Battling Back - Patrick Wolf

For an artist with such an illustrious career, already the creator of three daring, popular albums, a figure hysterically adored by teenage girls and musically replicated by ambitious teenage boys, to go back to your roots when you're on such a high might sound like an odd idea. But Patrick Wolf had to.

Last year he quit touring, disposed of his passport, locked himself in his flat and turned off his blackberry. People panicked. Despite his face not being printed on tabloids every day, rumour on his whereabouts still managed to circulate through fan forums and word of mouth. Matter of fact, he spent his isolated three months reading back through his old diaries, spending days on garageband, discovering exactly who he was again. In other words, he went back to his roots.

But what triggered this dramatic move indoors for such a lengthy time? "I had no private life, no personal life at all." He explains to Gigwise how time on the road was spent "staring out a window Lost in Translation-style" and "experiencing all those typical rock clichés that you could think of…I couldn't stop myself." An artist, who's spent life on the stage since he was 12, finally decides he's not enjoying it any more. That sort of realisation could easily trigger a period of time solely spent on finding out exactly what you stand for in the first place. From 18 onwards, Patrick was swept away on a musical wave of endless writing, touring, scratching his head for new ideas, buying new instruments. And whilst all of this sounds ridiculously fun, put emphasis on the word "endless". He had no time for family of friends, no time for home comforts.

It seems that the period after 'The Magic Position''s release produced this epiphany of sorts for Wolf. Maybe it was all too much for him. "With 'TMP' I kind of streamlined myself to see whether I could take on the top 10 and be an opportunist." Under Universal, one of the most cash-heavy labels in the world, Patrick experienced American prime-time TV, big budget music videos, tours with three costume changes. The only catch? "It was the album that'll never make me a penny for the rest of my life." He elaborates on the inequality between those that were part of the album's release: "when you're putting a lot of time and effort into your work and you realise lots of people are getting paid and you're not…I mean…" And he's right to be frustrated. He wrote the album, he went round the world with it; he even did the artwork for it. "The only way I could make money from it was touring and giving songs to Homebase adverts".