I interviewed Patrick Wolf, one of my personal musical heroes, back in October 2009, right before he went on stage in Belgium. The interview was posted on the blogspot, but disappeared because the blogspot got deleted (drama, drama, drama). Patrick Wolf is currently recording his new album The Conqueror, his fifth full-length.
disco naïveté: This is your first album on your new label ‘Bloody Chamber Music’. You are referring to the English writer Angela Carter, why this reference?
Patrick Wolf: When I was 16, Angela Carter’s books helped me with my lyrics, especially with the language and imaginary I wanted to use. It’s about reality, sexuality, desire, death and life, but it’s told through a wonderful language. I think she works with very powerful metaphors. I always felt very much connected to her for giving me that first inspiration. I think she was the inspiration for changing my name to ‘Wolf’. Music is more than just what we see here with the lights and the concrete sound: it’s about finding your own world.
If I’m not mistaken, Bishi is also referring to Angela Carter with her album ‘Nights at the Circus’?
You just have to find your own favourite book. My favourite was Bloody Chamber, a compilation of short stories. In Nights At The Circus there’s a girl lost in the circus of nightlife, I’m sure Bishi relates very much to that.
You’re known for your extravert clothing-style, changing the colour of your hair, but how important are style and appearance for you? Does it relate to your music?
Well, you just saw that in that other room. There are some true artists, visionaries, out there; there aren’t much of them; I’d like to meet those people. Half about it is looking how I feel, representing how my songs should look. It’s like when you’re directing an opera, you don’t want a character that is a Viking dressed as something else: he should be dressed as a Viking warrior. You have to make sure it’s representative. On the other side it’s about drawing attention, using my looks as publicity, and the voice I have within the media. The people I work with are really great designers and I would like more people to love them as much as I do.
I’m wondering what kind of music you were listening to when you were my age, 18 years old. Have these artists influenced you? And what contemporary artists influence you?
Starting at 18, I think that was a very strange time to me… I was deep in the middle of making Lycanthropy. I was also in a band called ‘Maison Crimineaux’ which was a kind of really bizarre, good, fun band. It was basically only about noises, like terrorist-noises, really hard white noise. I was listening to a lot of industrial music back then. Inspirations for me were people like Grace Jones, I love how she acts on stage. Björk had been an inspiration as well, PJ Harvey, …
Lots of women?
Yeah, I think female creativity is a lot more intelligent. It’s emotional, fearless, that’s the female aspect of music. Men can make female music to: you just need to combine your feminine and masculine energy. Both of these can exist in a man or woman.
So far you’ve recorded four full-length albums, several singles and EPs: of which are these are you most proud?
I’m most proud of just ‘finishing the album’, because you just want to get the record started. It’s a personal victory, something personal to finish. Twelve songs you’re very proud of and represent you and your life, and things you want to say to the world. It doesn’t come naturally. Mhm, it does come naturally, but it takes a lot of living and experience. I’m just proud of the whole journey: getting somebody to believe in my music from day one. All the different business-madness that’s going on, the publicity around the records, the drama’s and scandals, all that kind of stuff: it all seems like a very bizarre journey and the records are just milestones within all that chaos in my life. I look at them as chapters in my life and I can’t really say of which I’m more proud. I think it’s about being a good mother. You don’t pick your favourite child. You love all of them equally.

You’ve explored several genres of music already, such as experimental, more classical music, pop, and lots of mixtures between those: are there any other genres you’d wish to explore?
Yeah, definitely. That’s my mission statement. I don’t want to be forced into something by businessmen or by public, because they want me to create something specific. I’m not going to stop making something because of losing money or audience: I’m on a constant mission.
Are you interested in something like acting in a movie, painting, participating in an opera, or writing the music for an opera, like The Knife did with ‘Tomorrow, in a Year’?
These things have been suggested as I was travelling around the world: there were lots of offers. It’s all about making priorities. A movie in which I got an offer to act in was a remake of ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ in which David Bowie starred. Everyone was like “Oh, you’ve got to go to Hollywood and act in this movie!” and I was like “guys, this is a classic film and why would I want to step on a piece of history?”. There are a lot of bad ideas out there and bad suggestions, I think, and I choose auditions very carefully. In fact I recently did an audition for a movie, but I can’t say which it is, but it’s very exciting. I’d like to look back at my life and see 90% of hard work, making music, and 10% of it as fun.
The past couple of months you’ve performed at a lot of festivals in the whole world, along other artists such as Bat For Lashes, Florence and The Machine, Grizzly Bear, The xx, Fever Ray and many more. Did you went to see any of these bands – or other bands – and did you like their performance, did they inspire you?
Fever Ray is beautiful. I love the album a lot, it’s really original, unique. Festivals are quite messy: you basically arrive and do interviews until half an hour before you go on stage, then you get your hair and make-up done, you get on stage, you throw all equipment on the bus and then you head straight home or to the next festival. You don’t camp for the weekend.
His manager interrupts him and says “You’re not allowed to have fun.”, Patrick laughs and starts talking again…
We have fun in our own way, downloading Girls Aloud albums and stuff like that. I think the biggest music inspiration for me was me and my band making songs on the tour-bus.
What’s your favourite album of 2009?
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s ‘Running for the Drum’. The story of Buffy is really astonishing and I never thought she’d release another album. She’s 67 years old and it’s wonderful for a 67-year old releasing an album. She created a great contemporary album, she even produced it herself, to show that no matter how old you are, you can still make a valid, refreshing album if your ears and eyes are open, and your heart is open to you in these modern times. You don’t have to be an artefact of the time that you were famous in. It’s a really astonishing record, really great. Very inspiring for me, cause I’m 26 but I’ve always said I wanted to make music until the day I die. It’s good to know that my albums won’t get worse and worse: I’ll just get better, like Buffy does.

Recently Morrissey considered participating in Eurovision. How about you, would you like to participate in such a contest perhaps one day?
I love Eurovision! I think it’s a wonderful platform for folk-music, it’s a competition about showing the colour of your country. It’s a song-contest about Europe, you know, and I’d definitely would like to represent my country in this contest. I have written a song that mentions Paris, Berlin and London: wouldn’t that make a perfect Eurovision-song? I’ve done so much travelling around what we call ‘Europe’, since I was young. I’ve seen lots, I’d just have to put all experiences together and make a song out of it.
Lily Allen recently quit music because of the illegal file sharing: what is your opinion about the illegal file sharing and quitting music because of this?
I don’t think she quit music because of the file sharing. There are times in musicians lives where family is more important, or money might be very tricky. Sometimes it can be a dramatic gesture, and some people do quit. But for example Cher has been on a farewell-tour for ten years now. I think Lily will always make music. I personally would never allow something like file sharing or the lack of money within the music industry to stop me from finding a way of being creative. The thing I did very recently with Bandstocks definitely shows that I’m not a quitter, I’m a survivor and I’ll always make sure that my music survives and I’ll always be free to be creative.
Are you going to play Empress tonight? Because you tweeted something about that some time ago and I would love to hear it live.
I don’t have the files, I’ve got to recreate it with my band, which is cool, but… I’m doing a solo-tour next year so I think I’ll put it in the solo-tour-. It’s quite a complicated number, and I love the song. I forget about some of the songs: some of them are really bad. Recently I was like ‘eh, I wrote a song called ‘Empress’… but it’s pretty good in fact’. (laughs)
Patrick Wolf started asking me some questions, all of a sudden. What other artists I listen to, and so on. He tells about how it all started for him in the music-industry 10 years ago and encourages me to keep on writing about music, doing interviews, and so on. He tells me he’s about to do a duet with Florence (and the Machine) soon and I’m sad cause I won’t be there. And then he leaves the room because he has to get dressed to get on stage. And the gig was beyond amazing - of course.
I’d like to thank Patrick Wolf and his manager again for giving me this chance. I truly feel honored.