anderswolleck

Marco Pirroni is a legend in his own time. Now some of you may be saying "But I don't know who the fuck Marco Pirroni is?" Well you may not know his name but you've heard his music. Pirroni was major part of the punk scene in the late 70's in his native England. He first played with Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1976 along with Sid Vicious and later he joined Adam & the Ants penning five number one singles. Since then Pirroni has worked with dozens of other musicians but he is forever looking forward and never backward. His latest band is The Wolfmen where he has teamed up with another ex-Ant Chris Constantinou.

Check out the official site for The Wolfmen

Daniel Robert Epstein: How are you doing today?

Marco Pirroni: A bit stressed today but alright.

DRE: What are you stressed about?

MP: T-shirts, boring stuff.

DRE: What made you and Chris [Constantinou] decide to get together and do The Wolfmen?

MP: I had this idea of a band called Wolfmen but it was just a name and I was hoping someone else was going to do it but I couldnt find anyone else. Chris was doing another project at the time and he said, If you play on some of my stuff Ill play on some of your stuff. So thats what happened. We did these two separate bands for about two weeks and then we thought Well this is just stupid. Why dont we just do it together and just call it The Wolfmen?

DRE: Did the concept of The Wolfmen change or did you even have a concept before Chris got involved?

MP: The original concept was retro garage glam rock soul so that concept hasnt changed. Whether weve actually achieved that concept is doubtful. Concepts just fall by the wayside. It just depends on what is in the ear of the listener so theyre not really things that you should adhere to too strongly.

DRE: How did you hook up with Damaged Goods?

MP: Ian from Damaged Goods was a friend of our lawyers and he suggested them because record labels arent as important as they used to be. There were certain things we wanted from a label and they fulfilled them.

DRE: Did you think about having The Wolfmen music be exclusively online?

MP: We thought about it, but we both didnt really see any reason to be exclusively online because the only thing people dont seem to want to buy is CD singles. But they want to buy vinyl and they want to buy downloads so we thought, Ok, thats what were going to do. Thats what were going to sell them.

DRE: Did the two of you write and produce the songs?

MP: Yeah, we write and produce everything, yeah. Though there is a producer named Chris Hughes who produced some of the work on EP. He was the original drummer and producer from Adam & the Ants Hes an old friend of mine so I got him involved in a couple of tracks.

DRE: What is the writing process between you and Chris?

MP: The thing is that the great thing about home studios is that we can now record separate tracks and then merge it all together in this technological garage rock thing, but its still garage rock.

DRE: I read on an Adam Ant fan site that a lot of people who used to work with Adam are doing more retro style stuff nowadays. But The Wolfmen sounds very modern.

MP: I think what they said was that generally people of our advanced years are going out to do reunion tours and rehashing old hits and doing this whole nostalgia trip. Funny though, thats what we desperately want to do but we just cant get it together, so we just decided to do a new band instead.

DRE: Its obviously more creatively satisfying to do something new.

MP: Yeah. This whole reunion tour thing is fine if its what people want to do. Its mostly financial and Im not knocking that at all. Its not something I need to do or something I would get off on.

DRE: Youve probably been offered many times.

MP: Yeah we have.

DRE: Have you ever been tempted?

MP: No, I dont think so. Ive never done anything retro unless Im desperately trying to make it retro.

DRE: [laughs] Hows that going?

MP: Its not as easy as youd think. Everything starts coming out sounding new. The strange thing is that when we started doing The Wolfmen what we were listening to were old soul records and the Velvet Underground and glam rock and that is what it is a mixture of. A lot of people our age say, Oh no man, its too late. I believed them for about five minutes and then after playing it for a bunch of 17 year olds they said it was brilliant and that it sounds really new. So never try and be what youre not.

DRE: [laughs] What made you rework the Brian Eno and Lou Reed songs?

MP: Needles In The Camera's Eye is a song Ive always really liked from Enos first album, it came out when I was 13. So we did that and the Lou Reed song The Primitive wasnt as much as a cover version as us finishing it off. So we did it and then I thought, its not much of a song really, its one little phrase over and over again. So we finished it off and made it into a complete song and then we had to approach Lou Reeds publisher saying Is this all right? Can we actually play this?

DRE: I guess they were ok with it?

MP: Well they werent initially ok with it. They came out with a ridiculous deal, they wanted like 90 percent of it and we said No, fuck off. You cant have 90. This is someones estate thats been dormant for the last 40 years; you can make some money off of it or no money off of it. So they were sensible.

DRE: Do you know Lou Reed?

MP: No, never met him.

DRE: Even so, were you worried about what Lou Reed might personally say?

MP: Well Id like them to like it but thats probably unlikely. Its a song they abandoned anyway.

DRE: I read that The Wolfmen was partially inspired by your love of Universal horror movies.

MP: Absolutely.

DRE: Is the Wolf Man the main one that was a big influence on you?

MP: No, actually Im a big Frankenstein fan. I never actually liked Wolf Man films. They were all right but they werent my favorite. I just thought that Wolfmen was a great title and a great name.

DRE: How did your love of those horror movies get into this album?

MP: Im not sure. They have just always been there. Ive always liked those kinds of movies. I dont particularly like modern horror movies like slasher movies or anything like that.

DRE: Are you finding a whole new fanbase?

MP: Yeah, its beginning. As I suspect or hope to have happened, a whole bunch of people are listening to Wolfmen stuff whove never really heard of Adam & the Ants or theyve heard of them but they never really knew who they were. Many of the people listening werent even born when we were putting our records out. Its weird but its nice as well because if youre 47, like me, 20 years ago doesnt seem a long time ago but if youre 21 obviously its all of your life.

DRE: I read that you guys havent really talked to Adam about doing anything. Do you want to ask him?

MP: Yeah, if Adam wants to do something. I havent talked to him about it but if one day we want to do something together Im definitely up to it.

DRE: You worked with The Slits on Revenge Of The Killer Slits, how did you hook up with them?

MP: I have this record label going as well called Only Lovers Left Alive and my partner in that, Sam Bully, pulled all that together but Ive always known them.

DRE: Are there newer bands that have contacted you about doing stuff with them?

MP: Not yet, because we havent really been seeking out collaborations with new bands. We havent been seeking out collaborations with anybody because we just started this. So we just want to put the album out and maybe when the album comes out people will call us up and say, Do you want to do something?

DRE: When you were 17 years old, what made you get up on stage with Siouxsie and the Banshees?

MP: In those days no one really thought very much about anything. Billy Idol was due to play guitar with them then he didnt want to do it so they just asked me. They didnt even offer, they said, What are you doing Tuesday? I said, Nothing. They said, Lets do a gig. I said, Ok and that was it. Then we tried to rehearse and after ten minutes we realized that we could never in a million years hope to learn certain songs. The idea was to play songs that come from versions of songs we hated which is a great concept but we couldnt even get that together though we didnt try very hard. We gave up after ten minutes and decided we were just going to go on stage with no songs written and no songs rehearsed and just see what happens.

DRE: Since it wasnt such a big deal it didnt really hit you then.

MP: We didnt think about it. We didnt think really think about it being the legendary punk performers because they werent legendary yet. At that point it was just four idiots, which is really the level that we wanted it all to be anyway.

DRE: Do you listen to a lot of new music?

MP: Yeah, I listen to stuff like Babyshambles. Theres lots of new stuff to listen to. But it doesnt sound especially new, new-ish but I like it because it sounds retro in a funny way.

DRE: Thats a big thing now.

MP: Yeah, it is a weird that 17 year old kids listen to Wolfmen because they sound new and then me listening to new bands and liking them because they sound retro.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck