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I’d got myself into a semi-catatonic state hanging around backstage for ages listening to the dull thud of the Stereophonics’ soundcheck coming through the wall. It was only when bass player Richard Jones sat down beside me that I realised the noise had stopped some time earlier.

“ This should be easy for you,” he says as I struggle to rouse myself, “you know everything already.” He’s not accusing me of being a cynical hack like those mocked in the song Mr Writer, he’s just making light of the fact we’re close friends.
I reckon familiarity makes it tough to write about the band because I know too much. “Presumably this gig should be easy for you,” I counter, “since you’re playing at home.” His look says otherwise. “We feel like we’ve neglected Wales a bit having not played for a while. We need to work harder.”

He needn’t have worried because, as it turned out, the crowd played its part in a triumphant homecoming and the new material held its own alongside the familiar crowd pleasers.

“ It’s good to be home,” purred Kelly Jones, his voice more magnificent with every number. “It’s good to feel some Welsh love in the room.” It was one of those nights when you feel proud to be Welsh.

Forget what you might have read in the papers at the time, Stereophonics cancelled a few dates with Oasis early in 2006 because Kelly’s daughter was ill. The hiatus quickly expanded into a full-blown sabbatical because after a decade of almost non-stop touring and with nappy changing duties a new priority, both Kelly and Richard needed a break.
With time on his hands, Kelly read my script about Julian Cayo Evans, the founder of the Free Wales Army, but declined a part because he has no aspirations to act. Richard and I took long walks on the Heath, each of us with a small daughter in tow.

It didn’t last. Musicians need to play as much as they need to breathe. After a few months leading relatively normal lives, the boys couldn’t resist booking a rehearsal suite, just to renew the pleasure of playing together.

‘ It felt good to be in a room again,’ Richard recalls. And as they rehearsed, new tunes began to fall into place quite naturally. Not wishing to alert their record company prematurely, they went to the secluded Grouse Lodge in Co. West Meath, Ireland, to record a few demos, but within a period of two weeks most of the new album had been written. Indeed, Kelly had so much material that he was later able to record and release a solo album, Only The Names Have Been Changed, of songs arranged simply, each with a girl’s name for a title. Argentinean drummer, Javier Weyler, too, was inspired to record an album of Latin music, entitled Lagrima, ‘tear’ in Spanish, under the handle Capitan Melao.

“ Capitan Melao is you?” I enquire. “Yes”, he beams. “My music teacher used to shout it at me. Melao! Melao! Melao! It means something like rhythm or swing but much stronger.”

One evening, a text arrived from Rich inviting me to Real World, a studio complex situated in a converted watermill near Bath. I arrived to find the drum and base parts of what became a song on the album called I Could Lose Ya thumping out across the lawn. It was a beautiful day and producer Jim Lowe had left the control room door open, unaware that the racket was reverberating around the village. Rich, Javier and Jim were working; Rich laying down the bass track beside Javier’s drums. Kelly was upstairs, supposedly recovering from the after-effects of a late night lock-in at the local pub. Yet when he appeared, he’d come up with the melody and some cheeky lyrics. Disappearing into the live room, he had the guitar part done in time for lunch. New material of this quality taking shape so effortlessly is the sign of a brilliant songwriter and a great band at the top of their game.

In the afternoon, while Kelly recorded the vocal track, Rich, Javier and I sat out by the millrace, enjoying the sunshine and decrying the predictability of British pub banter.

“ Why do they always go on about the Falklands?” Javier complains. I suggest he affect a confused look and ask if they’re talking about the Malvinas, the Argentinean name for the Islands. “I didn’t think of that,” he says delighted. “Thanks.”

I worried for ages afterwards about whether my advice might get him beaten up.
Sometime later, studio owner Peter Gabriel stopped by to compliment the boys on the sounds he’d ‘been hearing’. He’s too much of a gent to mention it, but he can probably hear ‘the sounds’ from his house a mile away up on a hill. The eminently pleasant producer Ethan Johns, who was working with Crowded House in the studio next door, also came to say hello.

A few more weeks went by until one morning we sat at Rich’s kitchen table listening to rough mixes over coffee.

“ We played it to the record company yesterday,” he told me proudly, “and they reckon it’s our best album to date.”

That was before the world’s favourite mixer, Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, weaved his magic into the record, and, on the downside, before Richard Branson sold V2 to Universal. Stereophonics were V2’s first signing, amid much fanfare, but they found themselves transferred to a different record company just as their album was about to be released. Nothing seems to faze them, though.

“ We’re on Mercury,” Richard tells me. “Very cool label, much cooler than V2,” I answer, genuinely impressed.

Warm-up gigs in Finland and Russia preceded the release and tour proper. I was in Finland, so it was natural to get a text asking if I knew a good curry house in Helsinki. Guitarist Adam Zindani, who has joined for the world tour, hails from Brum and eats little else, or so they tell me. I was more than 400km from Helsinki but, oddly enough, I did know an Indian restaurant just around the corner from their hotel.

Despite coming together so quickly, Pull The Pin was released more than a year after my visit to Real World and became the fifth Stereophonics album in a row to reach No1.

As we sat in the Green Room, which probably passes as the CIA canteen during the day, swigging beers at the after-show party, we knew we’d witnessed one of the best Stereophonics gigs ever. I’m playing Jim’ll Fix It for another friend, the brilliant novelist Rachel Trezise, so she can lay to rest her long-held obsession with marrying Kelly.

Rich wanders over and says, “Have you worked out what to write yet?” I tell him I’ll think of something. “I’ll probably just tell people to go out and buy your record.”

Go out and buy their record.
Pull the Pin is in the shops now

Backstage at Cardiff’s CIA, Martin Wilding tackles the Stereophonics, a band whose members are among his personal friends

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