Thirteen Questions with Patrick Wolf

Nearly a year after the release of Crying the Neck, English singer-songwriter Patrick Wolf brings us a “harpsichord banger” with The Beast, on top of a new headlining Tour of the Beast tour in the US that kicks off June 5th.

“The Beast,” the A-side of the two tracks, is an anthem of empowerment for the ostracized and people pushed out to the margins of life and society and features Wolf on Vocals, Harpsichord, Pianotron, Dulcitone, 5 String Viola, Upright Piano, Drum Programming, Modular Synths, Radiator + Percussion.

And with help from you jokers folks, we kindly got him to answer some questions for us.

• What have you been listening to recently (music, podcast, audiobook, etc)? 

PW: Music:  I’ve been listening to “Strings” by Kristin Hersh, I was looking for an album to listen to while I was doing some 2am drives searching for locations for my video for “The Beast.”  It’s an incredibly arresting groundbreaking beautiful album of just string section and voice. I was stunned it had passed me by my whole life or not discussed more as a legendary album.

Podcasts: I’ve got into a John Waters-esque habit of really enjoy listening to the most extreme relationship and sexual advice, sado masochistic, and true murder podcasts I can find while driving around my little English seaside town.  Perhaps something about knowing the moral disgust and outrage some of these tales and ways of being would cause if the majority of my town heard what I was listening to that really entertains me. I adore that the door seems to be wide open to pretty much anyone that wants to upload their dispatch of audio and that there seems to be no form of censorship on podcasts, yet.

• What’s touring like after more than 20 years into your career? How have things changed? What’s stayed the same?

The biggest thing that has changed is me, in that I have been six years clean and sober this June. My recovery birthday happens on the road between Texas and Arizona and I am driving myself and my equipment alone in a minivan from the East to West coast. I didn’t learn to drive until three years ago, just before I turned 40 as I was too drunk and dangerous to go anywhere near a steering wheel.  For the first ten years of my career I was driven everywhere and slept on tour buses, back seats and slept endlessly.  The idea of touring the way I do now would have been completely unfathomable to me, but it’s how I’ve found my pride and wonder in touring and nurturing the adventure aspect of the journey, not the duty of it.  I’ve had touring parties of 21 employed on some tours in the past and I’m sure one day if I want to start bringing more musicians back on the stage with me, things will have to change, but for now like last year’s American tour where I drove from Seattle to DC alone with 21 shows, this is a beautiful journey which has gifted me a lot of ideas, words and music, touring for a long time was an endurance, not that I remember the majority of it. 

• As a follow up to the previous question, have you found your audience following you along your career or have you been seeing newer faces in the crowd?

In the USA the audience that turns up for me is much wider in age range and background. I was so honoured to see one of my albums had found its way into resonating with some of the Goth Latino community for instance and the main story I got from meeting the audience after my shows and talking was that a lot were just kids when they saw me on the Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel shows, or read about me in magazines and were far too young to come to any shows, so for many it was their first time seeing me only last year.  This pattern seems to continue across the states, or parents raised their children to my music and now they are coming as families to my show.  There’s nothing more profound and fulfilling as a writer knowing your work has reached a spectrum of human beings of all make and model. 

• Favorite meal you’ve had on tour?

I developed an obsession with banana cream pudding on my last tour.  We don’t have anything like this in England so it was a new creation for me. Since sobriety, I have become an expert in Banana Splits too.. a Banana Split Sommelier

• Which instrument would you un-invent if you had the power to?

That would be cruel to say.   Even if I had an opinion, it would be crushing a butterfly to voice it.  Whatever joy or wonder someone can find in a musical instrument must be protected and nurtured. 

• Wackiest thing that happened on tour you can share with us?

Ooh gosh, well I am currently in DC and when I’m here I’m always reminded of a time I went to visit the Lincoln Memorial at the end of a tour when I found out Michael Jackson had died by a car pulling up and a guy shouting at me “Michael Jackson is dead.. because he saw what the f*** you were wearing today” then sped off. The whole concept and execution of this moment and news was pure surrealism, I adored it. 

• Theme parks, yes or no?

Yes, once and for many years and all extremes, but no, for many years, not at all.  

• What’s been a source of inspiration for you that if you told a stranger they wouldn’t believe you?

Wendy Williams was a key figure in my recovery, and I am so grateful for her existence.  I was on a form of house arrest for my first 90 days clean and I spent those days watching her chat show on B.E.T religiously.  I think an attachment began knowing her story of recovery also and then the structure of my day as I began to rebuild my life and reprogram my brain all revolved around the Wendy Williams show.  She was my anti-depressant, imaginary sponsor and court jester.

• What was the songwriting process for “The Beast” like compared to Crying the Neck? Do you find yourself revisiting unfinished ideas from before or have you been going for entirely new material?

This was a songwriting challenge of a process.  I knew I had to deliver a final master by the end of February in order for to have a 7″ vinyl on sale during the tour this year.   So I flew to a certain place on the Tropic of Cancer, geographically on the continent of Africa, that I know after a couple of writing trips that I can always return to and be completely alone and anonymous, and if I choose detach from “Patrick Wolf” completely.   This is how I get the perspective and space I need as a writer when writing under pressure or to a deadline, to assume a human form and experience or even experiment with the identity of someone else for a week. I didn’t want to reuse any old writing or unused melody.  This had to be a statement of and to 2026, a message of now, as did the B-side, “The Laughing Dove.” This was a reaction to Crying the Neck taking nearly a decade to complete and a lot of it written retrospectively on moments in life that I was very glad to not have to revisit anymore once the album was finished.   But then I had to tour it which made me even more eager to move on as quickly as I could when the album cycle was closed in February. 

• The themes and story of Rain fit very well with The Beast, was the sound clip from Rain something you had always wanted to incorporate into the song or did you come across the movie after you had begun writing?

I knew I wanted a sample of Joan Crawford when she was performing Anger in her acting, her guttural declarations of rage, anger or distress are Wagnerian.  There was a scene from “Strait Jacket” I was initially working with about her pride in her madness and survival of an asylum but it was too long a monologue to use.  I remembered the story of Rain and realised a quote from that would fit perfectly, Crawford as the prostitute who rejects a religious doctrine and absolution and refuses to be shamed and absolved by a priest.  The moment I landed on her “and I have the power to stand here” and say “you hate me” and be damned to you, I knew I had the line and delivery I had been searching for. 

• How did the radiator find itself incorporated into the song? What’re the challenges in recreating sounds from things like that into live performances?

I had asked the great percussionist Seb Rochford to play a radiator I found lying around the studio in the sessions for Crying The Neck so I knew what kind of resonance it could achieve.  I was sad that my engineer and I had to mix that so low in the mix of the last album. I wanted to see if I could revisit the sound so set about on my oil radiator in my studio for “The Beast” as it was missing one magic ingredient in the rhythm section. 

• Any places in the US you’d like to revisit during your return here?

I would like to return to New Lebanon in upstate New York. I hired a writers’ cabin there at the end of my last tour where a flood of writing came to me and I received the name of album eight. I experienced a great peace and stillness there. 

• In honor of the Year of the Horse, favorite song about a horse?

You cannot answer this without saying Patti Smith’s “Horses,” but also the first song that comes to my mind is “Horses In My Dreams” by PJ Harvey.  I’m sure the two are lyrically or definitely spiritually related anyway. 

Catch Patrick Wolf on tour across the US at these dates: