WOLFMOTHER TAUGHT A NEW YEARS LESSON

Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale was taught a New Year’s lesson about the music industry that he will never forget.

Wolfmother will be playing the Falls Festival in their native Australia on New Year’s Eve. It makes good sense considering it’s summertime in the southern hemisphere. While Wolfmother will surely be enjoying themselves, the band’s Andrew Stockdale recalls a time when things weren’t so good. Stockdale said he was on the road to be a capable flamenco guitar player, but a bad gig with his outfit not only turned him off to flamenco but gave him a lesson on the music business.

Stockdale taught a hippie looking fellow from a music conservatory how to play flamenco guitar and joined a group with him. The then fifteen year old Stockdale recalled how he was stabbed in the back for a New Year’s eve show.

“It really, it stuck with me the rest of my life. I taught this guy how to… I was like fifteen and this dude from a conservatory, this hippie dude with like long hair and he always taking about his Karma and his inner this and all that kind of crap. He came along and he sat in the class and he was like, ‘Hey can you teach me some of these songs?’ So I was like, ‘Yeah, sure. No worries,’ and I started teaching him all these different songs.”

Stockdale continued:

“We had this gig at like…it was at the Hilton, I think, some function we were going to play on New Year’s Eve. Somehow, my mom got sick and I couldn’t do it, so he teamed up with one of the girls who was learning Flamenco, approached the venue, got the gig, then rang me up and said, ‘Hey, this has happened to me before. I’m going to have to let you know you’re not good enough at the guitar, and we’re going to have to let you go on this show that’s coming up on New Year’s Eve. I was like, ‘Yeah, no worries. Dude, I taught you how to play the guitar, and now you’ve taken the job and kicked me out!’ I was devastated, but I got a kind of first hand expereince of how the music industry works (laughs).”

Wolfmother’s retro sound has placed them at the top of many magazine’s year-end lists. The band’s “Woman” and “Dimension” were standouts from their self-titled debut.