‘It’s very vulnerable for me. It was a moment that happened to me and now it’s out there’
KELLY ON MOVING NEW TRIBUTE TO STUART CABLE:
ON THE morning of September 15, Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones was dropping his eldest daughter at their local Tube station in Parsons Green, west London.
Ten minutes after he departed, helicopters, armed police, firefighters and ambulances descended on the station when an improvised explosive device detonated on a District Line train.
Jones, 43, has described that day as “weird, insane, surreal”.
And while the band’s latest album Scream Above The Sounds – finished almost a year ago – doesn’t directly reference that incident, it is certainly informed by recent terror attacks piercing the music world.
“Caught By The Wind was written in the aftermath of the Bataclan attack,” he says down the phone from his London home.
“That’s when things started to come into our work environment. There’s a lot of anxiety and stress in the air, people are getting constant noise from their phones and the 24/7 news cycle.”
The album, Stereophonics’ 10th studio record, is a journey through the angst in today’s world in anthemic packaging.
Nostalgia and fear are very much present, but there’s plenty of room for hope too.
The title is a line from All In One Night – an intriguing observational track which documents a young man’s night packed with party, police, a car accident and a woman giving birth.
The narrative is characteristic of the record. There’s some brash, Tom Waits-esque freestyling and it’s obvious Jones has been thinking a lot about his own upbringing.
In fact, he’d been spending a lot of time travelling back to Wales and the birth of his third daughter last year prompted thoughts of how the world had changed since he was a child.
And then there’s Before Anyone Knew Our Name, a moving tribute to the band’s original drummer, Jones’ childhood friend Stuart Cable, who died in 2010.
Cable had left the band seven years earlier, and it took a long time for Jones to pen the track. Even then he wasn’t sure about including it in the album.
“It came about very late in the album process. Me and Stuart grew up on the same street, we’ve known each other all our lives really and I first
played in a band with him when I was 12.
“He left in 2003 but we were still mates, there were no arguments or anything. He died seven years ago but he’s been on my mind every day really since then.
“I don’t know why it came to me now, I don’t know what it was, but it came out on a page and I sang in front of a piano and I recorded it and people heard it.
“They thought it was some beautiful sentiment to him and they all got a bit emotional about it.”
The result is a soulful piano ballad which recalls them forming one of Britain’s most successful bands of the past two decades from their coal-mining village of Cwmaman. Jones sings eloquently of yearning to see Cable, but struggles to translate his thoughts over the phone.
“It’s very vulnerable for me. It was a moment that happened to me and now it’s out there.
“Talking about it is a bit weird because everything I want to say is in the song,” he says slowly, adding: “But he was a brother to us and a big friend and a big laugh, a big smile and a big voice.”
The album arrives 20 years after Stereophonics’ debut release and two years on from Keep The Village Alive, which landed their sixth UK number one.
Jones regards their chart-topping track record as “not a bad” achievement but places a higher priority on attracting new fans without marginalising those who supported them from the beginning.
“This is not a greatest hits album or a greatest hits tour,” he says of arriving at their two-decade landmark.
“Our music is still being played on the radio, It’s still being bought in the shops and streamed.
“And at the front of our gigs are people who are 17 or 18
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“Me and Stuart grew up on the same street, we’ve known each other all our lives. He died seven years ago but he’s been on my mind every day...”
to others who have been from the first album.”
But he does take some notice of the charts. Quizzed on the muchtouted theory that guitar music is dead, Jones is dismissive and references sales of Liam Gallagher’s recent debut solo record.
“It’s an indication that of course guitar music is not dead,” Jones says.
“It’s about what you’re selling. if there’s something people want they will go out and buy it, it’s great.”
With a little more encouraging, Jones does reflect on the band’s 20year fame and believes they are at the peak of their performing prowess.
“To be able to pick from 20 years of material every night,” he says.
“We’ve got different kinds of styles and forms of songs and music, it’s a great position to be in.
“We’re always hopefully making music which is contemporary, I wouldn’t want to really be a band that has relied on a formula from 10 years before.”
Scream Above The Sounds was released on October 27. Stereophonics tour the UK next year.