London’s Kashpoint – an iconic club night populated by a host of crazy characters and club kids – has generated some truly iconic identities. Among them are the likes of DJ and vocalist extraordinaire Bishi and avant-garde designer Gareth Pugh. But leading the charge is electro pop dandy – and inscrutable emerging gay icon – Patrick Wolf, a boy who is now well and truly on his way with the recent release of his fourth studio album, the intense affair that is The Bachelor.
The album is an adventure into the romantic heart of England, one threaded together with the use of incredible arrangements. Even Tilda Swinton, she of the alabaster skin and flaming locks, makes an appearance, her voice a seductive poetry of annunciation. It’s a two-part release, The Bachelor is the precursor to next year’s The Conqueror, the pair together creating The Battle.
‘I guess the mission was to work through my sadness that I had, that I thought I may be alone for ever, that I may not meet me true love,’ Wolf said of The Bachelor while recently on tour in Europe. ‘There had been a long dry spell in my life in terms of romance and I felt quite lonely and unprotected in the world, what with the public attention and curiosity about my identity and private life. I really felt like life was confirming me to be a bachelor.
‘The Conqueror is the sequel to The Bachelor, specifically in a lyrical sense. The idea that “love conquers allâ€, that love can come into your solitude and bitterness and wake up to your senses and make you re program your heart to function better, or restore your sense of innocence or love for the world and nature.’
Love plays a prominent role in Wolf’s work. It’s what guides his songs and gives insight into the naming of the upcoming 2010 release, The Conqueror. After all, Wolf’s new lover is called William, and for anyone who knows their English history, William the Conqueror transformed the face of England back in the 11th Century, much in the same way this modern day William is transforming the life of Wolf.
‘When I first became a sexual creature at the age of 11, I craved romance and most of all love,’ Wolf said of the role love seems to play in his life and work. ‘It took me a very long time to really work out what I thought love to be or what was lust and what was longevity. I took me a while to realize what specifically I was expecting love to do to my life as I always said music was my first and truest love. My violin would never take me on a bad date and I could never have bad sex with a piano.
‘I was a promiscuous heartbreaker too and a real teenage tear-away. At the age of 16 I left home to be with an older lover, but I never really had learnt to love or respect myself so I decided to be alone with my music and work through the issues of my life and make and album and try to get a roof over my head. The issues of love and heart are my main fuel to my music, and my music keeps me well fed and sleeping on a nice bed.’
If love is the fuel, then it takes on many forms. One such form is the admiration Wolf has for the larger than life Tilda Swinton. For those who don’t know, Swinton appeared as the gender-bending lead in the now cult classic film version of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the story of a boy who travels through time without aging, becoming a girl along the way. Swinton was also the inspiration for the AW 2003 collection of Dutch designer duo Viktor & Rolf, who created a collection which played with androgyny and independence, qualities inherent in Swinton. And now she appears on Wolf’s new album, lending a voice of determination, perseverance and relentlessness.
‘Through wonderful luck, we were in Brixton at the same time,’ Wolf says of them meeting, ‘and I had, one year before, written a song for her to be the narrator on. (I) needed to replace a lot of my spoken word pieces with someone who really understood the words and could say them with confidence and a sense of beauty.
‘I would say we are both definitely unconcerned with traditional stamps of gender identity and see a natural fluidity within to not be scared of being a broth of male or female,’ Wolf says of the parallels between himself and Swinton. ‘I would think it a lot more exciting if Tilda was a bigger “gay icon†than Audrey Hepburn, in that I think she has such a wonderful sense of art, anarchism, humour, experimentalism and progressive thinking. But I would definitely say she is an inspiration to all people who want to live life, experience many different ways of living, being and creating. She is the epitome of the “renaissance manâ€.’
When asked if he sees himself as a gay icon, Wolf admits that after 10 years of being a creator and showman, one who is in the public eye, that yes, he has been informed by a few sources that he is certainly becoming something of an icon to the gay community. ‘If this is true, then I am so grateful and so very proud of this honour,’ he added.
‘I wish I had more male, proud and out creative people to look up to when I was a teenager at school,’ he concluded. ‘When I discovered Derek Jarman’s books aged 16, I felt very empowered and resilient to a lot of the negativity and abuse that had been thrown my way. I hope my music or my artwork or anything I do can serve as an inspiration to any body to love themselves stronger and enjoy life and to the maximum they truly deserve and during hardship, for any of my songs to be like a suit or armour just as many of Joni Mitchell’s has been to me.’
The Bachelor is out now. The Conqueror is due for release in 2010.
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