25 January 2010 16:45
Rocking all over the world...in thongs
Wolfmother are back for a sold-out tour of the UK. Just hours before Andrew Stockdale leaped onto the stage at Brixton, he talked to Australian Times about all things musical and why wearing thongs to Dublin isn’t a good idea while attempting to brave the worst of winter.
editor@australiantimes.co.uk
By Sara Newman
This is an important tour for Wolfmother and their fans are out in force.
With irreconcilable personal and musical differences behind him, and a talented new line-up, this is the band’s first full tour of the UK and Europe together.
“It’s good to be back”, said Stockdale, who is known to get the energy flying with audiences.
“It’s good to get out there and play music everyday and see the crowds who have been fantastic,” he said.
“We’re cruising, it feels like we’re back on track again.”
Just before getting on the plane to Dublin, Wolfmother played Southbound festival in Perth, which was a definite summer highlight for Stockdale.
“There were really good crowds, with different bands playing all kinds of music to 20,000 people who were cheering through every bit. We went on and just jammed.
“It didn’t feel like we had to put 20 hits in people’s faces to gain their attention, I mean, it’s great to see everyone go off to ‘Joker and the Thief ‘and ‘New Moon Rising’, but it’s good to see the rest of the set flow really well between the big songs,” he said.
When asked about how he sees the band progressing, Andrew talks about letting the songs and music create itself, rather than with certain ambition and intent.
This goes against the grain of some critics who call his music formulaic.
“I let the ideas happen, try and make sense of it, and let the music find itself. I try not to stress and over-think it,” he said.
This method proved a winner in a last-minute pitch at creating a supporting track for Tim Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland, which stars Jonny Depp.
“We were asked to do it and I had just missed the deadline. They gave me two more days, so I went into my home studio and recorded ‘Fell Down a Hole’ in a day,” he said.
“Apparently they loved it. So, it’s great, we get to start the New Year with a new song.”
Andrew said he always has a few inspired ideas on the go, and plays them out wherever he is, be it on his acoustic guitar in the hotel room while on tour, or an electric guitar in his studio at home.
Sometimes he just tries out all different riffs and just sees where it takes him. The big challenge, he said, is resolving, or finishing the ideas.
“That’s the hardest thing to do.
One of the driving forces behind the Cosmic Egg album was actually finishing all the ideas I had,” he said.
A recent challenge Stockdale set himself this tour, was to wear his thongs all the way from Perth to Dublin.
“We landed in below zero in Frankfurt with ice and snow everywhere”, he said.
“I was standing on the bus on the runway, it was freezing, and then scarily, a guy stepped off and lit a cigarette right next to the big jet engines.
Anyway, we arrive in Dublin, and there is the guy in front of me wearing shorts and a T-shirt, I thought – I give up, this guy is taking it even further!”
Andrew has a couple more weeks of cold feet in Europe before heading back to Aus to tour with the big daddies of Aussie rock AC/DC.
“They asked if we would be interested in doing it this time last year, before we even started making the record, so it was a pretty massive leap of faith, and we said yes! That’s like, stadium rock!”
Read Sara's review of the Wolfmother's gig at Brixton Academy here.
Wolfmother for Glastonbury?