Wolfmother interview: Pack to the Future

Guitar World recently caught up with Wolfmother's Andrew Stockdale where he discussed the band's new album, Cosmic Egg, and how the band reformed.

By 2007, Australia’s Wolfmother had sold more than five million copies of their debut, self-titled album. Meanwhile, their single, “Woman,” was ubiquitous on radio and TV. Thousands of fans packed their shows, and the band itself had toured with some of the biggest acts in rock.

But by January 2008, it was over: Wolfmother had broken up. The band’s fans—to say nothing of the group’s A&R reps—were distraught, but singer/guitarist Andrew Stockdale says that it was about time. “We’d been drifting apart. Once it finally did happen, it was a relief. We could finally get on with our lives.”

Now Wolfmother are back. They’ve got a new lineup—including Stockdale, drummer Dave Atkins and bassist Ian Peres—and a new album, Cosmic Egg (Island). Their sound, however, is unaltered. It’s still the grimy, Seventies-inspired hard rock that made Wolfmother so popularly out of sync with other bands. Credit Stockdale with providing the sonic continuity—he wrote all the songs on the new album and reveals that he wrote most of Wolfmother, too.

“I tried to share the credit with the rest of the guys,” he explains. “We wanted to maintain that kind of brotherly ‘we all write songs together’ mythology. But I was bringing in ideas, riffs, all sorts of things. The problem is, when you sing and play guitar, you kind of end up writing a song.”

The band’s resurrection wasn’t intentional. Stockdale and the new lineup had been performing under the name White Feather, because, he says, “in my mind, it just wasn’t Wolfmother. But the fans kept calling us Wolfmother. Then, one night, I bumped into our old bass player and he called us Wolfmother! That’s when I decided to give in. I guess we’re Wolfmother.”