but, you know... Camden
Patrick Wolf is one of those things that makes me want to cry and scream and dance and hug everyone alive, no matter how horrible. He makes me BELIEVE. And he's beautiful and talented, and punk-gypsy-glam fucking awesome! Ohmygod, he played the dulcimer. I sort of want to chop off all my hair, dye it platinum blonde and invest in hairspray. No lies. (Especially today, when my hair is a train wreck of epic proportions. I should really make an effort to brush it occasionally. I'm thinking of stopping entirely. Dreads are ninja; it's all good.)
Concerts are experiences that I can't even write about. I can't even begin to describe what they make me feel. So I'm not even going to write this entry, I'm going to steal words from an article about Patrick that I read, that made me fall in love with him just that much more. In this case, it's a wonderful, platonic 'I-want-to-have-tea-and-an-herb-garden' with you, kind of love. Because he has a boyfriend he calls his husband, and he's gorgeous.
Anyway. Have a picture and a cut:
Just random quotes from this article, which is awesome.
Patrick plays the accordion, sings like a fallen angel. It's hard to tell if he's channelling David Bowie, Nina Hagen or the Count from Sesame Street but the overall effect is both confrontationally sexual and slightly giggle-inducing. And it is sincere. Patrick is a man whose songs come from the heart, whether that heart beats beneath black feathers or an S&M truss.
*
He plays umpteen instruments, including the ukulele (he made his own theremin aged 11); he's a trained composer ("I hear music in my head as loud as if it's playing through earphones"); and he styles all his looks, which range from Dickensian waif to Hoxton playboy.
*
He tells me this with a wry smile as we drink cups of tea and eat digestives. Patrick's press cuttings and performances had led me to believe I'd be talking to a full-on diva, Grace Jones meets Violet Elizabeth, but he's proving delightful: polite, amusing, a bit shy. We're in his one-bedroom flat, in Borough, which he rents with his boyfriend, William, who works in radio and on Patrick's merchandise. They've just moved in; they furnished the entire place from car boot sales and second-hand shops.
*
At one point Patrick pretends to be an out-of-control computer, over some beats he made on an Atari when he was 16. He says, "I'm always searching for the new taboo", and has a knack of tickling people where they'd rather not be touched at all.
*
Although he's played around with his sexuality throughout his career - he currently identifies as gay but was in a relationship with a girl for a long time and once told an interviewer: "I don't know whether I'm destined to live my life with a horse, a woman or a man" - that's not what makes Patrick interesting. It's not even his one-man-Radiohead approach to making music. What's fascinating about him is his wilful, almost suicidal, desire to go his own way.
*
At 16 he informed his parents that he was leaving home and did so two days later, changing his surname from Apps to Wolf, supporting himself through busking and bar work until he got a record deal with an independent label.
*
He would bunk off, painting his toenails so he'd get chucked out of swimming lessons, filling his time with making music and writing his fanzine. Through the latter, in 1997, he interviewed Minty, Leigh Bowery's art-rock group: during the meeting he broke down and told them how awful his life was. Fantastically, they let him join their band.
*
The only private establishment that would take Patrick afterwards was the do-whatcha-like boarding school Bedales. He was given a music scholarship and his own room: the only boy ever allowed this. He was considered too damaged to share. Bedales saved him, he says. Lily Allen was there, too, along with "all the other freaks that no other school would take. It was brilliant, being thrown in with all these characters. Before then, my freak status was something that I was made to feel ashamed of. Suddenly it was celebrated, like, 'Oh my God, I love your platform shoes!'"
*
Patrick spent his time baking bread, playing the harp and making demos to send to record companies. Unlike his contemporaries, who were aiming vaguely towards university, he knew what he wanted to do. "People underestimate what bullying can do to your ambition. The more I was told that I would be a failure in life, the more I knew that the moment I was 16 and could legally get out of the education system, I was going to show them. I was going to be a superstar. I was on a mission to prove everyone wrong."
*
To this end, whenever he employs people, he positively discriminates, so that even his roadies are not white, straight males, which is some achievement.
*
He is so hardcore, Patrick; so unwilling to compromise his ideals or vision that I find him both inspiring and incredibly touching.
(And a few more from this article, because too much Patrick Wolf is never enough.)
I was going to bring my piano and sell all my possessions and write and learn how to cook and look after myself. I think I was on a bit of a self-destructive path and I thought, well I'll get down to Brigthton and then the day that I put the deposit down and hired my moving van, I then ran into the love of my life - a boy called William, and I just had to cancel all my plans and stay with him in London and start a life with him. So suddenly all these songs that I was ready to record that were all about "hating love" and being "self destructive" - I just found that I was the opposite person in a matter of a few days. I had something to live for and something to love and someone to love me and then I realized that I had to document those feelings as well.
*
I did a little bit of busking too down where I live by the river. I also did the Dylon Thomas festival which was in Wales and that was celebrating the work of Dylon Thomas in a village hall that had people who had absolutely no idea of my work or who I was. That made me realise exactly why I sing and why I perform. When you get a 90 old granny liking your songs - it means the world to me and that's why I do this. At the end of the day, it's just for the music and that instant when the song hits somebody's ear, y'know without any pre-conception.
*
I think there are a lot of people before they come out to their family or they accept their sexuality, a lot of people maybe first struggle with the fact that there is an expectation on you like the father's son or the mother's son - or an expectation to carry on the family. When you say you're gay, you almost rule that out for your family and you have to overcome that shame a little bit y'know and say "it's fine - this is my body and this is my natural position of love - I love another man or I love another woman and I don't know, I really overcame that when my father and mother accepted my sexuality. I joke with my boyfriend about adopting a Chinese baby, but there's that thing around Christmas where you think "I could have an immaculate conception" and I love this person so much and I'd love to make another creature with him. I think the basis on a lot of love when you meet someone is that you want to create a life with them, create a home. The one thing that is denied with gay love is that you can't make a baby. I don't know, it's just an honest feeling I've had recently. Marriage is denied for a lot of us as well which is more shocking. I think it should be a basic right and I talk about my husband all the time. I mean, if he proposed to me we could only be civil partners which is like for me, I'm a very uncivilized person (laughs) so I couldn't have a civil partnership? I don't really get that at all. I want to have a husband.
I want to BE him.
Concerts are experiences that I can't even write about. I can't even begin to describe what they make me feel. So I'm not even going to write this entry, I'm going to steal words from an article about Patrick that I read, that made me fall in love with him just that much more. In this case, it's a wonderful, platonic 'I-want-to-have-tea-and-an-herb-garden' with you, kind of love. Because he has a boyfriend he calls his husband, and he's gorgeous.
Anyway. Have a picture and a cut:
Just random quotes from this article, which is awesome.
Patrick plays the accordion, sings like a fallen angel. It's hard to tell if he's channelling David Bowie, Nina Hagen or the Count from Sesame Street but the overall effect is both confrontationally sexual and slightly giggle-inducing. And it is sincere. Patrick is a man whose songs come from the heart, whether that heart beats beneath black feathers or an S&M truss.
*
He plays umpteen instruments, including the ukulele (he made his own theremin aged 11); he's a trained composer ("I hear music in my head as loud as if it's playing through earphones"); and he styles all his looks, which range from Dickensian waif to Hoxton playboy.
*
He tells me this with a wry smile as we drink cups of tea and eat digestives. Patrick's press cuttings and performances had led me to believe I'd be talking to a full-on diva, Grace Jones meets Violet Elizabeth, but he's proving delightful: polite, amusing, a bit shy. We're in his one-bedroom flat, in Borough, which he rents with his boyfriend, William, who works in radio and on Patrick's merchandise. They've just moved in; they furnished the entire place from car boot sales and second-hand shops.
*
At one point Patrick pretends to be an out-of-control computer, over some beats he made on an Atari when he was 16. He says, "I'm always searching for the new taboo", and has a knack of tickling people where they'd rather not be touched at all.
*
Although he's played around with his sexuality throughout his career - he currently identifies as gay but was in a relationship with a girl for a long time and once told an interviewer: "I don't know whether I'm destined to live my life with a horse, a woman or a man" - that's not what makes Patrick interesting. It's not even his one-man-Radiohead approach to making music. What's fascinating about him is his wilful, almost suicidal, desire to go his own way.
*
At 16 he informed his parents that he was leaving home and did so two days later, changing his surname from Apps to Wolf, supporting himself through busking and bar work until he got a record deal with an independent label.
*
He would bunk off, painting his toenails so he'd get chucked out of swimming lessons, filling his time with making music and writing his fanzine. Through the latter, in 1997, he interviewed Minty, Leigh Bowery's art-rock group: during the meeting he broke down and told them how awful his life was. Fantastically, they let him join their band.
*
The only private establishment that would take Patrick afterwards was the do-whatcha-like boarding school Bedales. He was given a music scholarship and his own room: the only boy ever allowed this. He was considered too damaged to share. Bedales saved him, he says. Lily Allen was there, too, along with "all the other freaks that no other school would take. It was brilliant, being thrown in with all these characters. Before then, my freak status was something that I was made to feel ashamed of. Suddenly it was celebrated, like, 'Oh my God, I love your platform shoes!'"
*
Patrick spent his time baking bread, playing the harp and making demos to send to record companies. Unlike his contemporaries, who were aiming vaguely towards university, he knew what he wanted to do. "People underestimate what bullying can do to your ambition. The more I was told that I would be a failure in life, the more I knew that the moment I was 16 and could legally get out of the education system, I was going to show them. I was going to be a superstar. I was on a mission to prove everyone wrong."
*
To this end, whenever he employs people, he positively discriminates, so that even his roadies are not white, straight males, which is some achievement.
*
He is so hardcore, Patrick; so unwilling to compromise his ideals or vision that I find him both inspiring and incredibly touching.
(And a few more from this article, because too much Patrick Wolf is never enough.)
I was going to bring my piano and sell all my possessions and write and learn how to cook and look after myself. I think I was on a bit of a self-destructive path and I thought, well I'll get down to Brigthton and then the day that I put the deposit down and hired my moving van, I then ran into the love of my life - a boy called William, and I just had to cancel all my plans and stay with him in London and start a life with him. So suddenly all these songs that I was ready to record that were all about "hating love" and being "self destructive" - I just found that I was the opposite person in a matter of a few days. I had something to live for and something to love and someone to love me and then I realized that I had to document those feelings as well.
*
I did a little bit of busking too down where I live by the river. I also did the Dylon Thomas festival which was in Wales and that was celebrating the work of Dylon Thomas in a village hall that had people who had absolutely no idea of my work or who I was. That made me realise exactly why I sing and why I perform. When you get a 90 old granny liking your songs - it means the world to me and that's why I do this. At the end of the day, it's just for the music and that instant when the song hits somebody's ear, y'know without any pre-conception.
*
I think there are a lot of people before they come out to their family or they accept their sexuality, a lot of people maybe first struggle with the fact that there is an expectation on you like the father's son or the mother's son - or an expectation to carry on the family. When you say you're gay, you almost rule that out for your family and you have to overcome that shame a little bit y'know and say "it's fine - this is my body and this is my natural position of love - I love another man or I love another woman and I don't know, I really overcame that when my father and mother accepted my sexuality. I joke with my boyfriend about adopting a Chinese baby, but there's that thing around Christmas where you think "I could have an immaculate conception" and I love this person so much and I'd love to make another creature with him. I think the basis on a lot of love when you meet someone is that you want to create a life with them, create a home. The one thing that is denied with gay love is that you can't make a baby. I don't know, it's just an honest feeling I've had recently. Marriage is denied for a lot of us as well which is more shocking. I think it should be a basic right and I talk about my husband all the time. I mean, if he proposed to me we could only be civil partners which is like for me, I'm a very uncivilized person (laughs) so I couldn't have a civil partnership? I don't really get that at all. I want to have a husband.
I want to BE him.