Interview Patrick Wolf: ‘It’s Good To See A Diversity In The Audience’

We last spoke to Patrick Wolf shortly before the release of his fifth studio album, ‘Lupercalia’. This time we grabbed a quick chat at Reading Festival, where he was avoiding writing his setlist in time for the television cameras…

How’s your Reading so far?
Well, I’ve only just got here, about two hours ago, and I went straight in to the signing tent, that was amazing, because the last signing tent I did was three years ago, at Underage Festival, and that was quite intense. This one was really great, it’s really nice to be able to spend a few minutes with all your audience and just have a chat, and talk about their experiences. It’s nice hearing what grades people got in their GCSEs and stuff. I really like being able to have that opportunity, it’s a real privilege to spend time with my audience like that.

Last time we spoke to you, it was just before your album came out. It has been out for a while now, how has it been received?
The album has been very positively embraced by my audience, and because of the radio play on Radio 2 and stuff, we’ve got a lot bigger age range, identity range in the audience, and that’s one of my biggest ambitions, to throw the doors open to any type of person, anybody that wants to come to the show, to feel part of a gang. It’s good to see a diversity in the audience. I’m proud of myself for my audience being as diverse as possible.

At Glastonbury, were you a little bit unhappy with the stage you played on?
We’re on a very long tour, and because the album had only come out about a week before Glastonbury, we decided that we were going to be playing a more ‘out of the way’ stage, and so in a way it’s one of the first big festival appearances for this album, Glastonbury was almost kind of a launch festival date, but we’ll be back again next year, and maybe the year after. It was a great experience, we drew the audience to us.

What have you got planned for today?
I haven’t written the set list yet, though everyone has told me to do that! I like to write it about ten minutes before I go on stage, but the BBC are filming it, and it’s going out on TV, and they’re getting a bit angry that I haven’t finished my set list yet! But I need to make sure the show’s spontaneous, I’m not a musician that over-rehearses and makes everything robotic.

What are your plans for the rest of the year?