Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
WRITE A HIT RECORD? I’VE NOT TRIED IT
Stereophonics singer reveals the influences driving band’s 10 million-selling career
Kelly Jones’s band Stereophonics was made up of three childhood pals who came out of the Welsh valleys in 1992 and conquered the world. Along with Richard Jones and Stuart Cable, Kelly set out on a 10 million album-selling career.
Though drummer Cable was sacked by the group in 2003, the pals were back on good
terms and a reunion was on the cards when he died in 2010 after a drinking session.
Now on Scream Above The Sounds – Stereophonics’ remarkable 10th album – with Before Anyone Knew Our Name, Kelly presents a beautiful, heartrending memorial for his friend.
He says: “That tune just sidelined me one morning. Stuart left the band in 2003 but we were mates again by 2004. I think about him most days, but I guess that day he overwhelmed me.
“I wrote pages and pages. At first I thought it was just a cathartic thing. Then, as I was about to leave the studio, I sat at the piano. Luckily, I had the tape on.
“It was a very vulnerable thing. I was a bit nervous about putting it on the record.”
The tune, his modesty and the impassioned drive of the new album show why Kelly is one of our greatest contemporary writers. A fact echoed by no less than Bob Dylan who revealed himself as a Stereophonics fan earlier this year.
Kelly’s pal and fellow countryman Rob Brydon texted to tell him. Kelly says: “The album was complete the day I got the news – and nice news to receive from the main man really.
“I was brought up with two older brothers always playing him, so he was a big influence.”
While the new album poignantly returns to his Welsh childhood, contemporary matters are prominent too – as on Caught By The Wind, written in the aftermath of the Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris.
“You get a bit anxious,” Kelly says. “It’s so random and on your doorstep. Weirdly the songs became more celebratory, more hopeful, I guess rallying against it. I was in Parsons Green the morning of that attack – with my three daughters.”
With his own studio to work in, Kelly has earned the space to follow his own creative path.
“I always wanted to be very honest in what I write – not put a record out just for the sake of it,” says Kelly, 43. “I’ve never tried to write a radio hit, I just try to put myself outside my comfort zone and surprise myself.”
Scream Above The Sounds is out today
’I think of Stuart most days... that tune just sidelined me one morning. Luckily I taped it’