Wolfmother Interview

Firstly I've got to say I've been looking forward to your album since you released the EP, and it doesn't disappoint, how does the band feel about the end result?
Very happy, we're really blown away by the result, we can't believe it's us.

How did you guys meet, did you play in any bands prior to forming Wolfmother?
I played in a lot of bands from about the age of 18 onwards that lasted for one show, and then everyone got jack of each other and never called each other again. It's very difficult to meet people who are willing to get into music. You meet people and you're like, ‘Hey do you want to start a band' and they're like ‘you know, I'm starting my degree next year and I've gotta do this and that', or ‘I'm more interested in being a chef or whatever'. I guess the majority of people like the idea of being in a band but don't really want to follow through with it.

I heard you guys used to be photographers and designers, so are you the internationally renowned fashion photographer who came up when I typed your name into Google?
Nah that's not me, that's some other guy! No, I used to be a photographer.

So were you playing music in that whole period when you were a photographer? What made you make the switch to becoming a full-time muso?
We'd been jamming full time for about six years, and occasionally I'd do a photo shoot for a magazine or something, and I'd finish the shoot and then I'd go and jam for days when I should have been out looking for work. I always felt like it was a distraction, I wished I could have committed myself fully to photography but I'm kind of too interested in music and I never felt like I could let music go.

Have you taken many shots of the band?
Yeah I did most of the first press shots.

You must have some really candid stuff.
Yeah candid is the word for it (laughs), it took the guys awhile to get used to being in front of the camera, I think we're still working on it.

The shots on the website look great, were they shot out in LA?
Yeah the one that is a silhouette of us, we shot on top of a mountain that is about half an hour out called Mt Wilson, we went up there with our girlfriends and hung out taking shots with a digital camera. The lighting looks great.

So where did the name Wolfmother come from?
Chris just texted it through to me before we got our first show and I was thinking, ‘What the hell is that, it sounds like a death metal band, are you serious?' But nobody came up with anything else. He got it out of a book called Skinny Legs and All , a Tom Robbins psychedelic book. So we told the people who offered us the show we were Wolfmother and from there everyone was like, ‘so have you heard of those Wolfmother guys?' And it kind of stuck, it's grown on me now and I think it suits us in a way.

There has been a lot of hype about how the process from Wolfmother forming to getting to where you are today seems to have been fairly rapid, what do you think of those sort of comments?
There have been years of jamming that people haven't seen, and with us it's like we can walk into a room and start playing something and everyone just falls into place. We've always had that, and I've been in bands where you can play for a month and walk up to your guitar and be like, put your finger on the fret board here and then put the other finger there. So I think how fast things happen aren't really a reflection on the quality of the music, although I think maybe it is a reflection of how good the band is. I think we were pretty good from the start because we were all decent at playing and we had a natural synergy within the group, an understanding of what everyone else was doing.

Who are some contemporary bands that you respect or are influenced by?
I like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. I went and saw her (Newsom) play a couple of weeks ago and was really blown away by her musicianship. I'm struggling enough with six strings let alone how many strings she's got on that thing! I really like the style of the Kings of Leon, he's got a great voice and they have a really good guitar sound, and I also like the White Stripes and Dead Meadow. Have you heard of Dead Meadow?

Nope.

They've got some nice stuff, it's got big buzz bass lines, (Andrew imitates a buzz bass line down the phone) and the whole band sort of follows a big groove. Dead Meadow is a band that I feel are like kindred spirits in some ways, it's like they're from the same family as what we're doing.

What was it like recording in the same studio as legendary bands such as Fleetwood Mac and Nirvana?
It's funny because it could be anywhere, in some ways it's exciting, but then you also kind of think, well this could be anyplace. It's fair enough a lot of great things have happened here, but it's the people that made it exciting, not the places. I got to the point where we were in a really historical studio called the Sound Factory, and it stank like shit, it was mouldy and I just said to the producer, lets go back to the new one, I don't care if the bloody Doors recorded here or somewhere else. It still had a vibe and the room sounded good, but I think in some studios they think they can be really lazy because people will continue to come from all over the world because of the artists who have recorded there. I feel like its good to try to make history in new places, to create new history.

So you're saying the environment you're in doesn't make that much difference?
I think it's the people. I found Dave the producer was a pretty unique person, and I just liked hanging out with him, talking about music and ordering Frapaccinos! In music it's about the people in the room. If you're in a room with five people and you feel good and you feel comfortable and creative, good things will happen. Or you could be in a room that has great historical significance but you might be stuck with people that you aren't feeding off creatively.

I have a personal fascination with the desert just outside of LA, was the album actually recorded in a studio in the desert?
No we'd actually recorded in about six studios by the end of the album. The first one we rehearsed in was called Cherokee Studios. Bowie had done some stuff there, Motley Crue had played on the piano and Evan Dando and some Lemonheads stuff had been done there. The next one we did was Sound City , that I think was in the porno district, and that was just urban sprawl. The room was enormous, with really high ceilings, and the Chilli Peppers and Nirvana had played there, and they showed us the spot where Charles Manson had recorded an album there. Apparently a guy tried to go in there and steal the tapes and there was a shootout with police and Dave (the producer) showed me where there were bullet holes in the lockers. He also showed me the spot where Stevie Nicks used to snort cocaine in a little attic above the studio. But in some of these places there is no vibe, like the place that we stayed in. It's called the Oakwood apartments and it's pretty much equivalent to a council estate. Nirvana stayed there, all the bands get put there and all these great things have happened creatively, but you go there, and it's devoid of any form of inspiration. It's like you may as well go down to Coles and write an album!

That's interesting because there's a real sense of mysticism in your album, is that an intentional thing, or do you think it's something that comes from the environment you're in or from within you guys?
I think it is something that is within me and the other guys. It's a place you can kind of go to creatively, I think that's what artists do whether you're painters or writers, you can react to your surroundings but it comes down to experiences in life and things that have happened, because you can get a whole bunch of people and put them in a certain place and they'll all have a whole different interpretation of it.

Wolfmother are currently touring throughout Australia and New Zealand and will then jump on the festival circuit, playing at the Homebake, Rocket, Meredith and Falls Festivals. If you can't wait till then, indulge yourself with some prog-rock goodness on their self-titled album, which is out now through Modular.