Andrew Stockdale: Going past rock and roll clichés

Lead guitarist and vocalist of Australian rock band Wolfmother, Andrew Stockdale, is the kind of rock star who has no problem ignoring critics, even when they have good things to say about his records.

JP/Ricky Yudhistira

“When you get a lot of praise, when critics say that this [our record] is so good, that this is the best, we just say ‘no it’s not’. And when they say it is the worst record we’ve ever made, we just say ‘no it’s not’,” Stockdale told journalists in a pre-gig interview hours before Wolfmother headlined the final night of the rock festival Java Rockin’ Land.  

When music writer Luke Turner of the British music rag New Musical Express (NME) thrashed Wolfmother’s sophomore record Cosmic Egg, calling it a “mindless effrontery,” Stockdale just laughed it off, only bemoaning the fact he had spent time doing an interview with the NME journalists.

“I was in NME doing an interview on their radio station and they were all ‘oh this is great blah blah blah’ and then they handed me a copy of their latest magazine. And I thought what the f*#k are we doing in here! [laughs],” he was quoted as saying by The Vine magazine.

Earlier last week, he once again displayed the same admirable amount of patience when dealing with a different breed of writers and music journalists from local media who rehashed the same old cliché questions about rock and roll.

This is what he said when responding to a question about whether he practiced rock’s worn-out troika of sex, drugs and rock and roll: “Sex, drugs and rock and roll are the stuff that people in a band use as a release. It gives people the energy and gives them hope,” Stockdale said.

But he was quick to qualify the “hope” statement by saying that sex, drugs and rock and roll were the fruit of a rebellion from the working class people in the West against orderly society in the 1960s.

“People did all these things to break out of the misery of the working class life,” Stockdale said.

And by putting rock and roll into its sociological context Stockdale comes off as a well-informed rock star who has gone past the cliché of rock.

Artistically, however, the music of Wolfmother thrived on rock clichés. The band played the kind of rock music perfected by legends from the 1970s, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Blue Cheer, the type of music suitable for the grandiose setting of stadiums and coliseums.

Stockdale has mastered the craft of writing songs about white unicorns, jokers and thieves, tales from forest gnomes, which draws from the bombast of the 1970s classic rock — razor sharp riffs, lengthy guitar solos and noodling organ. He possesses Robert Plant’s wail and The White Stripes’ Jack White yelp that makes him the most perfect singer to sing in a band promoting throwback music from the golden era of rock.

It is obvious he had a vast knowledge of rock and roll history but decided to just have fun with it. He borrows the 1970s rock clichés and takes them to the stage to bring entertainment back into rock music after it was sullied for almost a decade of Grunge.

During the band’s headlining slot at the Java Rockin’ Land rock festival late last week, Stockdale and three new members of Wolfmother, bass player and piano man Ian Peres, rhythm guitarist Aidan Nemeth and drummer Will-Rockwell Scott, formerly of the American garage band the Mooney Suzuki, delivered a huge, fun rock spectacle that will long be remembered by rock fans in the country.

The show however was nearly cancelled because of Stockdale’s anti-smoking and anti-alcohol concerns.

Two weeks before Java Rockin’ Land kicked off, Stockdale posted a statement on the band’s website saying he would pull out of the festival because it was sponsored by one of the country’s biggest cigarette makers. In a statement that publicly scolded Stockdale, the band manager Joe Segreto said promoters had made arrangements for the band to perform.

“I heard some of our fans had to sell their cell phones to buy tickets to this show. That’s the spirit of rock and roll,” he said on stage during the show, adding that the only reason the band did the gig was because of the huge anticipation from fans.

The music he wrote and played may be old, but Stockdale is the type of present-day rock star who strictly means business and — as indicated by his strict anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco stance — made it clear that indulging in alcohol, groupies or tobacco was the last thing on his mind.

In fact, he prefers to listen to his music on an MP3 player with music from presently hyped lo-fi band Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti in heavy rotation. “I have never been the type of person who has a huge vinyl collections, sits back in a smoke-filled room listening to vinyl and says ‘dude, I love the high fidelity’. When I started, I had a US$30 record player and it sounded like c#*p,” he told The Jakarta Post.

The 34-year-old Stockdale, who is trained as a flamenco guitarist, also lives in the moment’s zeitgeist believing that big record labels will not be part of the equation in the future of rock music.

“Now we have all these social networking sites to get our music out. We just follow and embrace it.

What’s the point of putting out a CD? It doesn’t matter anymore when your record comes out… People can just find [songs] online and buy them on iTunes or Amazon,” he said.

As much as he embraces the future, Stockdale’s roots, however, are firmly planted in the glory days of rock. Born in Brisbane, Stockdale grew up in Wimbledon, England, a place he considered as haunted by the rock and roll’s past.

“I lived in Wimbledon, where Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart and Keith Richards live within a 5-kilometer radius, where I could listen to all kinds of music.”