Fans of rocker Jayce secure a piece of music history
THESE super fans have long admired their musical idol from afar.
But now they’ve met the man himself and got some of his music video memorabilia to call their own.
After successfully bidding for the clothing worn by rocker Jayce Lewis in his videos for tracks including Icon – which launched his career and made him a superstar in Asia – and =Pure when he auctioned them off on eBay, they were invited to his own studio near Brid- gend.
As well as being presented with the signed items Jayce, 32, showed them around Northstone Studios at Court Colman Manor in Pen-y-Fai, which he designed and built himself from scratch on the site of an old monastery, and answered questions about his career to date, including how he became friends and later toured with Gary Numan and how long-term friend Dave Prowse, aka Darth Vader, came to star in his latest music video.
The fans also got to hear an exclusive first play of new track Shields, from his forthcoming solo album Orderart, and tales of how the clothing came to be seen around the world.
Jayce told Teresa Beman, 44, a manager, and James Pickering, 45, who had travelled down from Wolverhampton, how the black jacket with “Life” written down the sleeve came to define the very start of his career after he performed in it on the VH1/MTV Global Express Tour when Icon topped the charts in 2009.
At the time his rise to fame was charted by a BBC Wales documentary called Big In India, in which he can be seen performing in the jacket.
“I bought it from a market and had ‘Life’ written down it because it was a life-changing experience,” he said.
The famous white hoody and mask from the Icon video went to mechanic Lee Hawker, 48, from Cefn Hengoed, a self-confessed “manic fan”, who buys everything to do with Jayce.
Civil servant John Carey, 48, from Newport, successfully bid for the biker jacket Jayce wore in the Mad Max-inspired video for =Pure, which is still covered in dust from the film shoot at a quarry near his Kenfig Hill home and smells of petrol from where he performed his own stunts with petrol bombs, which burned his hands.
Two other jackets Jayce auctioned on eBay were successfully bid on by a fan from Sweden and a collector in Japan.