LIFE AFTER A MONSTER HIT
They had one of the biggest hits of the Noughties with a song that was adopted on the football terraces, but what happened to The Automatic, the band that had the world at their feet? David Owens went in search of answers...
YOU remember the Noughties.
It was the decade that was not only difficult to name, but also a period where the music industry was in a state of flux, transitioning from the the myriad highs of the 1990s to a time where there were untold challenges to be faced from the internet in the form of illegal downloads and music piracy.
It was also the decade, let us not forget, that witnessed an unnatural uprising of bands beginning with K – see Kaiser Chiefs, Keane, Killers, Klaxons, Kooks, Kasabian and Kings of Leon for further reference.
From nu-metal and post-hardcore to nu-rave, and dance-punk, music redefined itself as it always does with joyful zeal and a constant spirit of reinvention – regardless of whether the industry that supported it faced immediate implosion.
The Noughties was also when a mighty garrison of bands ready to rewrite the rules of rock music emerged from the south Wales Valleys.
Kids in Glass Houses, the Blackout, Funeral for a Friend and Bullet for my Valentine marched to the beat of their own relentless, indomitable drum, forging a scene that galvanised a closeknit community.
A few miles down the A48 in the sleepy market town of Cowbridge, something else was stirring – the like of which the locals had never seen or heard before. A band was about to unwittingly put the town on the map. Whether they liked it or not.
For this group of youngsters, the Noughties would signal a brief but nevertheless brilliant moment in the
sun, alive with the exuberance of youth and the endless possibilities on offer. It’s a story which, by the band members’ own insistence, didn’t have a satisfactory ending. And if this particular tale is anything to go by, there may yet be another chapter written in the all-too-brief rise and fall of the Welsh outfit in question – the Automatic.
It’s now 10 years since the band’s final album, Tear The Signs Down. A decade on, it seems an appropriate moment to discover what happened to the musicians who appeared to have the world at their feet when they signed a major label deal in 2005 and released a bona fide solid-gold anthem in the shape of Monster – an era-defining song turned terrace chant, as instantly recognisable now as it was back then.
The band’s frontman and bass player Robin Hawkins and drummer Iwan Griffiths have both agreed to be interviewed via phone for this piece. In another dimension, all three of us are sat in the pub sharing an ice-cool pint, but that’s lockdown fantasies for you.
The pair are happy to look back on those heady days, given the distance between then and now.
Rob and Iwan, both 34, studied for degrees after the band ended and now appear well-settled into domestic contentment. Rob is a software developer, who lives with his partner and their cat in Bristol, where he moved five years ago. Iwan, meanwhile is a trainee accountant and a married dad-of-one living in Wick, outside Cowbridge, with his wife and their one-year-old daughter.
When I ask them if the Automatic seems like it was yesterday or another world, Iwan quickly answers: “For me, sometimes it feels like a whole other life lived. We did the band and now it’s 10 years later. In that time we’ve been to university. Sometimes I think we did it all backwards. It’s like we had a tremendously extended and exciting gap year.”
“It does feel weird to look back,” adds Rob. “We were talking the other day about back in the day when the band was together people didn’t have
camera phones. So our life hasn’t been documented like it is now. It’s difficult to remember all the stuff we did.
“I don’t really regret anything, but if I could wish for one thing, I’d wish that I’d at least written down everything I had done each day. I had a journal, I just didn’t use it.
“But, yeah, I do feel the distance of it now, It feels like a long time ago.”
Despite their current situations, it doesn’t mean they don’t miss performing.
“I was never about the fame or anything, but I do miss playing gigs,” concedes Rob. “I still make music at home, I guess I’ve never really stopped. It’s still a compulsion.”
Iwan too still dabbles. “I have to confess I do have a GarageBand programme full of 30-second snippets,” he laughs.
To look back you have to revisit the moment of inception, when the stars first aligned. To begin at the beginning, as a famous Welsh writer once wrote, having first met at Y Bont Faen Primary School, Robin, Iwan and best friend James Frost would soon be getting their teenage kicks and musical rites of passage at Cowbridge Comprehensive School.
There, these budding musicians took their first tentative steps in sound through the school’s excellent music department, Robin excelling with the flute – becoming a member of the Cardiff and Vale Youth Orchestra – Iwan, the drums, and James, the guitar.
There were, it transpires, more pressing matters when they first started comprehensive school.
“We all had shared interests,” recalls Rob. “I think the first thing we were more preoccupied with was whether Star Wars was better than Star Trek. We were all geeky nerds and still are.
“We were always doing creative things, even before the music kicked in. We used to watch comedy shows like The Fast Show and Big Train. We had a go at writing comedy sketches which we thought were amazing, when in truth they were C90 tapes full of small boys doing characters with terrible accents.”
However, as teenage years beckoned they found their calling.
“As puberty hit, music became more important,” recalls Iwan. “We were 12-13 and things like Radiohead’s OK Computer had just come out.”
It was then a nascent band quickly took shape.
“I said, ‘Let’s be a band,’” remembers Rob. “Frost already played guitar, Iwan played timpani in school orchestra so he was naturally the drummer and I was the bassist by default. Overnight our heroes changed from Star Wars to bands.”
Through attending midnight signings for the Manics’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours at the Virgin Megastore in Cardiff to seeing Super Furry Animals in concert, the youngsters were fired by the music on their doorstep.
“All that was going on in Wales at the time with the bands that had broken through did have an impact on us,” says Iwan. “We thought we could do it too.
“It didn’t feel like a remote thing. It wasn’t music from a distant country. This was on your doorstep. It felt a lot more real.
“We always honestly believed we would give it a go,” adds Rob. “It was probably just teenage naivety writ large, but there you go.
“School was really supportive. We were in the music room all hours of the day. I remember the deputy headteacher complaining, ‘Do you always have to be playing those Radiohead covers?.’
“Every other assembly we’d be playing. If we felt like it, we’d ask and we’d be allowed to play in front of the school. We got a lot of leeway. We were very lucky.”
As the band developed they broadened their rehearsal horizons – with a little help from their parents, who clubbed together to pay for practice sessions for their sons. Setting up in the grandiose surroundings of one of their regular rehearsal spaces, Cowbridge Town Hall, must have come as a shock for the old boys in the local Masons’ lodge, when they were on the receiving end of the band’s noisy punk rock.
“I remember we were rehearsing in the town hall and there was a Masons’ meeting going on next door. This old man appeared at the door in this double-breasted blazer and uttered the words ‘Good Lord,’ before turning on his heels. It was very Cowbridge. A proper culture clash.”
The pair unanimously cite “the Levy twins’ 16th birthday party at the Scout Hall in Cowbridge” as their first proper gig. “We did requests for people. It was like band-aoke. I think that was 2002, when we did our GCSEs,” says Rob.
From there they gave the band a name – White Rabbit – and became regulars at the well-remembered Teen Spirit under-18 band nights at late, lamented Cardiff venue the Barfly.
“We did a lot of them,” recalls Iwan. “We’d work our way up the bill each time. That definitely helped us develop our craft. The club was amazing and gave us opportunities to become a proper band and play live.
“It was then we thought that this was something that we could actually do professionally. We didn’t feel like a school band any more. We were plugging into a proper PA and making people dance.”
“It’s where we got our first buzz of playing to an audience which doesn’t want you to stop,” laughs Rob. “That was pretty huge for us.”
Looking for a fourth member to supplement their sound, Cowbridge Comprehensive schoolfriend Alex Pennie had seen them play at the Teen Spirit nights. He subsequently joined the band as backing vocalist and keyboard player in 2004.
His shouty vocal style and energetic performances would soon became trademark signatures of the band’s live shows. With the line-up complete, it all started to click into place very quickly for the teenagers.
“It was very fast,” confirms Rob. “I think we were still in the sixth form. We all pulled some money together to record a demo. We sent that out to everybody we could find in the yellow pages, like local record labels and management.
“Based on that we met music manager Martin Bowen, who was running local record label FF Vinyl. He came down to rehearsals. ‘Monster’ was one of the tracks on the demo. We thought it was a fun pop song, but you could see the dollar signs in Martin’s eyes. He knew what that song was going to do. We then got a more polished demo together sharpish and sent that off to about 20 labels.
“I think 20 said they would come to a showcase we were going to put on in Cardiff but only one did, that was B-Unique. They were sufficiently impressed that on the night they said they wanted to sign us.”
Passing a final hurdle with a private gig for label bosses at the Louisiana venue in Bristol, it was then the foursome had to make a major decision about their future. They were all set to go to different universities spread across the UK when they decided to take a gamble and take a year off to devote to the band – a gap year with a difference.
It’s a good thing they did, because a month before university classes were to start, they signed the deal with B-Unique, then home to bands such as Kaiser Chiefs, Ordinary Boys and the Twang.
First up on their itinerary was a change of name – from White Rabbit to the Automatic.
“There was another band called White Rabbit, so we had to change it,” recalls Rob. “Then we went with the Automatic. And then we discovered there was another band called the Automatic,” he laughs. “We ended up being known as the Automatic Automatic in the US, which wasn’t ideal.”
The band found themselves having to learn very quickly.
“I remember there was a discussion about whether we would be given a bit of time to do smaller gigs and develop a bit more,” says Rob. “But the label said no, let’s just go for it.
“Then it was do everything at once, go on tour, write an album, learn to play live. Up to that point we’d done tens of gigs, before we were signed.
“Luckily we were always pretty good live. That was quickly where we came into our own and won over a lot of fans.”
Touring as support to the likes of Ordinary Boys and Hard-Fi, they found themselves playing to several thousand at Brixton Academy.
“Looking back, there was a lot of running before we could walk,” says the frontman. “We had confidence, arrogance of youth. The self-belief was unwavering. We were determined to enjoy it all.”
After the release of a limited-edition 7in single Recover in the autumn of 2005, their debut single proper, Raoul, in 2006 was a top-40 hit, peaking at number 32. However, this was to be very much the calm before the storm.
The release of the single Monster on June 5, 2006, complete with a chorus that demanded to be sung at the top of your lungs, was to light the blue touch paper and rocket the band to another level.
The first inkling it was going to make a considerable mark came before it had even been released.
“I remember we were due to appear at T4 On The Beach (an annual pop festival broadcast by Channel 4) at Weston-super-Mare,” recalls Iwan. “We were in a hotel in Bath or Bristol, somewhere down in the West County, and I remember a club emptying out across the road and people singing it.
“I was lying in bed thinking, ‘This is really weird.’ That was weirder than hearing your song being played on the radio. It hadn’t been released yet. It was the week before it was due to come out.
“It was a proper ‘sh**, I can’t believe this’ moment. It felt like quite a big deal.”
Rob also vividly recalls the same experience.
“It was a warm night. It was summer, so we had the windows open and I thought to myself, ‘I know that song, bloody hell I wrote that song.’ It was the second-biggest emotional moment after getting signed.
“We’d already had singles out and they’d done okay, but that song did feel very different.”
Like many classic songs, it was written quickly – and it’s amusing to learn that the familiar-to-millions chorus, which surely rivals Kaiser Chiefs’ I Predict A Riot as the most recognisable chorus of the Noughties, was pretty much an afterthought.
“I think we had been to see [south Wales rock band] Jarcrew and [US rock eccentrics] Electric 6 in Barfly,” Rob recalls. “When we went into the studio the next day we thought, ‘Why don’t we write a nice upbeat dancey punk song?.’
“With the chorus I think we thought, ‘We’ll put something better in later, that’ll do for now,’” he laughs. “But of course we never did. We stuck with it.
We were just messing around with that chorus in the studio, it wasn’t even what we envisioned the end product being.”
It was no surprise then that the boisterous singalong, which is about getting so drunk that you become someone you don’t really like, was quickly adopted by Cardiff City, in tribute to their then star striker Michael Chopra.
The song’s frantic, pulsing, electro punk rock chorus of ‘What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? Is it a monster?’ was replaced by ‘What’s that coming over the hill? It’s Michael Chopra. It’s Michael Chopra.’ For the Cardiff City fans in the band, this was wish-fulfilment.
“The club invited us down to Ninian Park and we did the crossbar challenge at halt-time,” recalls Iwan. “We also met Michael Chopra and his family. We had a lovely afternoon. It was very weird and very cool as well.”
As it’s the song so intrinsically linked to the band, I wondered whether they ever feel any resentment towards it or ever see it as a burden.
“I’ve never felt any resentment towards it at all,” says Rob. “I’m always conscious that it gave us a career. It’s never been my favourite one of ours by a long stretch. I don’t think it’s particularly reflective of us, either.”
Two weeks after the single slammed into the UK top 10 at number four, the band released their debut album Not Accepted Anywhere. It was another unprecedented success, a platinumselling success in fact, hitting number three in the album charts. The Automatic ended 2016 with three top-40 hits and a top-five album. They’d also built a formidable reputation for their storming live shows tearing it up at all the major summer festivals, putting in memorable turns at Glastonbury, T in the Park and Reading and Leeds Festivals, where they memorably duetted with fellow countrymen Goldie Lookin’ Chain on a supercharged version of Kanye West’s Gold Digger, complete with Rob playing the flute he had excelled at as a child.
On the surface all seemed perfectly set up for global domination in 2007. However, all was far from well. There was mounting tension between Pennie and the rest of the band.
“It became clear that we were going to part ways with Pennie at some point,” recalls Rob. “During touring there was a lot of friction. It got very difficult. Him and me were at loggerheads a lot of the time. It became increasingly uncomfortable.”
The frustration stemmed from that age-old, perennial band killer – musical differences.
“I don’t think he was comfortable with the type of band we were or the type of band we were becoming in a commercial sense,” explains Iwan. “He was more into the DIY indie punk thing.”
“I think he was yearning for the credibility that we lacked,” laughs Rob. “Maybe we were more comfortable with our position on the pop spectrum.”
All the tension and frustration famously boiled over on a notorious appearance on breakfast TV show GMTV, where Pennie and Frost smashed up their instruments while the band were miming to Monster as part of an outside broadcast presented by Jenni Falconer and Ben Shepherd.
“We’d been going back and forth about whether we wanted to do GMTV,” recalls Rob. “I don’t think any of us were happy when we did it and we’d been kept in the dark about what was going on. And if anyone was going to make their frustrations known, it was Pennie.
“He had an enormously important contribution live and I don’t think we would have got the acclaim we did had he not been there,” reasons the singer. “But that energy he had on stage was coming from a place we were dealing with backstage as well. The whole thing had become untenable.”
The band moved quickly to replace Pennie, signing up multi-instrumentalist Paul Mullen, formerly of Yourcodenameis:Milo.
“He’s a very talented musician and got on with us from the off,” says Iwan. “It was a good connection. It was a bummer when Pennie left, but it didn’t interrupt things for too long with Paul coming onboard.”
Scrapping recordings for their second album This Is A Fix, which featured Pennie, songs were re-recorded with Paul. The album was something of a fraught process for the band in many ways. It took them several attempts to get it right, at studios on both sides of the Atlantic.
This Is A Fix leaked on to the internet a month before release. It was also hindered by online distribution issues – which saw both the single Steve McQueen and the album get released late across sites such as iTunes and 7digital.
Despite this, the single still charted at a respectable number 16 in the UK singles chart, although the album fared less well, limping to number 44 in the album charts. The promotion of the album by B-Unique was dogged by record company unrest and political infighting.
Incredibly, given the massive success of their debut album. It ultimately resulted in the Automatic leaving the label after being caught in the crossfire.
Theirs is a salutary tale of the potential pitfalls of being on a major record label. They are understandably still baffled at the way the second album was handled.
“They [B-Unique] pulled out all the drive behind the project before it had even been released,” says Rob. “Steve McQueen was A-listed on Radio 1 and was everywhere, the video was everywhere, so it made no sense to pull out when everything was going fine.
“Everything up until then was great, the album sounded fantastic, then they [the record label] lost all interest. When they don’t put anything behind you, it’s not going to go anywhere.
“Despite the single entering the chart at number 16, it was released half a week late, so we only had half a week’s sales. Looking back now, it sounds crazy.”
For the band it was a huge blow. “We’d worked so hard on the album,” says Iwan. “We’d recorded it three times in effect. First time in LA, it wasn’t right. The label weren’t happy. We started again and finished it in Cardiff. I’m still very proud of that album. I wish more people had heard it.”
A final album, Tear Down The Walls, was self-released in 2010. By then they knew the end was in sight.
“I think at that point on some level we knew we were on borrowed time,” says Rob. “It wasn’t necessarily where we wanted to be or how we expected to be doing it at the time.”
Iwan says they found it tough going. “That third album felt harder immediately. Apart from anything catastrophic with drugs or death, we’d experienced everything you don’t want to happen to you as a band.”
Little did they know that there was worse to come. As the Automatic faced up to the end of the band, they learned that their manager Martin Bowen had been charged with making indecent images of children. The man who had guided their career was ordered to register as a sex offender and given a three-year community order.
“He’d gone off the radar to a worrying extent,” says Rob. “There were gigs that were meant to happen and we didn’t hear anything from him. There was six months of nothing.
“I got in touch with him finally one day and said, ‘Listen mate, we’re all worried about you, what’s happening, tell us, and he said stuff was catching up with him. So we thought, ‘Okay, when he’s back on the radar we’ll sort it out.’ Then I got a call from my mum who had heard fourth-hand from somebody who had heard on the radio that Martin had been charged with these offences. Then I had to go and tell the rest of the band what was happening.
“As soon as we heard this, we emailed him and told him he wasn’t our manager any more and immediately cut ties with him,” adds Iwan. “It felt like a gut punch, a feeling of being let down... We felt sick by association.”
At that point it was obvious it was all over.
“The decision gets made for you because you need to eat,” states Rob. “It had reached that point. We didn’t sit down and say, ‘Let’s call it a day and put something up on the website and say we are no longer a thing.’ I wish we had done that.”
“I think there was an element of none of us wanting to go, ‘This is it, put a full stop on it,’” adds Iwan. “I don’t think we were very good at being completely decisive. We were always a democracy and no-one would want to make that decision and say, ‘That’s it, we’re done, boys.’
“That decision never got made. It kind of disintegrated, I suppose.”
What is certain is the end of the band had a profound effect on both of them.
“I don’t think I thought beyond the end of it [the band] at all,” says Rob. “Which I don’t think served me well in the long term. I certainly wasn’t ready to stop doing it. We were so young and in my case not savvy enough to think ahead and contemplate what I could do if it all stopped being a thing.
“With the benefit of hindsight you do think, ‘Oh my God, the opportunity was there for us,’ but at the time you’re just living in the moment and getting on with it,” adds Iwan. “You don’t think what’s going to happen next year. You’re too busy thinking, ‘Tomorrow I need to be there.’ You’re not thinking any further than that and maybe we should have done.
“But then it happened so quickly and we were so young. It’s like talking to someone who is 18 about getting a pension, isn’t it? Nobody at that age tends to think in those terms.”
Rob admits lots of things have resonated with him since the band split – not least in the unlikely form of Irish girl group Bewitched.
“Things have resonated with me really strongly since this all ended,” he says. “One of those was I saw one of Bewitched talking on the news about how they sold a million records and got dropped. It was way more extreme for them because they were huge.
“Their lives as they knew them ended immediately and it wrecked them. And she said all musicians should have some kind of counselling or some sort of mentorship to help you get through it. I 100% agree with that.”
For those hoping to one day see the Automatic back on stage, I can offer a glimmer of hope. It came in the form of a tweet that Iwan posted in February. It read: “It makes me wonder. Even though it’s one song that gets the majority of plays, would people show up to a few small gigs for sh**s and giggles?”
The response was understandably unanimously positive.
“It’s based on the fact I saw the streaming figures for our songs and was thinking, ‘If there is this many people still listening to the songs, why wouldn’t someone come to a gig?,’” says the drummer. “Now it would be for the fun of doing it. But we need to convince more than just us two.”