'Phonics Boom

Every few years an act emerges who can justifiably lay claim to being a people s band . They haven t been parachuted into position on the whim of a coterie of London-based media luvvies but earned their stripes through a combination of hard work, determination and possessing a bunch of songs that, well, lots of people actually like.
Stereophonics are immensely affable and articulate people but there s a steely resilience and pride to their demeanour which suggests that they ve put plenty of themselves into the band in the past five years and woe betide anyone who belittles their achievements. And those achievements are considerable.
Signed to the fledgling V2 label just prior to playing the In The City industry beano in Dublin in the autumn of 1996, Stereophonics opted for what some might see as a hopelessly old-fashioned gameplan consisting of endless touring throughout every corner and crevice of Britain.
This paid off with their debut album Word Gets Around eventually topping the million mark. Last summer they played to 10,000 people in Cardiff Castle, the gig going under the banner Cwmaman Feel The Noize in tribute to their hometown in South Wales. This summer the stakes have been upped considerably, with the band not only featuring in a prominent position on the Robbie Williams bill at Slane but also headlining their own show in Swansea s Morfa Stadium last weekend, where close on 50,000 fans turned out.
Apparently Robbie wanted Prince to support him in Slane, says diminutive singer Kelly Jones, but had to settle for us instead. Still, there s not much in height between myself and Prince so hopefully Robbie won t be too disappointed. I don t mind playing below people on a festival bill an audience is an audience no matter how many of them there are but I have to admit that the Swansea gig set the nerves rattling. A while back we went to a Leeds/Man Utd game and when the attendance was announced as 40,000 we just looked around and went Nah, this amount of people couldn t fuckin pay to see us! But they had, he adds with a smile.
Although Word Gets Around and the follow-up Performance And Cocktails undeniably contain more than their fair share of robust, smartly written and finely observed songs, in a live setting Jones, drummer Stuart Cable and bassist Richard Jones (it s a Welsh thing, obviously) display the influence Heavy Metal had on their formative years (Kelly and Stuart cite AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and, significantly, Slade among their chief inspirations). This certainly comes in handy when attempting to win over an audience, but is hardly likely to impress the style slaves of the London music media. Yet Stereophonics kicked off last year with a headlining slot on NME s Bratbus tour, a jaunt which also included Asian Dub Foundation, the audience and the late, unlamented Tiger.
It was a mutual thing, explains Kelly. Touring in January is never that hectic, so it suited us to start the year the way we intended to continue. In that way the NME aided us and we aided them. It went both ways. They knew we d sell the tour and we only agreed to do it on condition that there were none of their backdrops onstage when we were playing. The whole thing gave us a nice momentum at a traditionally slack time of the year.
Throughout their rise, Stereophonics have certainly received plenty of positive coverage from the UK weeklies, but they don t appear in the least concerned about any possible some would say inevitable backlash.
The media didn t create what we have, chips in Stuart. We were just touring constantly, doing it ourselves, building up bit by bit. They like to create a buzz about bands themselves, but then they can take it away just as quickly and the bands are usually fucked. It s happened to so many people in the past. Not to us though.
We never even bought the NME or Melody Maker until we were signed, Kelly continues. When all that Britpop thing was going on we were doing our own thing and sitting at home listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Eagles. We were so unfashionable we almost became fashionable by accident.
The notion of a band as a group of outsiders joined in a common cause is more than mere romantic myth. All the great bands have in their own way been gangs and Stereophonics are certainly no exception. In fact, given the prejudices which exist in the music business towards bands from what are perceived as unfashionable locations, such an attitude is essential to even get within range of the starting blocks.
In the past few years with the way the Manics, Catatonia, Super Furry Animals and ourselves have come through there s been all this talk about the Welsh scene , says Kelly. It s a bit misleading in a way because although I m intensely proud of being Welsh, as are those other bands, I think it s more to do with people living in some remote place, remote from London anyway, where nobody was telling them what to listen to so they just ended up sounding like themselves. It makes it all the better when you do something and the same goes for bands from Scotland, Ireland, the North of England, wherever.
So if you ve got something to fight against it makes you more focused as a band?
Exactly, he agrees. We worked our arses off and felt that we were the best band in our area, but thought that if we went to London we d be blown off the stage. So when we did go up to check these bands out, all that Camden Town stuff, we realised they were all fuckin shit. What did we have to worry about? To be honest we wouldn t have minded being scared by another band cos that would ve spurred us on even more, but there was no fucker about. We didn t want to be the next Blur or Oasis, everybody in Britain was at that and there was already one of each so why bother? By the time we went to London we were ourselves and had a very good idea what we wanted.
By the time Kelly, Stuart and Richard began courting record companies they were, by their own admission, fully formed. Even so, there have been innumerable horror stories down the years of promising bands who ve attained the grail of the deal only to find themselves embroiled in labyrinthine shenanigans which made them wonder if they wouldn t have been better off playing local pubs for fun. Perhaps it was down to the outsiders capacity to sniff out potentially dodgy liaisons, but when Stereophonics finally signed with the new Virgin label V2 (one of whose mainmen is Ronnie Gurr, the Hearts-supporting A&R man who d previously signed The Blue Nile, Danny Wilson, Microdisney, Something Happens! and ,er, In Tua Nua to Virgin) they knew instantly that they d made the right decision for them.
We d had offers from and spoken to pretty much everyone, recalls Kelly, but none of the other companies seemed to have any real plan. One company said Here s the money, go record the album and that was pretty much it. That was the same bloke who didn t even appear to have listened to the songs properly, he went Oh, A Thousand Trees one for the eco-warriors, right? . Bye-bye!
One of the things that particularly impressed us about them was that they really wanted to make their name with us and vice versa. Fuck, they didn t even have a proper office set-up at the time but convinced us that the whole thing d be running in six months. Looking back, it was a major risk for us having turned all those other people down, but the main reason we did it was because they offered us so much priority. They did seem to have a load of other bands on short-term deals at the time which seemed a bit silly to me but fuck it, it was none of our business. They were in tune with the way we wanted to go about things.
One of the main planks in the V2 plan for Stereophonics was a heavy concentration on regional radio stations, a ploy which Ronnie Gurr had been fond of over a decade back when Something Happens! were under his wing. Basically, this involves weeks at a time visiting stations up and down the country armed with a couple of acoustic guitars and a ready supply of anecdotes, which tend to become more and more outrageous as mike fever sets in and you can barely remember what band you re in, never mind trying to recall if you re on the air in Stoke, Stockport or Stirling.
We were well up for it because we thought that was what every band did, says Stuart. We d get the train from Cardiff to Manchester or wherever, pick up a car and off we went for days at a time appearing on these shows, play a couple of songs and record a station ident or whatever. We did two years of that, on and off, and it makes a big difference the next time you bring out a single or are playing in the area. I know that some of the people in V2 did something similar when Oasis were starting, but some bands seem reluctant to do it. Yet, when you go into these stations and see, like, pictures of Boyzone, the Spice Girls and Robbie Williams on the wall, whether you like their music or not, you realise that they were prepared to put in that level of work as well.
Given their admirable work ethic, there s always the possibility that Stereophonics could find themselves in the Catch-22 situation whereby the requirements of being on the road can have a detrimental effect on their songwriting.
The songs on the debut album are pared-down, economically worded vignettes of smalltown life (it comes as no surprise to discover that Kelly Jones has studied scriptwriting and prior to the band signing had been commissioned to write a treatment by BBC Wales).
So does he feel that by being removed from the environment which spawned such fine songs as Local Boy In The Photograph , A Thousand Trees and More Life In A Tramp s Vest , he s in danger of falling prey to the curse of singing songs about hotel rooms and whatever he happens to see on CNN?
I m well aware of that trap so I don t think I ll fall into it, he laughs. In any case I didn t want to write another Word Gets Around, because you can only write so much about living in a small town and when you go away from it you realise that things you thought were unique are kinda universal. The first record is very young in the head and you can t go back to that.
The newer songs are more personal, because obviously you grow up a bit more, but they re not self-indulgent because I still try to write about myself as if I m looking in from the outside. My songs are still people-based and observational but they don t necessarily have to be about a small town. But things being seen through the eyes of someone from a small town, now that s a different thing entirely.That slant is still there.
So has effectively writing on the run led to the appearance of writer s block?
It hasn t proved to be a major problem just yet, says Kelly cautiously. In fact for the second album it worked to my advantage, funnily enough. For six months I couldn t write a fuckin thing and then it all came out in the space of about two weeks. It s the same now. I ve had five or six ideas that have been knocking around for months and I can t finish them. It s nothing to do with not having enough time. I just can t fuckin finish them!
When that six-month stoppage happened did it set off any alarm bells that there might not be any more where Word Gets Around came from?
He didn t seem that bothered, says Stuart pointing at the singer, but when he d head off after rehearsals and we d no new stuff, myself and Richard would go to the pub and think, We re fucked! It s all over! He came through, though, bless im!
With an album called Performance And Cocktails and songs nestling in the catalogue called The Last Of The Bigtime Drinkers and The Bartender And The Thief would it be fair to say that drinking plays a significant part in Stereophonics worldview?
Well, my mother thinks we re all Betty Ford material, says Kelly. When you ve finished a gig you re naturally gonna feel like having a few beers. But when you add it all up, especially considering the amount of gigs we do, it s a lot of drinking. Still, could be worse though. It could be smack, couldn t it? None of us have ever been big on drugs, cos where we come from is a big drinking environment. None of us are gullible and we re all pretty good judges of character, so we ve never fallen into that hopefully never will. I m scared shit of it to be honest.
I m partial to the odd joint though, adds Stuart. When you finish a gig you re hyped up. It s like playing a football match every night between 9 and 11. So you re sitting on the bus in the early hours after a few drinks and it s Fuck, I m still awake . It s the easiest way to send yourself to sleep. You ve gotta be careful though. I keep thinking of that whole Paul Kossoff thing you can t sleep so you take a shitload of dope, then you have to go on the powders to wake yourself up for the gig. It s a big fuckin circle. Actually, being in the studio is worse. Your sleeping patterns are shot to hell and before you know where you are you re on big cans of Red Bull and packets of Pro-Plus!
Before they take their leave to be photographed with a collection of Minis supplied by the Irish Mini Owners Association, their most recent video having used The Italian Job as its theme, the question of America has to be raised. Can Stereophonics possibly hope to emulate their astonishing level of home success?
We re looking forward to trying, says Kelly. The album s being released there in September and we re doing the old toes in the water tour. It s a strange one because the whole set-up is different, the press, the TV. It s very odd and you have to ask yourself do they even want bands from this part of the world over there? Very few bands crack it, just like very few American bands really break over here. That lot The New Radicals got a shitload of airplay, but I bet they won t sell many concert tickets. I keep thinking of Slade, they went to the States for a year, didn t do it and had lost their grip at home by the time they got back. We really can t jeopardise our home base, or Europe or Australia to the extent of ignoring them for a huge length of time.
Ah, one song is all it ll take, laughs Stuart. A Creep , Song 2 or Tubthumping will break down the door, then we ll tour the bollocks off the place! We ll be laughing! n