Stereophonics – Interview

Stereophonics’ story isn’t as simple as it seems. Kelly and Richard were born a couple of yards from each other; Stuart arrived a few years earlier. They all grew up under the influences of their older siblings, record collections that were full of Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Marley.

Kelly Jones became the singer/songwriter and began playing guitar. Stuart had sung in local bands before finally joining Stereophonics. Richard took up the bass because everyone else had guitars. Kelly got him in the band because he was the ‘coolest fucker in the village.’

Richard called me in New York early one morning from his perch in England. The night before had been long, as they celebrated their winnings at the Kerrang! Magazine awards, which honored them with awards for Best British Band and Best Album. One on one, I had a chance to talk with the ‘coolest fucker in the village’ and at that time the coolest fucker in Britain!

How’s everything?

Good. And yourself?

Great.

We had a bit of a heavy night last night. We were at the Kerrang! Magazine awards and we managed to get two awards from them.

I know! Best British Band, right?

Yes, and Best British Album.

Weren’t you nominated for a bunch of awards?

Yes. We were up for six, which is very flattering, especially when you look at all the bands that were nominated with us, like Marilyn Manson and Skunk Anansie. It was very good.

One of the nominations was for Best Band In The World, right?

I think [Marilyn] Manson won that one.

Does it blow you away that you were nominated?

Yeah, it is really good because you are nominated by the readers of the magazine. It’s nice to think that people are thinking about us.

Did you celebrate your victories?

We did, yeah. (laughs) Quite a bit.

How do you keep your ego from blowing out of control when you get nominated for things like Best Band In The World?

It’s not too bad. The three of us are really good friends, and if we see each other getting a bit big headed then we tend to knock each other back down. But that really hasn’t happened yet. We are pretty levelheaded people and we know where we come from.

When did you first start playing?

When I was fourteen. And about two to three years later Kelly and Stuart’s bass player went on holiday and they drafted me. I’ve been with them ever since. We’ve been together for ten or eleven years.

So they were already gigging when you joined them?

Yes. They had been another band since they were fourteen.

Had you played live before you joined the band?

No. Never. The first gig I did with them was a charity show at a local sports center.

Were you good?

It was a good night. I was a bit nervous, but I got the bug then and never stopped playing.

Were you amazed that so many people were singing your praises after your first album, Word Gets Around?

Yes. It was really good. We did the album we wanted to make and we were blown away with the amount of albums we sold. The first album just went platinum in Britain.

And your last album, Performance and Cocktails, went number one in Britain, right?

Yeah, it just went number one in only four weeks. It went double platinum now. There are not a lot of bands around at the moment and we are the most popular in Britain right now, which is very flattering.

I like how inside the cd with the lyrics you actually date the songs from when they were written. Some of them are quite old. How does your songwriting process work?

It is never a set way. Kelly does all the lyrics and a majority of the melodies because he is a singer. When we have time during sound check or in the studio he shows us a couple of ideas that he has and we jam them out. We play them a couple times a night and see what the audience thinks, but there is a touch of all of us in there. We all trust each other’s judgment. Whatever Kelly writes is always pretty good.

I was curious about a few songs and wanted to get a glimpse of what was behind them. “Roll Up And Shine”.

That was about the night we spent in a club in New York called the Shine Club. It was just a really bizarre night and I can remember Kelly saying, ‘I’ve got to write a song about this.’

“Half The Lies You Tell Ain’t True”.

That was a very fast one. The first time we played that one we were in a festival in France. But the song is basically about people who feed you bullshit and try to top anything you got. Like say you’ve got an elephant in your backyard, well that person would have a box to put it in. It’s like half the lies he tells ain’t true.

“She Takes Her Clothes Off”.

That was a very old song, like seven years old. It used to be a punk song. It used to be really fast and we just played around with it different ways, and when we started doing radio sessions over here we decided to do that and it worked better as an acoustic song. We thought it was going to go on the first album and we used it for a B-side for the first single, and everyone kept asking us when we were going to put it on an album so we put it on the second album. It was really good because it breaks up the second half of the album.

My favorite song by far is “I Wouldn’t Believe Your Radio”. What is that song about?

It is on the same lines as “Half The Lies”. It’s about people just trying to better you. Kelly had made up this story about a man and a woman split or divorced and the woman takes everything, the house and the car, and you end up paying for it for the rest of your life. It’s a combination of like “Half The Lies” and about the man and woman.

How do you think the two albums compare to each other?

I think the second is more mature. We wrote a lot of the songs for the first album to get noticed by a record company and managers. But once you do the first album and play that, you can find your own way of doing things because people don’t expect you to do those things again. We’ve slowed down because Kelly is writing a lot more acoustic material.

Do you have any plans for taking over America?

Well we’d love to. It won’t happen overnight. When we came over there last year we did a month’s tour in all the shit holes. We went from New York to LA and everywhere in between. And it was a big waste of money because it didn’t get us anywhere. It didn’t get us into any radio stations and our record company wasn’t that well set up. They didn’t know how to market us either. They tried all of these different angles but it didn’t work.

What current bands do you listen to?

Most of them are American. I really like Stone Temple Pilots, the Tragically Hip, Beck, and the Smashing Pumpkins. We listen to everything as well. Kelly is really influenced by Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan. And he really likes all the old soul singers, like Otis Redding and Sam Cooke.

Who did you grow up listening to?

It was very varied because I had three older brothers and a sister. My oldest brother is thirty-seven and he listened to everything from the Specials to Bad Manners. My sister listened to Bob Marley and all the old hippie stuff. My other brother was into like Genesis and Phil Collins. And then the brother closest to me, he is only four years older than me, listened to a lot of punk.

What can we expect from Stereophonics and for the year 2000 and do you have plans to ring in the new millennium?

We were just talking about this a few hours ago. We’ve had a few offers. We don’t know yet, but we might rent an old manor house and invite a few friends and family down there and a have a big party.

+ charlie craine