He’s spent years on the edge of the mainstream, doing his weird, amazing thing. Now Patrick Wolf, 24, is set to have his moment
Patrick Wolf – singer, composer, fashion muse, heart-throb, perhaps pop’s next wunderkind – is so so gaudily beautiful, so sweetly puppyish, all 6ft 4in of him, in his camel-coloured sweater, denim lederhosen with silver braces, over-the-knee socks and locks the colour of a Wham bar, that it seems a shame (not to mention impossible) to ask him to calm down. Or to point out that the tearoom upstairs at Maison Bertaux, a cake shop in Soho, had only three other people in it when he arrived, and that one of them has just left in a huff. Already today, a taxi driver, whose cab Wolf used as the venue for an impromptu one-man performance, has told him, “Don’t give up the day job,” and that he has “terrible hair”. “I said, ‘Well, at least I’m not beige,’ ” says Wolf, choosing to take that remark as the backhanded compliment it wasn’t.
He may come across like a psychedelic south-London Sebastian Flyte, but if you really wanted to put Wolf in a box (for which he wouldn’t thank you), you would stick him in there with Amy Winehouse and Beth Ditto – artists who plough their own furrows, rather than work the pop-plastic stereotype.
He has talent and charisma to burn. He writes and engineers his own albums, knows how to arrange a symphony orchestra and has been gigging since he was 14 and recording and touring since he was 17. Until now, his source material has been school, where he was bullied for being everything different. His indignant responses – he once recorded a teacher telling him off and remixed the result as a pop tune – have made him godlike in the eyes of his followers.
And look: now the mainstream has found him. In February, he released The Magic Position, his third album but first for a major label. Then Burberry photographed him for its latest ad campaign. He sang Prince’s When Doves Cry with Charlotte Church on her show. He’s a hit in the States and Canada, after a whistle-stop tour to promote the album, and a regular mischief-maker on the East End scene, and in July he wore a silver sequined cardigan and baseball trousers to Elton John’s White Tie & Tiara ball.
It’s been a journey for the boy who, at 13, was shown how to disguise his acne with pan stick by drag queens, and who spent years in the gigging wilderness. “I went from being a boy with a Bontempi organ, travelling the seaside towns of northern Italy,” he has said – he does a nice line in self-mythology – “to a piano player with a fierce celtic drummer in Amsterdam, to playing to thousands as a pop star across the world.” When he was 14, he lied to his parents that he was doing “creative projects” with schoolmates, when he was playing a homemade theremin in the performance artist Leigh Bowery’s band, Minty. “My parents sent me to boarding school when I brought [the drag queen] Lady Bunny home to do a demo.”
If Wolf does get famous, everyone will speculate whether it’s boys he fancies, or girls. He is a romantic, and was in love with a woman when he recorded his last album, but his earlier songs were all about homophobic bullying at school. Who knows? At the Underage Festival in August, teenagers of both genders were jumping around adoring him.
As for fame itself, Wolf sees only potential for further naughtiness. Doing Burberry was “like a private joke with myself”, he says, and on a blog he has been writing for one of his sponsors, Fujifilm, he claims to covet a Las Vegas casino residency and “perhaps a Penge Triangle residency”. He has been known to come out of big London hotels with a blanket over his head just to tease the paparazzi.
“I woke up in my friend’s bed the other day and turned on Radio 4, and I was there talking about Joss Stone at Fashion Rocks. So bad, so awful, and so important to laugh at that and see how ridiculous it was,” he says. “Sometimes, I go to Paddington, pay £50 for the train, and go and sit on a beach in Cornwall on my own, because that’s where real magic is. When I’m 50, I’ll just be in a hut with my piano.”
I wonder if that isn’t the only way to do fame nowadays – like you can take it or leave it. “We’ll see. It isn’t ‘Look at me – look at how crazy I am.’ I just want to inspire people to break out and be themselves. I want to relate to 12-year-olds, 40-year-old fish-shop ladies, factory workers, taxi drivers. But if your ambition is to be subversive, you can’t do it from the underground – you have to do it from within.
ON THE VERGE
Interesting boys to keep your eye on
Noel Fielding
The psychedelic funny man with a flamboyant flair for fashion. When he’s not filming the mind-bending Mighty Boosh, you’re most likely to find him at a secret East End party, complete with eyeliner, spray-on jeans and cowboy heels. A total charmer.
Sam Riley
You will know Riley as the brilliant young upstart playing the late Ian Curtis of Joy Division in Control – his turn as the tortured artist is mesmerising and affecting. Riley’s wide-eyed innocence, coupled with gritty northern posturing, seals his status as actor du jour and captain of our hearts.
Devendra Banhart
A kind of modern messiah, he enthrals girls and boys alike with his tender, idiosyncratic music. Reminiscent of Jim Morrison, Banhart is breathtakingly beautiful, and says he simply wants to spread peace and love. We certainly won’t be stopping him.
Alex Zane
After a stint doing stand-up, he now graces our screens weekly, presenting Popworld. Those dishevelled curls and big, brown eyes make for a happy addition to Sunday-morning TV. Add to that his cheeky-chappy bravado and pseudo-shyness, and you’ve got yourself a crush.
The Magic Position is out now on Loog/ Polydor. Patrick Wolf tours the UK, Nov 21-30; www.myspace.com/officialpatrickwolf
No comments:
Post a Comment