Podcast update, and a chat with Patrick Wolf

Good evening to all of you. Midnight Chats were Wolves. It's been a little while, hasn't it. Stue here with a little bit of an update on the podcast, something that's a bit of a bonus and something that I hope will will intrigue you with something else that I'm doing right now. Midnight Chats is still on hold for

In the other corner is the recent edition. I got rid of my bicycle because I've never cycled since I moved down. There are too many cliffs and hills and it's my costume making area. So I realized how much I was making, especially for the album artwork. I you know, I don't have any of the connections I used to living in London, and I kind of don't want them.

Used to do, was make all my own clothes.

Yeah, are you enjoying that? You enjoying getting back in time.

I'm really enjoying.

It feels very If I'm furious about something then although the sewing machine is not the place to take your anger up because it registers it and everything goes wrong, but there's something about I think I have to calm down in order to be productive there. It's a very very holistic area for me. Yeah, very pragmatic. Sure, it's either gardening or sewing gets me into get some of the rage out of me of the modern world.

So it's like the perfect perfect space. I think, like you've got these four zones. It's a beautiful garden. It's a lovely day. We're in rams Gay. How long have you been here?

So it's coming out to like five years?

Okay.

I was thinking about it when I got When I got sober was in June twenty twenty, and then I was here by May May the first, the year after, and then I moved into this house on Halloween.

Kent as an area, I know it's because Kent, Kent.

I'm very specifical.

Okay, Yeah, why is that?

Well, you know, like Middle Kent is like Tunbridge Wells, North Kent is getting I like Medway I'm not saying I don't like these places. I just feel an affinity with something about you know, East Kent goes I don't know. I don't know that even like the local folklore changes when you get to East Kent. There are some very specific things about the border land of East Kent, of seeing France on the other side of the cliffs of

It's interesting actually because I'm from Essex. I'm from South End in Essex. And you know, people talk about Essex probably in a similar way to the way they talk about Kent and by lumping it all together. But you're dead right. You don't actually have to travel far within a county like Kent or Essex to realize how different places are. Like the north of Essex is completely unrecognizable to where I grew up. I know this place is has become really special to you, But what what made

So like I live between Ramsgate and broad Stairs. So actually the name of the place where in between. It's quite unfortunate has the word dump in it, so so I live in the dump right So, but but Broadstairs.

I saw a.

Clip of it on.

The Alan Bennett film Lady in the Van. There's a bit where she gets in the van and she she vanishes and he finds her on Broadstairs and and I just loved there was something about the about about the bay, and I just was like, I need to find where that is and I need I need to go. So my partner and I then we we would make it our escape out of London because so it was only felt like an hour and a half and it just became like a romantic place to come to.

And then and then.

The the week that I was declared bankrupt by by the court, then I am I was pretty shell shocked and and my partner took me down to Broadstairs and there was just a sense of like a feeling of like this is where I start again. I don't know, I don't know what I felt, but I just remember staying up all night and watching two seagulls fight.

Over like a bottle of beer or something like outside and just watching that and watching it was it was.

A January January, and it was on January February really really bleak, and I just felt at home. I just felt like in this out of season. And the strange thing is like on Wind and the Wires, my second album, I had imagined I had a lover down in who had a family in Penzance and Hail, and the whole mythology of Wind and the Wires was based around this.

Really, I wouldn't, I wouldn't.

I'd say it was too hardcore for Thomas Hardy, but it was like this very tragic romantic relationship in set in this area. But that set off my imagination to into out of season. And I say imagination because it was i'd grow I grew up in Wandsworth, but I started to I think I was using the imaginary the places I saw on the train trips down there, like Tigemouth, the ferris wheel on the but I don't even know if.

There was a firest wheel, but I was.

I was sketching out this how I felt, but using out of low season England to tell that story. And then when I and I think it was like that always felt like home wherever that was where I was describing, and then it wasn't until I did my first winter here that I realized there's a song called This Weather and it basically like like prophetically describes what it is to do a winter here. And I just was like, I think I kind of wrote about this place, and

Yeah, and now you found it. Was it just that you were sort of bored of London? Did you just need to change it up? Did you want to quieter, quieter existence?

No, I was, you know, I was very ill and am tired of London. I I guess in a way, I felt like I had spated me out and and strange like luckily I always lived in central London, so like I lived in Southwark opposite the Tate Modern, like in this very you know, like very bougie penthouse apartment, and then moved to this little mewse house and I lived like a really like I lived in central London and I lived in Bloomsbury for like four years and and yeah, I know, but like for a flat that

And where was that flat in.

Perry Vale? And you might you might Lewisham, you said you're.

From, I'm living in Lewisham. Now yeah, where right?

Yeah?

So it's like between sydonym and Catford, and it's like it's like a small area in between there, but it was and it was like I moved in there three months before the pandemic hit, on an eighth floor of the of a tower block. And and the thing, like romantically I I all I saw was this view over. I could see across the whole of London from a distance, and on the other side I could see in my head.

It was like this liminal world where I could like wander and wonder. And and.

When I actually started exploring, like in so there was London that side, I was like, okay, I've lived here.

I'm like, how old am I now? I'm like thirty five.

But in the distance, I was still looking for one. I was looking for something that would inspire me to work and to come back to life and come back to what, come back to writing. And I thought I would find it there, but you know, I would just wander and I couldn't get and keep on walking and walking for like hours and I just end up in Bromley or Beckenham or and I just felt like completely

But it really didn't help.

It just it just made me feel it, like to get darker and more anxious and like, you know, it was like the most inspiring thing I could find was Sir Chiselhurst Caves, you know, And I said, oh, I'm going to make an album in the caves and I got permission to.

Do it, and and.

The pandemic happened, and I realized I was had gone from getting clean in twenty sixteen to becoming a full blown alcoholic. Like what do they say some people use the word functioning, like but whatever, the opposite of functioning is, you know, so deathly and when.

You weren't funk, you weren't functioning.

No, like malfunctioning.

Yeah, and and and very ill, and the whole the whole building just became possessed in that in that way before me and London just felt like I had reached completely not the end of the road, but I've been kicked off the road, you know, And and I just thought, there's no way back there, and and I don't want to go back, and and and I knew that if I was going to be sober, then I needed to be I needed to every day have something that I didn't put in my body that gave me a sense

Feel like you're on top.

Of it, like you're bigger than everything, or you're too big for this space. To have something that completely makes you feel small. So I needed to be by the sea.

I realized that, as Patrick's already alluded to, there's been a long gap between his last album and what is going to be a new album that comes out later this year in June twenty twenty five. It's been thirteen years since he released Sun Dark, River Lights in twenty twelve, which was an album that celebrated his first decade in music by reimagining old songs. It was sort of a best of that boiled some of his songs from previous

I have a theory that chaos begets chaos, you know, so if you are you know, at the at the heart of.

All of this stuff is is somebody without any self control, without any healing of any raw nerve, all the all the nerve endings like like you've you've wider plug and put the earth in the but all the different colors in the wrong places. And and there is a sense of responsibility that that I take for all of those.

Things that happened.

I the bankruptcy came through financial abuse through a management system and accountant.

For eight years of my life.

I you know, at the end of the day, the only person that could ever have found that out was somebody that that decided to take a little bit of responsibility for their financeing and investigate these things. But of course they should never have done those things in the first place. But at the end of the day, it didn't stop until I.

Wised up a bit.

I'm sorry those things happened to me in one way, but I also believe that things got that those things stopped happening when I decided to to change my behavior.

You know, yeah, I do know.

You know, there is there's a pattern of people entering rock bottom that It's not just that they can't stop drinking or they can't stop using. It's that they're losing their relationships, their house, they're breaking their mobile phone every week, they've lost their ten passports like me, like they like I used to go through a phone every month, you know, and I kin't and I.

Am from from what from just drop.

Drop, dropping it, running it over, putting it in the bath, just like you. You know, I went ten passports. I had the government people warning me up saying you're not allowed another one. We think you might be committing fraud, you know, like I haven't lost a passport since I've got since I've got sober, I haven't. I still had the same phone, you know, there's and and if you look at that on a macro scale, of course, it were most likely that I would get run over or or you know.

So even even that, even like being hit by a car in Italy, you take a certain amount of responsibilief.

I take it as a big warning sign that you know as well. But you know, I had to romanticize it because like on one side at the end of that road was where Byrons it was a beach in Lago del Puccini in Via Reggio, was where Byron's body was washed up on the shore. You know, some like romanticizing it at the time, you know, and still like and it's like, yeah, you know, it's like near it was. It was all quite like, you know, kind of glamorous and felt like part of ye know, I didn't take it.

Way back when that last YEW came out, we actually spoke on the phone for an interview for the magazine, and I think, I don't know if you were just there, you just happened to be there. But were you living in LA at that point and you spoke to me from LA?

That would have been terrifying.

Okay, yeah, that's not a great place for me.

Was that it was? But you were there at that point around that time they're releasing that record? What was the sort of plan? Obviously it's you know, thirteen years between records, obviously very long time. It's a lot's happened. But when you think back to that time of twenty twelve, was the plan to put out that record, tour it, promote it, and then make another record within you know, as you normally, you know, as an art as normally would within two or three four years. Can you remember

I do remember because I had started to work out that there was something very dark sided happening with my management and perhaps with my accounts and I and I needed to get out of that situation, and because I didn't really know any other alternative, I was like, well, I just need I just need all this to stop so I can work out what's going on. And so I decided I.

Started to.

Make I started to sew to to sew seeds in my management's management's head, saying that I was going to this is going to be my last album for a while. I was going to go and learn sculpture, and that I was going to and I was basically looking like trying to say to everybody, like you can't make.

Money out of me anymore.

I'm going to this is my last record for a long time. And I was kind of putting it like kind of I'm kind of use that word manifest.

Yeah, that's a clay to use that.

No, I guess, like you know, manifest what manifests, like, you know, we manifest everything apparently these days. So but I was, you know, without without really going into the grotesquery of of of of what was happening at that time, I was setting up a period of a break as a test to to the people around me to see how they react about me not making money for them anymore. But also because and but in order to do that, I realized that I was going to have to.

To physically take time.

And when I was and I was starting to realize at the end of Sun Dark and Riverlight, and I was also just a feeling of like I did, I just felt like a sense of a chapter of work ending. And I'm talking about not like the recent album, but the thing, the thing I started at eighteen, I felt like was coming to a natural end. I don't like in this studio, I've got two albums I'm preparing to come after this album. I've always had another project on the go. When I was making the Chan three, I

It was like, so yeah, I was. I remember, I felt.

Like it was the ending of something. I didn't realize how how long it would be, but you know, you can't like it was. It was really when my voicelessness took over and I lost my voice to quite a furious addiction for the next four or five years.

Yeah, has there ever been a point within that period of time where you sort of told yourself, I don't think I'm going to make another record. I don't got it in me.

I mean exactly that. And it was when.

I was assigned a psychotherapist by the NHS. I'd gone to them about some you know, things that were troubling them my behavior, and they they wanted to diagnose me with with with something. They wanted to work out what was wrong with me. And I was given a psychiatrist, so it's a clinical psychotherapist. And the first thing he did it was like, you haven't worked for for.

Like eight years.

That's not usual for somebody in that, you know, you haven't whatever it's like if you were because I wasn't unemployed, because I still receiving royalties for like the magic position, and from you know, like it wasn't like what he realized was like, the first thing we're going to do is work out why you why you can't function with the thing that you're meant to be doing in your life.

Were you aware of it, Like, was that like being told that number. Was that like a sudden realization or were you constantly aware of the fact that, like, shit, I've not made something again.

Well, I always always used to feel that the New Year's Eve of like, oh my god, Patrick, another year has gone.

By and you haven't Year's I.

Mean literally, like the thing is I was still doing.

That.

I mean that the the synchronicity of this whole period, you know, is really blessed because despite all this malevolence going on, there were people really lifting me and carrying me for so like that weekend where I played there was like this like about a month basically where I'd already been playing a fiddle with Patty Smith in her band at the end of Lupekalia and into Sundarken River Light during this so twenty ten to twenty twelve, I had met Patty at Land Festival.

And then she.

And then I had fired my management, which meant I also had to lose my booking agent, my accountant, like I lost basically all contacts to the music industry very very rapidly. And so the weekend that I lost my booking agent, I did a show with Patti at World Festival Hall for like the Yoko own know, the Double Fantasy album, So I had to sing three Yoko and John Lennon songs and did a song with Patty. We

You were doing enough to not realize, not realize and to not necessarily need to because you sort of had. I guess you had while I'm doing this and I'm still I'm working musician, I'm just not making a record right now. And that's yeah.

I was.

I was very I was very aware and the you know, the the the addiction was, it's just you know, and the way, the type of addiction it was is a swallower of people's voices and souls, you know, And and i'd noticed that we are. I was going down that path quite quite quickly. And I think when I started to realize the co morbidity of it all it was just because I was a a songwriter who hadn't released, who hadn't finished the song in ages.

It was because I was an addict, you know, and.

Co morbidity of it all was was when I realized I had a very very big problem on top of that.

If you think.

Without management, without booking agent, with that record label, without all of those things, like, how do you even begin to work your way back into any of those situations too? To release to release anything again? I mean, now I have all this all those things. It wasn't easy to come by and to build that all up again. And it's quite a huge infrastructure that goes into releasing a song or like in this the way that we're doing it, you know, or putting a tour together, like you need.

There's a lot of people.

I didn't have one person I had. I had my booking agent, but that was on a very like the other artists that he represented were people that didn't need those things anymore, like Lou Read and marrying faithful Patti Smith. You know, I was like the youngest person in all this group of people. But yeah, that that part is we really don't underestimate that that side. It just it just felt like I was just completely not in the music industry anymore at all.

I think that's quite interesting because I think people would listening would maybe just presume, but you're Patrick Wolf and you're you're like, you're a tried and tested name, you've been signed to like a major, you've been you've done things yourself, you've done things independently. I think people would just presume that, yeah, you'd been away for a lot of time, but you can still call some be like, yeah, I'm ready to go. No, I need a man. You know,

But and let me let me tell you this, Like that, when I was ready to go back to work, because of the amount of time that I had taken away the I had to prove every step of the way that I still had an audience. So I knew I hadn't still had an audience. I knew what kind of venues I could sell out, but working with a new booking agent, I had to slam my fist down on the table and say, book me in this city, book me in this.

Town, book me in this venue.

Even when I first when I finished my EP that the people putting it out didn't think that I would. They thought, oh, would just to go straight to digital because we don't know if Patrick they're enough people that are interested in buying vinyl anymore. So I said, I dare you to press up a thousand copies. And we sold out the first one thousand in the first month, actually the first week, first two weeks, we sold out the first to London. We sold out the first London

Yeah.

So it was a lot of that, and even last year I had to really prove that there was an audience still in Berlin. There's an audience still in all the major cities that I worked really hard for since I was eighteen.

I realize now as we get to the end of this episode that I'm really making you wait for it. But there are happier times coming for Patrick. Wolfe. I've chopped this episode into part one and part two because we did spend a lot of time talking and there was just a lot to get into. As we've already heard, it's been a thirteen year hiatus and it's not been

I thought should be on a major label. I was like, well, why isn't this on a major? Why isn't it got the same treatment as Girls Allowed? I end up on the same label as like Girls Allowed, you know, and it's like, I didn't know if you looked at it from the outside, if I looked at it at him, like what are you doing there?

Like?

But it was it was a fun game to play in it, and I don't think actually I lost.

And of course where he is now. There's a new album coming in June of this year called Crying the Neck. We get into what that is about, how some of the songs on there, how he feels about it, and how he's adapting to being a musician again in a world that is very different to the one that he left twenty twelve. Things were not asked of musicians that are being asked of them today with promotion and social