RICH JONES, bassist with touring Welsh rockers STEREOPHONICS, gets down to earth with DAN WATT, revealing how the band rediscovered their love of the heavier side of rock & roll.

In Australia it’s easy to forget how stratospheric the Stereophonics success has been. This is because in Australia they’re still considered alternative, but in the UK they’ve had no less than five number ones. Yet after my conversation with bass player and founding member of the Welsh three piece, Rich Jones, I was no more convinced of their mega-stardom because my chat with him felt more like a chat in the pub with a guy with a funny accent, than one of the higher profile interviews in my career.

The interview starts off discussing Stereophonics’ most recent gig in London’s Roundhouse where Rolling Stones guitarist, Ronnie Wood, got up on stage to perform a few tracks totally unprompted by the band or a greater other. Rich casually but respectfully sums up the encounter: “You know it was really great. Ronnie is a good friend of ours and always tells us how much he likes our music.”

Uniquely, the Stereophonics sit atop the musical tree wielding both uber commercial success and also the utmost artistic integrity. Richard explains how they achieved this most enviable tenure: “Essentially our sound comes from a melting pot of ideas. I mean, we like country, The Beatles, punk; I really like metal and I think like never before on Pull The Pin in tracks like Bank Holiday Monday you can here those harder edged influences coming through.

“I mean, on that song we were really trying to channel influences from the early punk scene like The Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks and I think we do that.” Rich then takes this a little further describing how the harder edge displayed on Pull The Pin has been embraced by an audience; the same audiences that fell in love with the band after their sublime country tinged mega-hit Dakota: “You know on this last [European] tour the crowd have really been lapping up the harder edged stuff like Bank [Holiday Monday] and other harder tracks from the new album. Its been great for the way the dynamic has changed where not two years ago they were really getting into the poppy stuff and now to have the same crowds digging the new stuff is just great.”

The confidence to embrace and exhibit the band’s harder-edged influences on Pull The Pin came from an unexpected or less regular origin for the album. It didn’t come from months of band meetings or brain-storming sessions with producers; it came from a series of fairly relaxed rehearsals originally aimed at getting Rich, Kelly (vocals & guitar) and Javier (drums) back into performance mode after the break.

As well as creating the aforementioned situation, the break led to Stereophonics deciding that when they returned they would take a somewhat retrospective approach to the contents of their live show – mainly in order to avoid any self indulgence in the choice of songs for their special show at London’s Roundhouse. For the contents of the set list, the band put their entire back catalogue up on the Stereophonics’ website and gave fans the opportunity to choose the contents of their set with each participant ranking their top 20 favourite songs. Rich discloses that, thankfully, the band received no alarms and no surprises from the fan’s selections – “it was pretty much exactly what we would’ve chosen,” he discloses. 

During the aforementioned break the band put out a live DVD that was featured footage from their last Australian tour. I ask Rich why they like Australian audiences so much: “We’ve loved it every time we’ve come to Australia, the experience has always been really cool. We’ve played some good shows down there.”

On this, and just before finishing our conversation, I had to know if they liked the fact in Australia that they were not as well known here as in the UK? Rich answers in a quite measured tone: “It is frustrating that you can’t bring the same scale show that we do in the UK, but at the same time it’s really cool how we get to play all these different types of venues in countries like Australia.”

Catch STEREOPHONICS at The Arena on Friday May 9, supported by British India. PULL THE PIN is out now on V2.

Comments (2)

2. Written by pakito el chokolatero, on 02-07-2008 01:50 Tomorrow night (02/july/0Stereophonics will play in Barcelona (unique gig in Spain)    Tickets still available for only 27 €.

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