Hot Press meets Kelly Jones from Stereophonics

I was asked to be a judge on The Voice,” reveals Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones in his lilting Welsh accent. “I had a meeting with a woman from the BBC. When she asked me for the second meeting I knew she was serious, so I backed out of that pretty quick.”

Most professional rock musicians tend to regard shows such as The Voice or The X Factor with disdain, but, obviously having chilled out in recent years, the 38-year-old singer and former hell-raiser is relatively sanguine about televised karaoke.
“I thought it might have been a laugh going down there with Tom Jones every week,” he shrugs. “I’m the same as most people, I imagine – Saturday night, you’re in the house if you’re not going out, and you’re with family or whatever, it’s on the telly, and it’s always a laugh. I take it
pretty lightly.”
Having said that, he does have a problem with the show’s misleading premise that participants can become major stars overnight.
“They lead these kids on,” he says. “You can’t get something that big that quick, you have to put the ground work in. We were working clubs at the age of 12, 13, 14, travelling around in the backs of vans, but these kids have been led to believe that if you go on telly for six weeks you become this thing. That isn’t the reality. It’s about doing the work.”
Although it’s been four years since the last Stereophonics album, 2009’s Keep Calm & Carry On (which came hot on the Cuban heels of their million-selling ‘Best Of’ compilation A Decade In The Sun), Jones and his three cohorts – guitarist Adam Zindani, bassist Richard Jones and drummer Jamie Morrison – haven’t been resting on their laurels in recent times. We’re meeting in the band’s west London rehearsal rooms to discuss their forthcoming eighth studio album, Graffiti On The Train.
Perhaps Jones spruced the place up in anticipation of Hot Press’ arrival, but it seems remarkably clean and tidy for a rock ‘n’ roll den. Anonymously situated behind an unmarked white door on a quiet suburban street near Shepherd’s Bush, it’s a large, comfortable space with big leather couches, battered beanbags, various instruments, and an expensive-looking fridge in the corner of the listening lounge.
There are some doorstop Taschen tomes and a volume of Bukowski’s poetry on the coffee table. Amongst various tasteful photographs, artworks and gold discs, there’s a massive framed cinema poster of Steve McQueen’s Bullitt on one wall, and a few crayoned drawings by Jones’ two daughters (aged six and eight) proudly displayed on a shelf. His family home is nearby and the girls often
drop in.
“They come around here and they mess about,” he explains. “They’re great, you know, they give you a sense of purpose. Then when you stop, you completely stop, and then it’s their time, you know. I love that contrast.”
Much of Graffiti was written and recorded in the compact studio at the back of the soundproofed house. Having made the decision to quit Universal Records when their contract was up, the band bought and modified the place before the end of their last tour in order to try a different approach to their work.
“We’d been on tour for the greatest hits album and then we did one for Keep Calm,” he recalls. “We spent about three years on and off the road and we finished up in South America. I think the last gig was in Peru. It wasn’t through fatigue or tiredness or anything; it was just a case of the radio had changed a lot, the record company situation had changed a lot, and we just
decided to find our own place and kind of stop
for a minute.”
Having spent most of their lengthy career constantly toiling on the album/tour treadmill, it was a first for Stereophonics.
“We’d never stopped before,” he reflects. “You’re always conscious about keeping the profile of the band at a certain place, and you have a bit of nerves about stopping in case it drops. I think after the greatest hits was received so well it gave us confidence to stop, and it felt like the catalogue is always going to be there.
“It was quite nice making a record that wasn’t confined to six weeks recording, and then three weeks mixing, and then going back on the road. It was nice just coming in, having some patience, doing a part of a track, going away, and then listening to it again in a few months. We were working every day, so we ended up recording about 40 songs – not just 40 shit ideas – over the course of a year-and-a-half.”
Of course, there’s always the danger of procrastinating forever when there’s no studio clock expensively ticking or record label screaming for product. Just look at My Bloody Valentine...
“Yeah, it happens,” he laughs. “22 years and three albums! The Stone Roses are another example, but I think it was different for us because we had the drive and the excitement of building this place, and putting all our gear in here. We had this idea for the script, and we decided to just go to work every day. If you have a little bit of discipline, it’s amazing what you can achieve.
“Like, we stopped the clutter of travel, the clutter of being on tour, the constant fucking running around. It’s amazing what comes into your head when you empty your head. In hindsight, I think that’s the best thing we’ve ever done because we made a very interesting record by just feeling free. It almost felt like making a debut record without thinking about any record company, without thinking about any pluggers or anything like that. Just coming to work to do music.”
Although not quite a concept album, the 10 tracks on Graffiti – which was produced by Jones and Jim Lowe, and will be released on their own Stylus Records – are all loosely interlinked. Based on a screenplay Jones had penned about two friends who flee the country after a tragic train accident, it’s certainly not your archetypal Stereophonics offering.
“Yeah, I was writing a script at the same time as I was writing the album, and they both kinda blurred into each other, so the music is sort of a soundtrack for the film. Hopefully the film can be put into production over the next couple of years. It’s a slow process, but it was nice thinking outside the box and writing a record in a new way.”
In a recent interview, Nick Cave said that the difference between writing songs and screenplays is that screenplays are quite easy and songs are quite difficult. Would you agree?
“I suppose, yeah,” he muses. “In a screenplay, you have a long time to express one idea. With a song, you have to get it done in three-and-a-half minutes – and I guess the overdubs are the subplots, in a way.”
The Graffiti screenplay is now into its third draft.
“I’d like it to become a film, but these things take time with the financing and all of that,” he avers. “I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve got about four different ideas on shelves in the house, but with this one, it was always very important that the album stood on its own without any story. For people who bought it in Tesco and the man in the Mondeo who buys his pack of fags and puts his CD on, it works – that’s what it needs to do on its own.”
He mentions that one of the tracks – a smolderingly seductive duet called ‘Take Me’ – was inspired by Cave’s Murder Ballads. He sings it with Jakki Healy, the County Clare-born mother of
his children.
“Yeah, my missus popped in here one night and wound up singing on the album,” he smiles. “We were gonna get Chrissie Hynde to do it or somebody because we met a couple of people on the way. I loved the Murder Ballads album about ten years ago. I was listening to it a lot, and I lost it, but I always remember the vibe of it. So I wrote ‘Take Me’ on the piano and said, ‘Oh, it would be fucking cool if I get a girl’s voice in, a kinda weird bittersweet thing’.
“Jakki came home from work and she popped in here for a cuppa. And she did a degree in singing, she works in the music industry but behind the scenes, she books talent on TV shows. I said, ‘Do us a favour, sing this demo for me,’ and she went in there and sang it. Me and Jim listened back to it and were like, ‘Hey, that was pretty good, eh?’ So we just kept it, never redid it. It was simple as that, really.”
Quite filmic sounding, and with less of their trademark crunchy guitars, Graffiti also finds them collaborating with David Arnold, who arranged the strings on several tracks.
“We’d done some arrangements on the keyboards and stuff, you know, digital stuff, and they sounded fucking great,” he enthuses. “But then my publisher said he knows David Arnold and would we like to meet him because maybe we could do it for real. Next thing, we were in a studio with 36 people he’d handpicked and 90% of them had worked on every Bond film since Dr. No! So it was fucking mad, a great experience. He’s a good guy.”
As Jones sees it, when it comes to Stereophonics, being a good guy is just as important as having musical talent and ability.
“What’s good about our band is I genuinely 100% believe that we’re all mates before the music. The music is secondary to the friendship and, if we have anybody new coming in, the ability is almost 50% of the question and the other 50% is whether we can live with these people and have a laugh with them.
“We haven’t been as lucky as bands like U2 or The Beatles, who keep the same line-up forever, unfortunately, but the lines-ups that we have had have always begun with a friendship. It’s never been like an advert in the paper, we need this guy to be able to do this. It always has to start from a bunch of blokes travelling around the world on the bus, and, by the way, we’ve got a gig tonight. You know, it’s that way round.”
Although Stuart Cable had departed Stereophonics before it happened, Jones still regards the 2010 death of their former drummer from a drink and drug overdose as the lowest point in their history.
“The band has been through a lot, but the worst moment personally was Stuart passing away. He was our best mate. You know, unfortunately these tragic accidents happen from time to time, as we all know, and these things happen in people’s lives, but that was still the worst moment I would say.”
How about the best?
“That we are still making music that’s relevant,” he asserts. “Looking out at the crowd at the shows we did before Christmas, there were 13-year-old, 14-year-old kids in the front row who weren’t even born for our first album. When a band is still making music, and recycling the next generation of people, that to me is the goal and that’s the best moment. If success is doing something you love, then we are successful.”
Still hungry, and with no shortage of grand plans for Stereophonics, Jones’s main ambition is simply to continue being successful for as long as possible.
“I think this project will take us through a couple of years, and hopefully we’ll get the film off the ground and start mixing all the music and film ideas together. Making bigger projects that keep us having a buzz out of it and keeps it exciting. That’s the main thing, really, just to keep doing something that surprises us. If we’re surprising ourselves then people will be interested.
“If we’re just becoming complacent, it’ll soon all be over,” he continues. “You can’t just release an eighth album. It has to be an eighth album people want. People have already got Stereophonics records on their shelf. If this isn’t doing anything special, they’re not gonna buy it. I think we’ve done something very different here, and that was our hope.”

You can watch a video interview with Kelly on hotpress.com.