Biography
Recorded at home on a four-track, 'Pieces of You' the new release from Wolf Gang, is a perfectly formed rough diamond.“I couldn’t care less about appealing to flippant, scenester people,” explains the man behind Wolf Gang, 22 year old Max McElligott, with cheerful intensity, “Pop’s had a bad name but it’s high time it was brought back into the fold as meaningful and cool.”
His four-piece band play regularly at under-the-radar gigs round London and he’s putting the finishing touches to an album, much of which was composed on a piano left in the house where he lives by previous owner Clive Langer, producer of Madness and Morrissey.
Something dormant awoke when Max left home to attend the London School of Economics. Not so much due to Social Anthropology lectures, as the lavish house parties he organized and the sunny days spent squiring dates down the Thames in a rowing boat. He was drawn weekly to the speakeasy glamour of Café Royale’s now defunct 1920s night, where he enjoyed swing-dancing A-list actresses into the early hours. His own parties even developed a well-deserved reputation- especially his notorious masked balls.
His musical blooming was revelatory, if less expected. A couple of years previously he and a friend put a couple of joke music videos on YouTube. They became a must-see sensation amongst their extended network of friends. When Max went to London he met people who’d seen them and encouraged him to write more music. As he did so, the penny dropped. “I just absolutely loved that period of writing and playing shows,” says Max, “I suddenly became obsessed, music took hold of me and I thought, ‘This is what I want to do now and forever’.”
That was it. Within a short time any chance of Max doing anything else disappeared. Two months before his finals, and with a possible career in the Foreign Office looming on the horizon, he dropped out. He’d found his purpose. Wolf Gang was born.
“Mick Jagger dropped out of LSE and it worked for him, so I’m taking my chances,” he comments wryly. The Rolling Stones reference is appropriate as Max hopes Wolf Gang will walk in the path of the classics. “I’ve never been part of any scene and the music I listen to is heritage records,” he explains, “It goes back to the Talking Heads, Bowie, Roxy Music, they’re definitely my influences.”
That he drops these names is apt. Like Max they’re educated artists who have a post-modern understanding of pop, a love of opulent sounds but also of pure, melodic rock energy.
As for his familial roots, Max grew up in a number of countries from America to Scotland as a result of his father’s work. In particular, great deals of his teenage years were spent in the Scottish coastal town of St. Andrews. This leads on to him describing himself as “a bit of a mongrel”, his bloodline an unlikely combination of Irish, Greek and German. The paternal side of his family have a habit of falling for exotic foreign maidens. His Irish grandfather arrived back from national service with a beautiful Greek bride and his father, a professor and expert on the Third Reich, met his German wife while uncovering Nazi secrets in the archives of Berlin and Hamburg.
His mother is a violinist so Max was exposed to classical music from an early age. “I grew up going to concerts and have a massive respect for classical music,” he says, “I love how it’s so dramatic and well structured.” The demo material Max has lined up for his debut album is casually flecked with classical music’s sonic ambition. He particularly loves the maverick genius Mozart, part of the reason behind his band’s moniker, although Wolf Gang was actually named by his sister, the fashion designer Sophie McElligott (of Bjork & McElligott).
Max learnt trumpet as a boy but had more in common with the piano, an instrument he could play instinctively since before he can remember and which he still plays onstage. The trumpet however, despite making an appearance on Wolf Gang’s debut single, was given up at 14 and, while he dabbled in school bands, Max didn’t really think much more about his own musical potential until his London epiphany years later.
Now, however, he has the bug. More than that, he can’t stop the flow of music. “My songwriting is on tap,” he laughs, “I can bash out a song in a day.” He’s working with fast rising 23 year old producer Blue May whose work with Cocknbullkid, Claire Maguire and Lykke Li remix have been stirring things up. Indeed, Wolf Gang is driven by the youth of everyone involved.“Working with so many young people is great, they have a hunger that older people in the music industry sometimes lack,” Max agrees, and the resulting music fizzes with enthusiasm, pushing aside genre boundaries and dusty notions of cool like so much rice paper. It simply revels in Max’s sprawling musical palette, scattering a trail of sonic references ranging through Supertramp, Joy Division, the aforementioned David Byrne and many more, all melded within a framework tinted by his classical knowledge.“That’s really what I’m in it for,” Max says quietly, “I’m not interested in making music that comes and goes like a fad.”