On the first self-titled Wolfmother album, guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Andrew Stockdale wore his influences on his sleeve. There were distinct shades of Zeppelin, Purple, and Sabbath. Now, some three years later, Stockdale has returned with a new band – Ian Peres, Dave Atkins and Aidan Nemeth on bass, drums, and second guitar respectively – and a new album that all but buries those earlier strains. Cosmic Egg is a sweeping and majestic landscape of guitars and layered parts and a big step forward from the pretty simple three-piece rock music on the debut album. There are still elements of Pink Floyd and little snatches of the Stones and even early ‘60s psychedelic rock, but these are toppings and not part of the main foundation of the sound. Though he was confronted with the splintering of his first band – Myles Heskett and Chris Ross left – he picked up the pieces, began demoing songs in a home studio in his native Australia, and created this pretty monumental sophomore record.
UG: When everything fell off the rails with Myles Heskett and Chris Ross how did you feel? Did you think that the original Wolfmother band falling apart was a good thing or a bad thing?
Andrew Stockdale: At that point, I guess there’d been uncertainty for so long about what was going to happen with the band, I just wanted to definitively know if the band wanted to continue or to discontinue. So, to a certain extent it was like a relief when it finished; it was actually a massive relief [laughs]. I guess because 2008 was full of confusion when this year started we just had to get going immediately. That’s why I just thought, “I want to be in a room, turn up an amp, and hear a drum kit and guitars.” Just physically have that experience of hearing music loud and hearing the machine of a band and that whole thing because I had like a year off from playing music. So, yeah, that was it, just to get started. And I couldn’t believe how excited I was just to go to rehearsals and meet up with some people at eight o’clock at night and get some takeaway up the street after a jam. And then hang out until 12 playing music; I felt like a teenager again.
You were writing songs with no band in place? Sort of writing in a vacuum?
Yeah, it was cool. Basically I felt like I was just jamming with the engineer. I’d write one part and then jump on the drums and then play the drums and play the bass. I was writing songs really quickly and I had a friend who helped do the recordings and he was really good. Like three mics on the drum kit, a vocal mic, a guitar set up and a bass, and we’d just track stuff really quickly and he’d just clean it up a little bit. And for a while, when the band did play [listened to] those demoes, I was like wondering if the songs were any good for a band. Sometimes it can sound really cool on a recording but then like when the band plays it, it doesn’t happen. So, yeah, they translated well to the band and it was good writing just for the sake of writing.
As you were writing these new songs, did you realize that they would require a second guitar player to really pull them off?
Yeah, I’d write a riff then there’d be an underlying sort of hook on the guitar so I thought to recreate that with a band, I probably would need another guitarist. So now I’ve kind of been playing for this whole year with Aidan Nemeth and it just adds a little bit of rhythm behind solos and for intros and you get nice kinds of harmonies. It’s been a good sort of thing to try out.
"There'd been uncertainty for so long about what was going to happen with the band."
Well, American studios have been doing albums for years and years and they way the studios just seem to function, it’s created for you to spend as much time in there as possible uninterrupted with everything working. And Alan Moulder who produced the record and Joe Barresi, you can bounce ideas off them really easily and move really fast in these places. And also, that aside, these are studios where the Doors and Zeppelin and all those people, were. And as a fan, I just enjoyed hanging out in those joints and seeing the old wooden walls. I really like everything looking like it hasn’t changed in 40 years.
But the music has certainly changed from the first album and you can hear instantly with “Back Around.”
Well, I see that as the interim period between the previous lineup and the new lineup. That was a song that I recorded at home where I did the bass and did the guitar in just a home studio sort of environment. And that was like the song that kind of got me through to the next record. So that was just sort of like the song that bridged the first and second record together.
From the second the song kicks in, it’s obvious that there is so much more going on guitar-wise than there was on the first album. Did you consciously want to expand the role of the guitar?
Ah, yeah. I guess from touring and playing the guitar for a few years on the road, you think to yourself, “How can I get that on the record? At some point I’m gonna capture that energy on a recording.” Once I got home and started doing this, I really wanted to push things as far as possible. Also, when I listen to other band’s records and they’re going onto their second record or their third record, I like seeing things step forward. You can see that a band has potential like maybe good songwriting and then for the second record you can almost see people evolve. You can see the guitars evolve, the vocals, the drums, the songwriting, and the feeling. I thought, “Things are definitely gonna have to grow; the guitar is gonna have to go way more out there and really find something to play that brings more to the table. And same with the drums and everything.”
And I guess having new members, that makes it a little bit easier on the second record because Dave [Atkins] on the drums has got a different style. So in some ways we’ve come in with a new kind of drumming style on this record.
You can hear on “Back Around” how the rhythm section of drummer Dave Atkins and bassist/keyboardist Ian Peres seems so much more adventurous and capable than Myles Heskett and Chris Ross were.
Yeah, they sync together really well. They haven’t been playing together for long at all and they’ve become a little engine room.
Describe what is happening guitar-wise on “California Queen?”
I’ve got this black Gibson 335 [Dot Studio ES-335], which is really solid for recording; the tone just seems to come forward and do well on pretty much every song. On the verse I have like a wah-wah up so it’s kind of got that internalized kind of distortion holding back. And then for the choruses I just hit the [Electro-Harmonix] Microsynth and you get that full-on sort apocalyptic octave thing that crackles away. So, yeah, I’m just playing around with that. And then on some of the solos I was doing the whammy pedal with that as well so you get this shrieking octave tone. Just messing around with all the different variations between both pedals. That’s how I get all the dynamic on the guitar.
The Microsynth is a key effect for you?
Yeah, it’s been great; I love that pedal.
“New Moon Rising” has some strange sounds on it.
I think that could be the Microsynth as well. It kind of allows you to play a lead guitar part that almost acts like a power chord.
That last comment you made really describes your approach to guitar orchestration. You take a solo guitar line but treat it as an accompaniment part.
On the verses of “New Moon Rising” where the chord sort of hits an accent, I just wrote that as I was singing the vocals to complement the vocals. And then on the chorus bit with the Microsynth part, I had that riff and I tried singing it in different ways. But that chorus vocal line I sort of came to that a few weeks later. I wanted to sing in a way that didn’t compete with the riff; a kind of laid-back vocal. I thought if I tried to sing with the riff, it could sort of compete too much with it. Yeah, the guitar part was kind of written further down when the track was recorded.
“White Feather” has an interesting rhythm sound to it.
I really wanted to do a song that had full-on counter-rhythm where there were holes and gaps and it was sort of disjointed. Kind of funky. That’s another one where I first wrote it on the drums and then had the riff and then I just sort of experimented where every instrument is playing a part where the other instrument isn’t playing a part. Like everything is kind of jumping in in each other’s place. Yeah, just this nice guitar tone with a little bit of dirt; almost clean but a really punchy tone that sort of just jumps right out at you.
The solo on “White Feather” is also very lyrical and powerful.
Yeah, I love playing that; it’s a full Keith Richards bend-it kind of moment. Bend the strings, light a cigarette, have a drink kind of solo. Put on some snakeskin boots.
All the solos on Cosmic Egg just sound so much more musical and expressive than what you played on the first album.
I enjoy doing solos. Tracking rhythm feels like hard work but then solos is where you can lose yourself. That’s probably my favorite part of recording; doing drums and doing solos.
"I couldn't believe how excited I was just to go to rehearsals."
Yeah, I might have used that or the SG [a 1972 sunburst Standard with a Bigsby].
Your choice of guitar has remained pretty constant – you’ve always played the 335 or the SG in the past.
Yeah. You know how producers can have 20 or 30 guitars? I’ve got like 30 guitars at home and there are two guitars that I know can pretty much do everything.
Can you talk a little bit about your amplifier setup?
I’ve got a Marshall 50-watt Plexi that I always use for a lot of things. We used a variety of amps and that’s for sure; there was some weird shit. I guess I’m going to have to admit it, the Engel Ritchie Blackmore head we used. We used that and that seemed to handle the Microsynths and whammies and everything that we were sort of throwing at the amp. That one seemed to hold it together really well.
“Sundial” was a pretty heavy riff with a lot of sort of controlled chaos going on.
On that, we used two Microsynths in a chain; or maybe even three. And then we tracked up three Microsynths over another three Microsynths. There’s a new model Microsynth and an old model and we put them all in a chain.
“In the Morning” is an acoustic ballad and shows a different side of Wolfmother.
“In the Morning” does have a little bit of flamenco stuff in there; some of those chords I’ve taken from my flamenco world of my youth. I think the acoustic was a Taylor.
There are actually an abundance of guitars on “In the Morning.” Can you describe that process of layering the instruments?
I did the acoustic first and then we got a Danelectro 12-string and then layered that up. And then we used a capo on the 12th fret and did the next octave up on the 12-string and layered that as well; which seemed to work really well.
“Cosmic Egg” has a bit of a shuffle feel to it and that hollowed-out type of guitar sound.
That’s the wah-wah pedal right up so you get that really hollow kind of sound. That’s what I did for the intro guitar and then once the verse kicks in I sort of take it off because I didn’t want to have too many effects on the verse; I wanted to let the parts sort of groove along. And then solo is a whammy as well.
Does Ian Peres play keyboards on “Far Away?” Did you know you wanted a bass player who also played keyboards?
Well, yeah, I guess in order to play the old songs it would be nice to have someone who could do that. But this is actually one of the first songs I wrote on keyboard. I bought a Fender Rhodes off of eBay and set it up at home and that intro on “Far Away” is one of the first songs I’ve ever written on the piano. I just started singing along to that part and then I felt like it needed an ending and I just picked up a guitar and wrote that part to add onto the intro.
Your vocal on “Far Away” sounded so much more self-assured than some of your performances on the first Wolfmother album. It sounds like you couldn’t have pulled this vocal off on the previous record.
Oh, yeah. Even now I think I’m still finding my voice. I’ve been trying different things, more acoustic songs, and with that song it was that really fast delivery of the words. Kind of stop/start kind of singing; it sort of sounds more emotional and there’s more personality to it when you sing with unusual timing. It’s like you’re just talking to someone, as if you’re just having a conversation.
“Pilgrim” is another heavy riff with a wah-wah?
Yeah, on some of the parts I think there’s wah on the breakdown riff and Microsynth on there as well. I used the cheapest wah available like a hundred-dollar Fulltone.
“In the Castle” has a lot of delays and echoes and goes through different parts. This is sort of the epic song on the album.
We finished demoing like 10 songs with this engineer and because I put it all together and spent time on the songs, I thought, “Let’s just have a few beers and muck around. Let’s not worry about it and try and make everything sound good. Let’s just press record and see what happens.” And I started playing “In the Castle” doing these kind of medieval chords and this unusual way of putting it together. At the time, I thought, “This is so ridiculous; this is so bad! I’ve wasted this guy’s time who is a serious engineer with a lot of gear and here he is hanging out with me and I’m just some dude mucking about.” And then I had a listen to it a few months later and thought, “I should use that idea.” So then I added that guitar solo part as a massive sort of moment that happened after the verse. From there, I thought you could just really go into one note and then smash the song to pieces with a full driving riff and not be too delicate with the song and just kind of obliterate it with this other riff and then move it around.
All the way through I’m trying to make it interesting for myself as well by messing around and putting something in there that you least expect.
"It was good writing just for the sake of writing."
No, this is stuff I wrote at home and I’m layering in all of the guitars. Aidan is on maybe one or two songs. I like to do all of the guitars.
“Violence of the Sun” is another keyboard ballad.
Yeah, that’s another one I wrote on the Wurlitzer and started thrashing out the guitar over the middle of it. And somehow it just became another big epic towards the end.
Cosmic Egg has really grown from a very organic process of recording demos and then finding a band and finally recording the songs in a big studio. What do you hear when you listen to the album?
Before I left to make this record, a friend of mine said, “Make the record that you want to make.” And I kept that in mind and now when I hear it, I can live with it, I enjoy it. It definitely feels like something that’s really grown and it’s a great thing. I’m glad to have done it and where it’s at and the way it sounds, it’s a real trip to be at the other end of it now and to be able to sit back and listen to it.
Interview by Steven Rosen
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2009
Stockdale plays Gibson guitars, primarily a 72' SG standard with a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece in vintage sunburst. He has also been seen using a 61 Reissue Gibson SG. Other times he uses a Gibson Dot Studio ES-335, a white Gibson Flying V and an alpine white Gibson EDS-1275 with golden hardware. For the recording of the Wolfmother album he used a borrowed Gibson ES-355 through a 60's Marshall. When playing live, he uses Orange amplifiers and cabinets, lately seen in an Orange advertisement with an Orange AD30 and Thunderverb 200 and PCC412 cabinets. Stockdale also states to use a Fender Stratocaster, though he prefers the Gibson guitars. In recent times he has also started using a Hohner Blues Master Harmonica microphone for some vocals.
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