Max McElligott has had a pretty colourful life. His mum’s a symphony violinist; his old man’s a historian – a career which saw young Max move from Hull to Ann Arbor, outside Detroit in the United States, to St Andrew in Scotland, where the kilted boy joined a pipe band. It was the maternal influence that invoked the love of grandeur in music, though his upbringing exposed him to everything from David Bowie and Talking Heads to Senegalese folk, Irish rebel songs and jazz, inspiring him a desire to become a multi-instrumentalist.
From the tried and true musician’s cornerstone – the highschool rock band – he became proficient on guitar, bass, piano and keyboards, glockenspiel and assorted other instruments; he attended University in London, where his thesis explored the question “Is the Notion of Romanticism a Western Construct?”; he did his share of shitkicking rent-payers – dishpig and oat-picker – while contemplating becoming a spy for the Foreign Office and eventually worked up the courage to explore music on his own.
Incredibly, it took almost no time before he was travelling the world — “I think it was kind of weird because we went to Australia and then we went to New York and LA on the way back,” he says, “and we still hadn’t even gone across to France or Germany at that point. It was the wrong way round almost, but it was great to get down [to Australia] early…” — playing landmark music festivals and heading into the studio with Dave Fridmann [producer of MGMT’s Time To Pretend] to lay down what would become Suego Faults, Max’s debut album under the moniker Wolf Gang. A whirlwind ride in anyone’s language: McElligott is only 24 years old. Tonight, he’s in the UK. “I’m in London at the moment,” he concurs. “On a rooftop, actually. Having a gin and tonic.”
I get the impression that when you started working on your own solo material you were unsure as to whether you should pursue it at all – as though you weren’t convinced it was good enough. Yet, almost immediately you had management interested and offers on the table.
It all happened very quickly – I was studying a degree in London and I could see loads of people around me lugging acoustic guitars and playing little gigs here and there and I thought, ‘Fuck it, I’ll give it a go and see what happens.’ I was by no means banking on a career in music so it’s nice that things picked up really quickly and worked out. I’m just sort of enjoying it while I can really.
It’s refreshing to hear an artist say, ‘It really happened so quickly.’ Often when a band or artist breaks they have been slogging away at it for years before they had any real breakthrough.
I know. I kind of feel like the young pretender – like some sort of imposter, really – because I feel as though I should have done like them, slogging my guts out for ten years on the circuit. And it suppose it was a short period of time, but it was also very intense and I was working very, very hard at it. I guess it was a year before I got my deal and started doing it [music] professionally. It was, yeah, it was quite fast.
There’s a phenomena of people our age who feel one day they’ll get a tap on the shoulder and someone will say, ‘We’re onto you. You’re an imposter! How did you get here?!
[laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s so true. I was speaking to my friend – actually I was in Paris, we played a festival in Paris and I met up with an old friend who I’d studied with in London – and I guess he’s about 24. Anyway, he’s writing for The New York Times, which is obviously like an amazing kind of thing, and I said, ‘Fuck, that’s great!’ and he said, ‘Yeah, but I’m just waiting for them to discover that I’m actually not that good – I don’t really know how I blagged it, but I have.’ I dunno, maybe more people feel that way, more than they let on.
I believe you might be right there. Frequently, I speak to older people in the industry who I am inspired by and it’s nice to hear them admit that there were bizarre moments of pure synchronicity that helped them along. Is that something that you can relate to?
Absolutely, and I think most people can. I think there’s a very small handful of people in this world who have a plan at the age 14 and ruthlessly pursue it until they get there, smash it and do really well. I think mostly you’re in the right place at the right time or you meet someone and they introduce you to someone else, and before you know it you’re on your way and you’ve got a career on the go. I kind of feel like that happened to me: I had the luck of the Irish and was in the right place at the right time. A lot of fate involved, I think.
Reading previous interviews you’ve done I kept getting snagged on the word ‘perfectionist’. It’s frustrating to me that after a lifetime of being told to ‘just do your best’ when an adult artist is putting together a work that will bear their name all of sudden ‘perfectionist’ seems a derogatory way of saying someone is ‘doing their best.’
I know, I find that kind of amusing; I guess they need to call you something, don’t they? A perfectionist, I dunno what that means ’cause like you say, if you’re going to put your name to it, you want to do your best. What would they say otherwise? ‘It was really sloppy. He didn’t try hard enough.’ It’s a no brainer, of course. Everyone who does an album – anyone who creates, full stop – is a perfectionist surely. As to how perfect it ends up looking or sounding, of course that will be subject to someone else’s opinion, but what they [the artist] does is to the best of their ability, surely.
And of course, as an artist, if there wasn’t a deadline it would never be finished. I know with this record you had nearly finished and then didn’t feel it so wiped the slate clean and started again. Were you as happy as you could be with the finished product?
Yeah! Definitely. I was really happy with it. For me to have done the record with Dave Fridmann, who I love and think is just amazing, on my first [album] is just…I’m actually still amazed that I got to it. It was such a good break for me and I’m really happy with it. I think there’s a point where you can look back and go, ‘It’s ready. For where I am in my life right now, it’s good enough. It’s ready to be shared.’
As you wrote and recorded the album yourself, did you find any challenges in having your band come in and realise those songs in a live group setting?
That was sort of a process as well. It took a while and I was playing with various people and I was always really scared of just having a band that were like session musicians; who just play their parts, turn up for the [sound] check and leave at the end of the day. It took me a while to find guys who I know are really into the music and they really care about it, almost as much as me. They give me so much advice on what their opinion is on different things; there’s a real band feeling on the live side of things. I think that’s also why it took me a while to even come out with the album, just the making sure that there was a live show that could actually do the album justice and almost sound better than the recording. I guess I was a perfectionist, in that quote perfectionist [laughs], but I’m really happy with where I’m at with it.
Well, the album’s out here now. And it looks like you’ve been having a good time making some pretty cool film clips too. How are the concepts for the shoots worked up?
Sometimes I’ll have a vague idea so I’ll pass that round and see what other people think. Recently, it’s just been working with producers who come up with an idea and we sit down and have a beer and chat about it. And together we finess the points. I always find it a lot of fun, the videos, and try to get involved where I can.
It’s a different world, isn’t it? Now, I think an artist can be involved in every aspect of their music; the video, the clothes, blah blah blah whereas previously it was, ‘You just do the songs. We’ll work the rest out.’
I think the climate’s totally changed now – although I think that stuff does still go on; stuff that’s completely put together by other people. I mean there are loads of artists out there who don’t even write the songs on their album; that’s the ugly side of pop music, I think. But I was really lucky that my label, Atlantic, are really relaxed and laidback. It was nothing like the horror stories of the men in suits telling you what to do to turn the best profit. They were all young guys, creative people who encouraged me to be involved on every level. It was cool.
I’m interested in a quote from you: ‘Once the older generation who run the music industry today and the young people go for a pint, share some information and understand where each is coming from, the industry will become a little more stable and the world will be saved.’ In my experience, the older generation have been very generous with pointing out their mistakes with a view to having me learn something about preparation.
I think they’re finding it hard to adapt, a lot of these older people who were there in the 80s and the 90s when the music industry was kind of glamourous and making loads of money. I think they’re finding it hard to think on their feet and change; which is necessary for major labels. For example, I wish that you and I could be talking three or four months ago when the album came out in London because I feel like it should just come out at the same time, all across the world. If it’s on the internet and people want to hear it, I mean, no one in Australia is really going to wait three or four months when the songs are available in another part of the world. They’ll just download it illegally. So for me, there needs to be that shift now where an album would just be released stimultaneously worldwide. That’s seems like a no brainer to me but you still struggle to make that happen. But like you say, they are admitting to their flaws. Noone’s really sure where [the music industry’s] going. I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.
– Melanie Lewis
