Ffa Coffi Pawb @ WelshBands
Interview: Gruff Rhys and Daf Ieuan
Prior to the release of the Ffa Coffi Pawb retrospective Am Byth, Gruff Rhys and Dafydd Ieuan talk about punk rock, onstage drilling and playing gigs for beer.
Why did you decide to form Ffa Coffi Pawb?
Gruff Rhys: Me and [guitarist Rhodri] Puw were in the same class at school. We went through various bands, started to get into the punk rock thing. We started listening to local bands like Anhrefn, Y Cyrff, Datblgyu - bands like The Jesus And Mary Chain, Big Black, Joy Division.
We invented this means of multi-track recording where we'd record something on cassette, play it out of Mr and Mrs Puw's stereo, and play along while recording on another tape recorder.
Has this material survived?
Gruff: Yeah, it's on cassette. I think we made 100 copies. We went to the bargain centre in Bangor; you could get three cassettes for 50p in a plastic bag. We did it tape to tape, made loads of copies, and we used to sell them in pubs around Bangor.
When did you first realise people were seriously into the music you were making?
Gruff: There was this movement called Pop Positive started by Rhys Mwyn. He was organising everything himself then, putting records out. But he couldn't be arsed to do it all himself anymore, so he started holding these meetings to try to get people into the scene.
We went down to a few meetings there, and met Gorwel Owen and sold him a cassette. He was very encouraging. He invited us down to his studio. Pop Positive was really good; it was like some punk rock collective. And a launch-pad, I suppose, for Ffa Coffi Pawb.
Were you going under the Ffa Coffi name at this point?
Gruff: Yeah, we were playing gigs all the time. It was a very fluid line-up. We didn't really have any instruments. We'd use drills onstage, it was more industrial. We didn't really have songs as such.
We settled on a line-up after a year or two. The four of us became really good friends and started hanging around. Drug buddies, or whatever. And we started writing songs about '87.
Dafydd Ieuan: We were awful live because we didn't ever rehearse. And we were always drunk. Phenomenally drunk.
Would the audience agree?
Daf: Definitely. Well, there were some good gigs...
Gruff: We didn't have any equipment for the first four years. We'd borrow the equipment off the main band. It got to the point where we started to headline, and we were borrowing the support band's gear. I think it was well after royalties started coming through before we bought anything.
We started doing a lot of TV - we were banned, originally, but then a program called Fideo 9 started on S4C. It was a bit more leftfield than most stuff, and they started giving us loads of telly gigs.
Daf: It was a great way of making money because it meant you didn't have to have summer jobs. Do a couple of TV gigs and you get a cheque for £800. I thought, I'm not going to start working for £2 an hour if I can keep doing this.
Why did Ffa Coffi split?
Gruff: When we started out, there was a really healthy experimental music scene in the Welsh language. There were so many bands like that, so we decided to start making pop songs in the Welsh language.
Our second album was explicitly pop, to get what we thought was contemporary, melodic Welsh language pop on Radio Cymru. But Radio Cymru were still playing songs from the '70s. And then there was the third album [1992's Hei Vidal!] which we really liked...
Daf: But we could only print 500, and we'd be lucky to sell them.
Gruff: It was impossible to keep any momentum. There seems to be a three-album limit on Welsh language bands. After you've played in Tregaron 10 times, you notice that people in Tregaron start getting sick of you.
Daf: I think I decided to leave. I remember seeing Emlyn down the pub and telling him.
Gruff: We were really good friends, so it was really tough.
What are your main memories of playing in Ffa Coffi Pawb?
Daf: It was like a backdrop to our late teens, early 20s - nuts.
Gruff: Really hedonistic... just playing gigs where we didn't really know the songs. It was a really weird time. We were making a bit of money, playing loads of gigs in Wales - but we were still completely isolated from the rest of Britain. Anhrefn used to give us gigs; they had loads of international contacts. They helped us out as much as they could. But our music wasn't really in line with the anarcho-punk circuit. We played gigs in squats in Holland.
Daf: Dewi [Emlyn, bass player] broke my ankle on the way over. We were really drunk. I was in a wheelchair, and he rammed me into a wall. We played a minority language festival in Friesland, playing to people with dogs on strings.
Gruff: We played gigs for beer.
Daf: They thought we were just going to have a few pints and go, but they had to change the barrel twice. That was a very Ffa Coffi vibe. Lots of alcohol.
Words: Louis Pattison
INTERVIEW: FFA COFFI PAWB written by Louis Pattison
Morning in the Ankst management offices in Cardiff, and two Super Furry Animals are puzzling over a request. It's from Saudi Arabia, and it's an order for 50,000 Super Furry Animals magic mugs. "We're trying to work out if it's some sort of joke," puzzles Gruff. "Usually we sell them five at a time."
Weird things happen to the Super Furry Animals - and although we're here today to gaze back into their pre-history, this was by no means simpler times. In August, Placid Casual will release a compilation of singles, album tracks, and lost oddities by Gruff Rhys and Daf Ieuan's former group, Ffa Coffi Pawb. With much of the material never previously available on CD, Am Byth marks the first time it will be available to SFA's international fanbase. "Didn't imagine it'd be coming out in Japan when we were making it," puzzles Daf. "Thought it'd be fu*king amazing if it came out anywhere outside of Gwynedd."
Ffa Coffi were no normal rock band: beginning in 1986 in Bethesda as an anarchic punk-industrial outfit with a fluctuating membership and an everything-goes approach to live performances (Gruff: "Had a few riots, got banned from a few schools"), they gradually evolved into one of the most radical Welsh-language bands on the scene. Mind you, their aims were certainly more hedonistic than political. "It was a teenage thing," remembers Gruff. "There wasn't anything political about it, apart from a hatred of Margaret Thatcher." The name translates as 'Everybody's Coffee Beans', although it was chosen mainly for its phonetic resemblance to a well-worn English phrase.
Ffa Coffi was born, like so many punk-rock bands, out of frustration. "We went to see The Smiths play in Llandudno," explains Gruff. "But someone had hit Morrissey in the face with a coin in Preston the night before, and they didn't show. So in a rage we went back and started recording an album in [guitarist Rhodri] Puw's living room." Early Ffa Coffi releases were recorded to cassette tape and sold in local pubs. But through Rhys Mwyn's Pop Positive meetings - designed to mobilise North Walian musicians - the group met producer Gorwel Owen and formed a partnership that continues to this day. Now featuring Gruff, Daf, Rhodri, and bassist Dewi Emlyn, Ffa Coffi recorded three studio albums - Clmhalio, Dalec Peilon, and Hei Vidal - that gradually forsook avant-gardisms in favour of a new vision of melodic Welsh-language pop.
Why did the end come? "Sometimes you'd get a really well organised gig in the students union in Aberystwyth," explains Gruff. "They'd hire an amazing PA and you'd get 500 people there. But like, the next week, you'd be back in Aberystwyth playing to 12 people through a shit PA. After seven years, you get a bit fu*ked off." Ffa Coffi Pawb split in 1993. The memories, however, remain - and virtually all of them relate to feats of chemical excess. The gigs where the band got so strung out on acid that Daf had to tie his drumsticks to his hands and guitarist Rhodri played one chord all set. The time Gruff drilled himself in the stomach with a power-tool. The show in Holland where the band agreed to be paid in beer. "They had to change the barrel twice," beams Daf.
And as a defining memory, that pretty much says it all. "Sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, in that order," cackles Daf. "On a Welsh scale."