Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale has the most magnificent hair in the world. And he’s really not that weirded out when I ask if I could touch it.
“Does it contain magical powers?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Bassist Ian Peres proceeds to inspect his own mass of curls, and Stockdale laughs and says Ian is trying to steal his powers.
But Wolfmother’s magic lies in their music, which for the past 10 years has graced stages like SXSW, Roskilde, Lollapalooza, Reading and Leeds Download and Coachella, and they have just added South Africa’s most beloved Oppikoppi to that list.
“Tell me what do you love about music,” Stockdale asks me, shoving my own recorder into my face.
I laugh and pose the question right back at him.
“Everything,” he says. United Kingdom band Editors play in the background and we all start jiving to the music.
“It’s cool. It’s funny when you’re on the road, you can be in a different country playing another show every day.
“You get this sense of getting things done and when you leave that and you see life going really slowly it’s hard to adjust.”
Wolfmother hail from Sydney, Australia, and they laugh when I mention the sport rivalry we have going on between our two countries.
“I just like to play guitar,” Stockdale says with a laugh.
The band started in 2004, and released their self-titled debut album in 2005, which won the band a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. An album which yielded the song Woman.
‘You need to tell your own story’
The band’s wailing hard rock sounds captured the music industry by the throat. Stockdale talks while Peres and drummer Vin Steele just let him ramble about the music.
“It’s funny. I don’t know how to describe it.
“I think new bands are of this era are influenced directly by old stuff, but there are still creative holes to explore from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Neil Young and you just take a little piece of it and morph it into your own thing.
“You need to tell your own story, because different things inspire you.”
Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother performs at Oppikoppi 2014.
(Photo: Nikita Ramkissoon)
Wolfmother have been compared to Led Zeppelin and I tell the band of when I was first handed their album back in 2006 and the friend who gave it to me described Stockdale as the lovechild of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.
“I’m blown away by that comparison, because I wasn’t going for that. You can her it in the demo for Woman … I was going for this Earth Wind and Fire high-pitched vocal thing like the song September.
“I was trying to get the ‘dooooeeee dee dooooo’ and that turned into a rock n roll wail. I went high and with playing guitar; instead of playing a minor chord, I would turn it into a power chord and then it turned into what we sound like now.”
A winning formula
The band’s latest album, New Crown is a raw album, which takes the band back to its roots.
“People want you to have a departure and want you to evolve,” Stockdale says. “Some people say that’s the sign or making of a great artist, but personally I think if you have a style and you can do it well, you’ve already won the game.”
He says that’s what makes you different to the millions of bands in the world.
“It means you can hone your craft, if you know what I mean. You get better at doing that one thing.”
And that is exactly what Wolfmother does. They bring out the wailing guitars, high-pitched vocals, maniacal drumming and Peres is all over the place on bass and keys.
Mix it all together and you have one hell of a good party.
“With New Crown we wanted to just be like a garage rock band, and bring it back to the original Wolfmother roots.
“New Crown is a good vibe, and just soulful from-the-gut music.
“A lot of metal or heavy music has an anxious feeling to it and it doesn’t have this full or good, commanding, confident vibe. We wanted to get that back to that tribal or primal almost caveman feel. It’s good, righteous sound.”
Koppi’s headliners
By this stage, the band hadn’t even set up and they were about to take to the stage as headliner for Oppikoppi.
Peres finally speaks up and says the band got a little taste of South Africa as an audience in Cape Town “and it was thrilling”.
“They we’re digging the old and new stuff and giving us a lot of love. We’re pretty excited to see that on a larger scale tonight.”
Stockdale says he’s stoked and honoured to be playing Oppikoppi and its 20th anniversary at that.
“I’m glad it’s happened now, and it’s good timing. Judging from the crowd out there, I think it’s going to be great.”
Despite some sound issues, their set was something beautiful to behold, with a mosh pit that almost took down a tree.
And with Wolfmother closing the rock side of the festival, it seemed like a beautiful end to a beautiful evening … Until Stockdale joined Valiant Swart for a jam up at the Klein Bar. But that’s a tale for another day. – Nikita Ramkissoon
