one band who could make utter cacophony groove harder than a thousand bouncing afros, it’s the mighty Wolfmother.
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