07.18.06
Interview with: THE WOLFMEN
By Stacy Sardelli
Editor in Chief

Rock / Experimental / Punk

Official description of The Wolfmen: "It's where The Velvet Underground, T-Rex, Adam & The Ants and Martha Reeves & The Vandellas are plundered to make retro rock and roll for the 23rd century."

The Wolfmen are Marco Pirroni (guitars, co-writer) and Chris Constantinou (bass, lead vocals, co-writer). They formed in 2004. Chris has a history with Drill, Adam Ant, JackieOnAssid, and Diz Watson. Marco has a history with Siouxsie & The Banshees, Adam Ant / Adam & The Ants, Rema-Rema, and Sinead O'Connor.

Their 'Jackie Says' EP (Damaged Goods) is scheduled for an August 14th release . It will include the tracks 'Jackie Says', 'Up All Nighter', 'Needle In The Camel's Eye' and 'If You Talk Like That'.

Interview

Babble & Beat - How / why did you guys come up with the name The Wolfmen?

Chris Constantinou - Marco is really into monsters and all that sort of stuff so he came up with that.

Marco Pirroni - I’m a big fan of old Universal horror films, and it looks good in German gothic script.

Babble & Beat - Did one of you come up with the logo?

Chris Constantinou - Marco came up with the original drawing and then it was tarted up a bit.

Marco Pirroni - I did a very childish version of it on a Post-It note, and our Art Director Mark Alleyne turned it into a real logo. It’s supposed to be like the Batsign. Eventually we would like to shine it into the sky.

Chris Constantinou - I still have that Post-It note. Was pretty good I thought...

Babble & Beat - You have reworked a Brian Eno song and a Lou Reed (The Primitives) song. Any particular songs come to mind that you’d love to cover in the future?

Chris Constantinou - None as yet.

Marco Pirroni - I’d like to do the 'Telephone Call' by Kraftwerk. That sounds like a good one to do next - load of noisy guitars and harmonica... but how we could cover it with guitars is beyond me at the moment, but maybe one day.

Babble & Beat - Do you have any specific directions in mind for future music videos? Any particular themes, directors, actors, models, etc., desired?

Chris Constantinou - We have loads of ideas on this - I really like making videos. Most of the band videos I see are really unimaginative. The next one we make will definitely be in colour and not grainy like the one we just made. I wanted 'Jackie Says' to be even more grainy and fucked up but I got strange looks when I said that, as it is already really fucked up! Caroline Richards did a great job on the edit. As far as specifics for the next video goes, it depends on which song we do it for. If we make it for 'Kama Sutra' that could be great, so much imagery to play around with. We will have more control over the next video we make...

Marco Pirroni - Models are always desired!

Babble & Beat - Chris, what’s a typical day like when you and Marco are working together?

Chris Constantinou - Go up to Marco’s, wake him up, go for coffee, talk some shit and then go back to his place to write some songs or head off to a studio somewhere to mix what we have recorded. These days things are slightly different as we have interviews and stuff to do for the EP that is out on the 14th August.

Babble & Beat - There’s also a full album currently in the works, right? What’s the release date goal for that?

Chris Constantinou - Yes, we are hoping to release it early to mid part of next year.

Babble & Beat - What are your tour goals? America in the near future?

Chris Constantinou - When the album is out in the new year we will do some specific dates, and definitely in the USA, and of course Marco will be the last one to know as usual!

Marco Pirroni - We don’t know yet, (and I would be the last one to know anyway...)

Babble & Beat - We want some Wolfmen stuff! When will there be merchandise available? Will it be just t-shirts or will there be some unique items too?

Chris Constantinou - Yes, loads of unique items!

Marco Pirroni - We are planning t-shirts and eventually a whole line of pointless money-making stuff like toys and air fresheners.

Babble & Beat - Toys and air fresheners?! Smart and exciting! I better start saving cash now.

Any chance of Adam Ant making a guest appearance on a future song by The Wolfmen? If so, have you asked him yet?

Marco Pirroni - No, but he may ask us...

Babble & Beat -I hope he does!

Chris Constantinou - That would be great and no we haven’t asked him yet.

Juicy Tidbits Section

This is where we ask personal questions for the fans. Yeah, they're often stupid questions. We like reading the answers though!

Babble & Beat - Blonde, Brunette, or Redhead?

Marco Pirroni - Jet black please but anything really except mousey.

Chris Constantinou - Blonde please.

Babble & Beat - Do you collect anything? Any hobbies?

Marco Pirroni - In the '80s I used to collect fashion models, but these days I’m reduced to collecting books of matches from restaurants, but I don’t keep them...

Chris Constantinou - I collect swords and I like reading, no time for hobbies as such... I love my VW type 3 1968 fastback automatic / cobalt blue. She is called Ella - do you want to see a picture of her?

Babble & Beat - We'd love to see a picture of your VW!

Here's Gorgeous! Click on image to enlarge.

Chris, Can you tell us something we probably don’t already know about Marco?

Chris Constantinou - He plays the banjo to the models when they come over. They love it!

Babble & Beat - I would have never guessed the banjo. Cool.

Many will be interested to know that Chris Hughes is producing several of your tracks.

Chris Hughes, aka Merrick, was a member of Adam & the Ants and Tears for Fears. Some of the other artists he has worked with are: Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Howard Jones, Peter Gabriel, and Paul Young.

Can you tell us something we probably don’t already know about Chris Hughes?

Chris Constantinou - That he is a great mathematician and designs all sorts of weird and wonderful computer programs.

Marco Pirroni - He seems to know everybody who is important in the music biz. Don’t ask me how...

In Closing

A huge thanks to Ian Peel, Chris Constantinou, and Marco Pirroni for this interview! We greatly appreciate it! Make sure to check out some of The Wolfmen music clips through their MySpace site. We love everything we have heard so far! - Stacy

Links:
Official site
Official MySpace - music clips!