No.1 for Interviews - The Stereophonics
The Stereophonics

Led by the small but perfectly formed Kelly Jones, the Welsh rockers found success in 1998 with their album Performance and Cocktails. They continue to live the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle...

The Welsh rock band that is The Stereophonics came together in 1992 and went on to be a firm favourite on the UK music scene. In 1998, they found critical and public acclaim with album Performance and Cocktails and singles ‘The Bartender and the Thief’, ‘Just Looking’ and ‘Pick a Part That’s New’.

Since then they have gone on to play sell-out gigs and, with a few line-up changes along the way, have continued to be a huge success. Lead singer Kelly Jones continues to be just as well known for his gravely singing voice as his small stature and attachment to leather jackets (he owns 20 in total)

Here he talks to IN:DEMAND’s Romeo about the band’s return to Cardiff Castle, where they played one of their most famous gigs in 1998, and their new album, Keep Calm and Carry On.

You recently played at Cardiff Castle. That sounded like an amazing gig…
Yeah we hadn’t played at the castle for 10 years. It was a bit of a wet and wild day but the crowd seemed to rejoice in the terrible weather and have a good time anyway.

What made you want to go back to the castle?
We had just been doing a series of launch gigs to preview some of the songs off the new record. We did a gig in a small club in Camden and had just been trying to do different things in the build up to the release. We have played at the CIA venue in Cardiff 13 times and just wanted to try and do something a bit more special for people.

Ten thousand tickets sold out in 40 minutes…
Yeah it was ridiculous. We sold them for the same price as we did in 1998 so it was £12.50 for a ticket. It wasn’t a money-making gig. We tried to do it for free and get the lager down to the same price as 1998 as well! We did manage to get Goldie Lookin’ Chain on before us so it was a really good laugh.

On the subject of beer, did someone not bring you homemade beer to the gig as well?
That was the day before. Before sound check we went for a little wander around Cardiff. We went to the music shop where we bought our first guitars and went in the pubs we used to frequent. We actually went to this coffee shop because
we didn’t want to drink. We walked in there and said, “What have you got to drink?” The guy said, “We’ve got coffee and we’ve got Welsh lager.” So we went for the Welsh lager and on it went from there really. We went to a place called Madame Fromage, which is a cheese café. We tried to be really inconspicuous and not go into any pubs but just ended up drinking loads of homemade Welsh lager.

What was the thinking behind the ‘not going to drink’ thing?
It was the day before the gig and the sound check was at six o’clock. When you play a gig like that you see, you sound check the day before because you can’t do it on the day. We thought if we go and have a big bender and then go on stage at four in the afternoon the next day, that’s just going to be a shambles. It didn’t happen anyway because we ended up drinking.

I bet when you woke up that day you never thought you’d be drinking homemade lager and sampling fromage…
And getting heckled by some weird hairdressers across the street as well.

What happened there?
She didn’t believe that we were actually in a band. She just thought that we were stupid blokes in black jackets. She was like, “What are you wearing leather jackets for?” We told her we were artexers and she came back 10 minutes later with her friend saying, “They’re architects!” We had been promoted within about 10 minutes with a pay rise of 500 per cent.

Did you start quizzing her back, ‘Why are you cutting people’s hair?’
We did but she won about 6-3 in the end. She was pretty good.

You are also touring this year and you will be back in Scotland, at the SECC in Glasgow on 3rd March. What’s in store for that gig?
We’re going to be doing some of the tracks off the new record and also the tracks from before. We have got our mad lighting engineer working out a fabulous new show for us, hopefully. Every tour we have done in the arenas we try to do something we haven’t done before and so we are really looking forward
to it.

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