Tuesday 24 April 2007

Patrick Wolf retires in messageboard strop

Browsing on the internet last night, I came across a story on the NME website saying Patrick Wolf had announced he was to quit music, which was worrying. He's only 23 years old and hitting the peak of his career. This led me to Patrick Wolf's messageboard (I didn't even know he had one) and after a bit of investigation, it turned out he was throwing a strop because someone had posted a video of him punching his drummer and some people had been critical of this.
Firstly, the drummer deserved punching and I found the video very amusing. Patrick Wolf is clearly a perfectionist about his music and takes it quite seriously. He was right to be annoyed when the drummer was too stoned/ high to even attempt to play them. Patrick smacking him the face with a cymbal and kicking him off stage was pretty fair I think. Patrick's live shows are really tight and this guy clearly wasn't pulling his weight. So hey ho.
Anyway: this offended a few babies on his messageboard, which Patrick obviously read, took great offence to, and posted a comment saying he'd had enough of music and was quitting in November. Whether this was directly related to the drummer thing I don't know, but he was lamenting that he was sick of interviews, burnt out, and wanted to embark on other creative projects. He also wrote something very pretentious about his persona being 'like Disneyland' and he wanted to give us Disneyland and magic, and we were ungrateful brats basically. It would have been amusing had I not been pretty concerned that he really is to quit.
This morning I'm still not really any the wiser. Was it just a messageboard strop? If he's that disillusioned with touring and interviews, why doesn't he just cut back? He's signed to a major label now and they are clearly milking him: he was on the Charlotte Church show, for god's sake. He's gone from a little known underground artist to being on The Culture Show, Transmission, The Album Chart Show, Popworld... I've seen him on everything lately. Even I thought he was getting overexposed. If his management aren't taking care of him, he should say so, not threaten to quit music altogether.
Even if he does want to pursue other creative avenues, why would he have to quit music completely? Surely music is a unextinguishable passion, even if promoting and touring isn't.
Hopefully this is all a flash in the pan and he won't be giving up music. Last night I felt very miserable about it all, which also annoyed me, because even if he is just being dramatic, I still feel let down by him, just because he has meant so much to us lately. I have this weird thing of just cutting people off in my head that have hurt me, and that extends to singers too. It reminds me a bit of when Kurt Cobain died. I remember vividly that I felt so betrayed by him I never listened to Nirvana again. I always felt extremely angry with him- even now actually. I just wrote him right off. Perhaps the comparision doesn't quite work, but it does feel like a friend has ditched me, or is threatening to.
The weird thing is, I've been dreaming about Patrick every day for the past couple for weeks. Perhaps I predicted this.

12 comments:

Ben said...

The video on YouTube of the whole incident is really quite disturbing. Sure, he was drunk, but there's clearly more going on as seen in that argument than a petulant strop as everyone else seems to be saying.

As I understand it he's not giving up music, just live performances. Which would probably be the best thing for him at the moment. His frustration is alarmingly obvious and he doesn't seem happy anymore at all.

lightupvirginmary said...

I've seen the video.
I didn't find it disturbing. I understood his frustration. It's his name on the tickets, it's his show.
If you'd seen him at live at the Astoria, you wouldn't want him to give up performing live.
He just needs a rest.

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