This year’s DVD release Rewind celebrated 10 years of the Stereophonics. Have the years flown by?Kelly: It’s gone really fast cos it hasn’t really stopped. You make a record, tour for 16 months and when you come back you’ve usually got another 15 songs so you’re straight back in the studio – a two year cycle every time you make a record. It’s gone really fast - when you see the pictures and the footage, you kinda go… good job we filmed it cos we can’t f***ing remember it!
So, 10 years. What have been the high points? If you can remember them?!
Kelly: Most of the high points we’re not allowed to talk about!
Richard: We’re not that bad!
Kelly: Probably headlining Glastonbury, V Festival in Slane Castle within two months of signing - that was surreal playing to 400,000 people. Also opening for people like U2 in Madison Square Garden, and the David Bowie tour. And things you’d never imagine like the Teenage Cancer Trust gigs when you’re on stage with Noel, Liam, Roger Daltrey, Weller - like four generations of musicians. It’s just bizarre.
What about the lows?
Kelly: I guess when we lost our way a bit; the band members changed, management changed. Everybody got a bit carried away, the drinking got in the way and nobody was really focused. We did keep delivering, in our opinion, great records, but it just got messy. You employ all your mates as crew members and so it becomes 12 people on a bus just having a party, then the next day you realise nobody’s set up your gear. You have to start putting up your own amps on stage at Wembley Arena and suddenly you go, ‘Something’s not right…’
You’re about to release your new album Pull The Pin, are you pleased with it?
Richard: We’re happy with the album. In terms of feedback, so far no one’s had a bad word to say about it. We had a good laugh in the studio making it – I think the confidence is high.
Kelly: We finished it last November so we’ve been waiting a long time for it to be released. The record company were keen to bring it out after the summer. It was written over the last two years. It Means Nothing and Daisy Lane are the oldest two songs, written about two years ago.
What’s recording like for the Stereophonics? Is it all one big rock’n’roll cliché?
Kelly: It is and it isn’t, really. It’s just fast. We do work, but we work fast and then at the end of the night we listen to lots of records and get drunk. There’s nothing weird. No dwarfs or funny animals or anything….
Richard: They’re on the next album!
Your first UK tour in two years kicks off in November, but will your arm be OK? (Kelly ended up with a deep cut in his arm after a scuffle with a bouncer outside a London nightclub)?
Kelly: If it heals properly it should be fine. There are a few bits in between we’ve had to miss that have pissed us off, a few live TV things and birthday gigs, but we’ve just got to take it as it comes really. But I think the tour should be good.
Richard: You’ll have to get a stand-in arm.
You could have someone standing behind you with their arm looped through, just strumming away?
Kelly: You could strap somebody to my back!
A dwarf…?
Kelly: Eh, there you go!
Richard: That’s how the dwarves come in!
Kelly: But yeah, we’re looking forward to the tours, We haven’t done big tours for a couple of years now and we’ve got this new lighting engineer so it should be a good looking tour.
Javier: We’re vibing on stage and we’re playing really good. We’re enjoying it.
