Press: Super Furry Animals @ WelshBands
July 13, 1996 Melody Maker
Melody Maker December 20/27 1997
July 13, 1996 Melody Maker
'We've Never Taken Acid'
So why is Super Furry Animals' new video set in a multi-coloured chemistry lab? How come their ancestors wore pointy hats on visits to castles? And what makes them behave so curiously on the road In Europe? We have our doubts.
Paris Au Printemps
It's not as if they did any damage to Paris. Clambered up some statuary, hanging mob-handed off an Algerian coloniser/liberator who had surely experienced worse in his time. Lolled around with their feet in the nearby fountain. In fact, Parisprobably did more damage to them, when Machesters' second greatest Frenchman - let's call him Jules - took bunf out onto the lamplit streets on his motorcycle, Bunf waving and babbling, his garbled stream of Welsh, French and English coming to a halt at the same moment as the bike, which met a bollard at speed and called it a night.
Anyway, the lady gendarme was most insistent that we move on. So with the sheepish air of chastised boys, Super Furry Animals ambled back to the venue, where Bunf and Jules could compare scars and bruises.
Bunf and transport were always and unwieldy combination. If Bunf is supposed to travel in something, he'll quite likely end up travelling on it instead. And when Bunf travels on something, it may well be because he is on something. It's a safe assumption that Bunf was on something the day he met Gruff Rhys on the roof a train.
"It was one of those narrow gauge railways," Bunf points out ever so reasonably, "with a steam train. It's not like it was an Inter City 125"
"I'd never spoken to him until then" says Gruff. "We were on the way to the nearest town, because the pub we we'd been at was closing. It was a beautiful day, so we simultaneously went on the roof. The gaurd saw us, stopped the train. By that time we were inside. We were in a group of 10 people. The gaurd said 'Which ones were on the roof?' And they all pointed. So then we knew that they were complete wankers. And me and Bunf wew took off the train and had to walk three miles along the track. That was 1990."
Destiny Calls
The five future Super Furry Animals already knew each other by sight.
"We were all in Welsh language bands," Gruff explains. "Because Wales is so small, our paths crossed. There's only so many pubs in Wales you can play. If you speak Welsh, you're in a community of less than half a million people. It's like Iceland. It's very incestuous and everybody knows what everybody's up to. And everybody knows who's shagged who. Which is everybody."
"I went to a rock workshop organised in a youth club. The Welsh version of Rock School. It was three quid. I decided on drums, so me and Daf were in a drum workshop. We met through the beauty of rhythm."
Three out of the five were orginally dummers. And the other two?
"Drummers."
Daffyd Ieuan would eventually win the coveted drumstool full-time, bringing his technohead brother Cian Ciaran with him on keyboards. Guto Pryce became the bassist. Gruff could sing, and Bunf and Gruff both played guitar. Gruff played it left-handed, even though he was right-handed, because he was taught by his brother, who was also right-handed, but played a left handed guitar.
Super Furry Animals album is called "Fuzzy Logic".
Bunf: "We all met properly, formally, in this club. Our eyes were very ..... large, so we could see ezch other across the room. Through the Day-Glo lights."
"It's like when I moved down to Cardiff," Daf recalls. "I knew Bunf and Guto anyway, to say hello. We just started talking, going to clubs and raves. It was like: 'He's still standing, I'll talk to him. Hey, why are you jumping up and down and banging your head on the ceiling? I think I'll start a band with him.'"
All Directions
When you wake up on the back seat of a tour bus, cramped and aching, the drags of a litre of Smirnoff blue label rolling across the floor and around your bloodstream, obscure English pastoral psychedelia still humming in your ears like tinnitus, your jacket thrown over you for scant warmth, there are certain things you don't want to hear.
"We're in Bavaria."
That's one of them.
Unless you're Bavarian yourself, you're unlikely to want to hear it at all. Ever. But when you wish you were in Hamburg - not so much because you'd like to be in Hamburg, more because you're meant to be in Hamburg, and you'd rather be in Hamburg than Bavaria - it's even less welcome.
"Do you want a coffee?"
Now, that's more like it.
Gruff likes living on buses. Gruff is from north Wales, much of which is even less cosmopolitan than the aggressively bucolic bit of Bavaria we're currently parked in. He likes where he comes from. The band all do. There's just one problem.
"The only reason I left Anglesey," as Daf puts it, "was that it's not very conductive to being in a band living in the middle of a field."
This may not be the only reason.
"Anglesey is a dump," admits Daf "which is why i used to go to Bangor, on the mainland. Me and Cian were brought up in a house surrounded by fields and cows. And silage. And rabbits. Which I used to shoot when I was a kid. You'd go out at night with an air-rifle and a torch. I was a lousy shot."
"For me a Cian and Gruff, moving was more a matter of practicality. It was necessity, and fate, maybe."
"Your feet?"
"Yes, my feet. They stank so much that no one would go out with me in Bangor, so I had to move away."
Gruff grew up in Bethesda, a small town south of Bangor, near a slate quarry. Bunf and Guto are both from the vicinity of Cardiff, in south Wales.
"We are a beautiful union of north and south, and if the world took our example, it would be a very peaceful place."
"Except for the east and west."
"We're a diagnol kind of band. As the world turns on its axis, south-west Wales becomes norht-east. So we're a global, all-points-of-the-compass type band. From Wales."
Did I mention that Super Furry Animals' album is called "Fuzzy Logic"?
Monoglot Blues
At times -- when, for instance they are awake -- the band become a single, chattering, five-headed entity. You might just as well attempt to train a bag full of puppies to rhumba as follow their conversations.
"How the fuck did you manage to get piss everywhere?"
"Look, I know where my dick is, right, I just didn't know where the fucking bog was. So I guessed."
"You guessed wrong."
"Obviously, because it's down my fucking trousers."
Then there's Mahony. Mahony is the Furries' tour manager. Almost every time he opens his mouth, a worried Super Furry will emphasise: "That is Ian Mahony, the tour manager, speaking, and not a member of the band. I would just like to make this clear." And Mahony talks a lot.
"You shagged my sister?"
"Of course I did. For three weeks. I was 20, she was 30, she was up for it."
"My sister" -- this is said without any hint of judgement or rancour -- "is a total slag. Honestly. I you had only that description to go on, and you saw her in a crowded room, you would know which one was her."
When English fails them, the band will converse in Welsh. And then when Welsh fails them, which is rarely, they will swear in English. Welsh, I'm told, is good for curses, after literal fashion, but for outright foul-mouthed, rank, pithy swearing, English can't be topped. To the non-Welsh speaker, this gives curious effect of hearing the words as plucked from a meaningless torrent of syllables: "Rhubarbliverwurstmogadonlochnessfucking syllabubglockenspiel? Bloody hell! Larrysandersgoggleboxbrentcross bastard gigglemuffin."
"I can't talk English to Gruff" claims Daf. "I mean, I can, like I can wank with my left hand, but it doesn't feel quite right"
Gruff: "When I was in school, my English was so bad that my teacher asked my parents to speak English at home, whihch was such an ignorant thing to ask. Mind you, he also told them to take me to a psychiatrist. They thought I was fucking nuts."
"The worst fucking people get into teaching," snarls Bunf. He should know.
That'll Learn 'Em
If the full details of Bunf's teaching career are ever revealed, Mid-Glamorgan County Council will probably launch the inquiry.
"It's probably one of the worst experienced of my life. I thought the kids were fucking brilliant. I worked in a totally smack community. They were fucked up, but the teachers were ever more fucked up. They were born-again Christians, most of them, and they were trying to preach Christianity to kids who fucking didn't want to know. The headmaster didn't have a clue. It drove me fucking insane. I felt like standing up in some of the sermons he was giving and...."
Bunf (full name Huw Bunford) was treated like a pupil by the staff and children alike. The kids called him "Bunf". Not all of them, of course. To the more respectful, he was "Mr. Bunf". "Oi! Mr Bunf," they would shout at him across the playground.
Bunf would join the others at weekends, go out raving, stay up all night. "I would wake up at 6:30 in the morning on my floor, go to school, have a row with the headmaster about why I was late. The kids were waiting for me to register them, I was the only one who was absent."
Gruff: "In the gigs we have now, in north wales, half the audience is from that school. They chant, 'Bunf-y! Bunf-y!' And he comes out and shouts, 'School's out , rock'n'roll's in!' They tell each other, 'He used to give me detention.' 'Wic-ked.'"
"You've probably influenced a horde of monsters," reproves Daf.
We are no longer in Bavaria.
Euroharmony
Mahony is pissed off.
Mahony is pissed off with Germany. Specifically, Mahony is pissed off with the German record company. The German record company, we are given to understand, appointed a promoter in hamburg only a week before the gig. This has given the promoter no time to do what he does best: promote. There is every given chance that this show will be attended by nobody whatsoever. Not even the GErman record company , in whose absence Mahony is having to make do with being pissed off at Germans in general.
"Fucking hell, they're supossed to be so fucking efficient here. That's what they're meant to be good at. Efficiency. They can put five channels of hardcore porn into your hotel room, but can they organise a gig? Can they fuck. Adolf shoots himself and the whole country goes to pot."
"I would just like to point out," comes a voice from behind us, "that his is Ian Mahony the tour manager speaking, and not any of the band. Thank you."
Fragments of overheard conversation:
"You are Dark Side. You are evil. You are the devil. Your idea of strategy in 'Mario Kart' is to quit when you're losing."
"It is a strategy, because if you do it at the wrong time, you lose a life. You haveto quit at just the right moment and restart the game."
"But what if nobody else wants to quit?"
"Of course you don't want to quit. you're winning. why would you want to quit?"
"Satan."
Pause.
"Do you want to see our video?"
Feed Your Head
The video is fantastic.
Literally, fantastic. As in exploding from the imagination and hurling psychoactive shrapnel into everything within range. The clip - for a re-recorded "Something 4 The Weekend" - sets the band in a comedy laboratory, all test tubes, goggles and alarmingly coloured liquids. Every so often, can-can girls in space suits high-kick across the screen.
"First time, I did it for the hell of it/ Stuck it on the back of my tongue and then swallowed it..."
This is going to get banned, with any luck. It might even get questions asked in the House if some indignant parent reaches the ear of the right MP.
"It's about wine tasting"
"It's set in a food-tasting laboratory."
"We've tried to avoid the obvious chemical connotations."
By filming it in a chemistry lab.
"What about the can-can dancers then?"
Perhaps that's what you see after swallowing the contents of the tubes.
"I've never seen no fucking can-can dancers."
"We've never taken acid."
"We don't know how to make drugs. But we do know a lot about how to make wine. And it looks just like that. You're talking about Merlot Grapes, Cabernet Sauvugnon."
"And a four/four for stomping them."
"It's obvious when you look at it."
"If you try and make any sense out of this ..."
It's a song about acid and sex.
"There's a quote in it from George Foreman. He was asked, 'What did you spend all your money on?' and he said 'Slow horses and fast women.' It's about the downside. There's too many songs celebrating the upside of sex and drugs. Wine, sorry. There's a lot of trauma to be had by shagging and wine. If you drink loads of wine, you keep on repeating yourself, and if you shag a lot, you repeat yourself. Some sexual experienes are blissful, some are traumatic."
What traumatic things have happened to you after taking a great deal of "wine"?
What do you most regret?
"Abusing people."
"Starting Fights."
"Twisting your leg so you can't walk for three days."
"Getting arrested, spending five hours in police cell, waking up with a banging headache, puking ..."
"You shouldn't regret anything. Not even when I mistook my synthesiser for a toilet. I don't even regret shitting on my synth you know?"
"I do regret you shitting on my synth."
"I regret shagging who I thought was my girlfriend. I was in a tent and I didn't realise."
"Driving is one of the worst."
"You've got a bigger selection of lanes."
"On the other hand you might come to a T-junction and not make up your mind fast enough."
"You can think of the most bizarre excuses when the police stop you."
"We're not into giving out advice about drug-taking. We're as much anti-drugs as we are pro-drugs."
"We just go about it in a funny kind of way." "It's shit that rural areas of Wales are full of smackheads."
"Daffodils now are not the national flower. It's now the poppy."
"We don't think it is amazing that all these people are off their heads on smack. We think it's reall fucking sad. Having said that I think all drugs should be legalised."
"They should give people more credit for having it up to here. They know it's a fucking bad thing, and a stupid thing, and it could kill you."
"It's a stupid thing to take five tabs of acid as well, but it's up to you to find that out."
"I've got total respect for guys like Nicky Wire and Anhrefn. When I meet my friends at Christmas we all drink. I don't drink because I am in a band. I know lots of plumbers who take lots of drugs."
That would explain the state of my bathroom.
Merrie Troubadours
"We," proclaims Daf, "are the descendants of people who went to castles with pointy hats."
The show went well. People came. Daf is happy, in an obstreperous kind of way. Daf is usually happy, in an obstreperous way kind of way. Sadly I have no idea what he is talking about. Does he mean the Welsh? Himself and his brother, Cian? The human race in general?
Daf searches for the word.
"Jesters. They told stories, you know, or sang them: 'In E-din-burgh, the people in Edinburgh dri-ink so much and they wear skirts, la-la-la-la-la.' And everybody would go, "Bloody hell!' It's the same tradition, man. You can't incur the kings wrath any more, but you can get dropped by the record company, which is the same thing: 'Away with you, jester, you are doomed to play the streets of Leicester for the next 30 years.'"
Super Furry Animals are neither idealistic nor naive. But they are exuberant. Cynical sometimes, but always exuberant.
"I'm having a great lifestyle ," raves Gruff, "going about in buses. We've all been on the dole, all had long periods of signing on and that. Songs like 'Gathering Moss' are about doing absolutely fuck all for a year, rotting away, sitting on my sofa with my girlfriend, watching television. With little bits inbetween."
A stage whisper: "Shagging."
"Bit of food and that. But we're not apathetic people. Possibly because the language we grew up speaking is still not considered an official language. I remember going on protests as a kid to get a Welsh language channel, and my brother being arrested for direct political action abd that."
"I got arrested for breaking into the Welsh office andgiving myself up," says Daf, proudly.
Gruff: "Our manager's spent six months in jail for smashing up homes."
"On the other hand," Daf allows, "I've been arrested for totally legtimate reasons."
"I have no idea what it feels like to be the target of racist abuse," Gruff continues. "It's not racism, it's xenophobia. Because I grew up listening to Anhrefn, who are my biggest influence politically, I've got some very strong beliefs. I understand the kind of area the Manic Street Preachers are come from. I think where I come from in north Wales is pretty similar to Blackwood, but I've never had a problematic life. I've always been fed. I've always been clothed. My family didn't work in the quarry, you know? My mum went to teaching school. My father wore a suit and worked for the council. He writes books in Welsh about mountains now, and which paths to take up."
Can you explain the connection between Stavros the Hamster and Marx?
"Which Marx? Howard Marx? Groucho Marx?"
Let's start with Karl.
Rodent Politics
"Stavros came into Bunf's life and it was a very beautiful moment for all of us, because we all loved Stavros. Funky hamster. He had special tricks where he would slide up chairs. I had a dream that Bunf had wired up his wheel to make electricity for his house, so I wrote a song about it, 'Fuzzy Birds.' But it dawned on me that it was also a song about the slave and the enslaver. And I think you can apply that to the worker and the employer, or the landlord and the tenant. It's a pop song about a psychedelic dream I had, but basically Stavros was shouting for more worker's rights."
There is a picture of Stavros on the album sleeve. A bright-eyed little critter, with no hint of insurrectionist forment on his furry face. Sadly, now a dead, bright-eyed critter. Another picture features a little-known Frenchman by the name of Frank Fontaine.
"Every motorway station you go to now," says Gruff, "or every shit pedestrianised high street - I wish they's stop pedestrianising high streets - everywhere you go, there's these 99p books. Cookery books, mythology books, books of the supernatural. It's the punk books you don't get in the libraries. I've bought ones on 'Great Leaders Of the World', with people like Fidel Castro - that was a good book- and this series, 'They Died Too Young', which has Elvis, Jim Morrison, Malcom X, Kurt Cobain. So I bought this book which had stories about alien sightings all over the world. One of them was Frankie Fontaine.
"In 1979, he was on the way to market to sell clothes with two mates. His two friends were walking to the car when they saw a white light picking Frankie into space - allegedly. So his friends, obviously, go to the police to say: look, a big white light has pinched our mate from his car, we are concerned - you know? The police said: we don't believe you, you are only market traders, we are convinced that you have murdered him. Lo and behold, 10 days later, Frank emerges from a cabbage field, fully intact, goes home. By this time his mates have been released, because they couldn't prove anything. Frank says, 'I've only been away half an hour.' He became a media celebrity.
"I'm skeptical about these stories. I believe in technology and science. I'm more interested in the phenomenon of these books, that this subculture exists. I'm fascinated by the fact that in this day and age, people still need to have something to believe in. They'll go to any length to make up stories and get on television."
Frank Fontaine and Stavros are two of the many arcane reference points in the Super Furries' songs, not flung in simply for their own sake, but part of the abstruse lyricism that makes "Fuzzy Logic" such a thing of wonder.
Daf: "Shaun Ryder sang about the cut of his jeans, or going out with someone because they're dirty. Things that anyone can relate to anywhere across the world. Except for me, of course. But he didn't sing about living in a big house in the country, which means fuck all to anyone.
"All these bands in Britain now, with absolutely no imagination at all beyond a nice guitar sound and a nice drum sound, they say 'Oh, we're into this, in this tradition.' But they're not. Just listen to all this mediocre banal bollocks that comes out these days, they have absolutely no idea what's happened, no idea of moving forward at all."
Bunf: "They're too interested in getting radio play. They think they can do it by getting the right drum sound, the right guitar sound, getting the right producer in. We didn't."
His fellows look at him expectantly.
"And, OK, we're not getting played by anybody."
But!
"But we still got into the chart. We didn't format, didn't pay ourselves into that chart, didn't get on the playlist. We've got no fucking idea how we got into the chart."
Gito: "They might be selling shitloads of units, but no one will give a fuck about them in five years' time, and they'll probably be skint cos they'll have spent all their money on cocaine."
Believe it or not
The Welsh invented rock'n'roll.
Jack Daniel, a Welshman left the town of Frongogh for America, where he could distil whiskey in peace, untroubled by the religious killjoys who had come to dominate the country. Without Jack Daniels, there would be no rock'n'roll. Thanks Wales.
The Super Furry Animals album is called "Fuzzy Logic", by the way.
by David Bennun
Melody Maker December 20/27 1997
THE MEN DON'T GIVE A FUCK
SULTANS OF SWING
Super Furry Animals have added a new name to their list of unusual admirers - the son of the Sultan of Brunei!
Following in the footsteps of convicted drug smuggler Howard Marks, the Sultan of Brunei Jr turned up backstage to meet the band during their support tour with Blur, which finished last week.
Super Furry Animals walked into their dressing room at Wembley to find their unexpected guest with a couple of burly bodyguards. He had come to the concert specifically to meet the band.
"He's a kid, about 14 or 15," said a spokesman. "He had his photo taken with the band, and had some signed stuff done, and he was thrilled. He was like any kid in the presence of his favourite band."
"The band were fairly non-plussed, but they saw him as another fan to be treated with respect. Their attitude is, 'We like all our fans, whether they are rich or poor.' He's obviously incredibly rich, but if he wants his stuff signed he can come and get it signed, no problem."
Asked what the Sultan's son particularly likes about the Super Furries, the spokesman replied: "I don't know. I think they're interesting on a lot of levels, not only musically but as people."
"They provide a whole package that a lot of bands don't. They're great live, great on record, they're great people, they say very interesting things and they do very interesting things. They push the boundaries out a lot further than a lot of contemporary bands, and they're fascinating to a lot of people."
They're loud, proud and bloody rowdy! The SUPER FURRY ANIMALS take a look back
at their year over a beer or two dozen
"Creatively and musically, it's been a fantastic year. Personally, it's been a disaster." Gruff Rhys, Super Furry Animals cello-voiced singer, raises his shaggy head with a wicked smile. "But we won't get into that."
We're huddled in a north London pub on the sort of dark, cold, pre-Christmas afternoon when you can see the moon as you're eating lunch. Gruff and the visibly hyperactive drummer Daf Ieuan have just been on an MTV Europe programme called - scarcely believably - "Up For It!", causing panic with a few teatime drugs related comments, and at a guess, having a few drinks when the cameras weren't rolling. Talking about their brilliant 1997 doesn't come too high on their list of priorities - you suspect at present they might not fully remember the last five minutes, never mind the last 12 months, and anyway, all they really want to do is think about the future. Or at least about the evening ahead.
But this is the band who have gone from an eminently likeable psychedelic space cadets to a gang of placid casual geniuses in the blink of an album. "Radiator", their fabulous second long-player, is a thing of great beauty, a shake-and-stirring cocktail of Stevie Wonder and Pavement, ELO and Supergrass, Aerosmith and Nick Drake, ranging in subject matter from goat-eating bats to Einstein, class war to astroturf. As you'd expect, they're not about to put their success down to anything so dull as making the music they want, man, or getting the heads together in the country. Not SFA.
"It's been a year of going completely bonkers because Hale-Bopp dominated the early part of the year," announces Gruff. And you think it was down to a comet, hmm? "Well, can you think of another reason?" growls Daf. "People who I know who are quite sane have gone completely off the rails this year and are just starting to calm down now," asserts Gruff.
When you have such a volatile year as the one SFA have enjoyed, it's not altogether surprising they choose to cast a suspicious eye on the cosmos. Apart from visiting Colombia to film the video for "Demons" and recording their album, other issues have loomed large on the Super Furry consciousness. "At the start of the year Bunf was busted almost immediately. We started recording the album in January and on the way up he was busted, and that set a tone for the year of extreme paranoia. As a band, we seem to have a strong eggshell around us. We're very thick-skinned, musically and personally." "We're Welsh, you know," shouts Daf, a bit unnecessarily. "We're hard."
And this is where the round-up of the year loses its way a little, and talk of Welsh devolution comes in. "It's a fucking joke," spits Daf with utter, utter disgust. "Best joke of the year. A nation where there's only a 6,000 majority in favour of devolution, they're fucking cowards. It's not a Welsh trait, not being able to stand up for yourself. I was so fucking disppointed. It was a fucking disgrace. I can't understand why everyone in Wales just didn't vote yes. I just don't understand it [He glowers out the window at unwary passers-by before revving up for the kill]. Six thousand votes! What a shit country. I was so embarrassed. That's why I live in London."
Gruff smiles his beatific, give-me-all-your-money smile, and bless him, tries for a conversational hand brake turn. Screech."It's been a good year musically. Although I don't like voting for my album of the year."
At the mention of the word "vote", Daf's ears prick up again. "Don't vote, don't vote. If you vote, you just encourage the fuckers. Don't vote for labour, don't vote for Plaid Cymru, definitely don't vote for the Tories. They're wankers, the fucking lot of them." Gruff: "Aaaahhhh. . ."
Daf: "I'm into paying taxes but I don't vote. I can't vote for the Labour Party, because they are fucking Tories and I can't vote for Plaid Cymru because they're fucking Tories too. . .[He's now shouting very loud indeed. Innocent afternoon drinkers are shuffling nervously in their seats in that, uh-oh, lunatic-on-the-bus-type way]. Tony Blair is a politician, he's a twat. Politician equals twat."
A triumphant flourish. The people on the next table sidle quietly away. "Heheheh," goes Gruff, with some pride. Then apologetically adds, "there was a general election, so it's topical." He groups for another serious topical issue. "Er, what's the difference between Princess Diana and Michael Hutchence?" Needless to say, he fails.
Early 1998 will see the release of a new SFA EP, called, if Daf's to be believed, something like "Tell The Police To Fuck Off". This year's trip to Colombia has also given them a taste for continent- hopping, and they aim to "conquer America from the south", starting with the far-flung Welsh colonialists of Patagonia.
"They're all alcoholics," says Gruff. "All these towns in Patagonia refused to give Princess Diana the red carpet treatment when she visited there a few years back because they said if it wasn't for her family, they wouldn't be there."
"Princess of Wales? She was about as Welsh as a fucking kebab," snarls Daf. Gruff, smiles again. It really is a verys soothing smile. "I think 1998 is going to be a dream year," he offers. Whether Gruff's dream or Daf's nightmare, you'd be wise to plan on sharing it with them.