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Rise of The Super Furry Animals
Ric Rawlins
Rise of the Super Furry Animals tells the story of the greatest psychedelic pop band of our time.Welsh speakers with a lust for global communication, the Super Furry Animals shot to fame on Creation Records and found that, thanks to the record sales of label-mates Oasis, they suddenly had a vast budget to play with. Wasting no time, they bought an army tank and equipped it with a techno sound-system, caused national security alerts with 60-foot inflatable monsters, went into the Colombian jungle with armed Guerrilla fighters, and drew up plans to convert an aircraft carrier into a nightclub.Yet SFA's crazed adventures only tell half the story. By mixing up electronic beats, surf rock, Japanese culture and more, the band recorded some of the most acclaimed albums of the millennium, all the while documenting the mobile phone revolution in their uniquely surreal way.Written with the band’s own participation and housed in a jacket designed by Pete Fowler, the man behind some of SFA’s most iconic album covers, this is the remarkable story of their ascent to fame.
Copyright (#u4e834102-ebc5-5711-ad6c-a2719590492e)
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Published by The Friday Project 2015
Copyright © Ric Rawlins
Ric Rawlins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008105235
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008113377
Version: 2015-01-16
Dedication (#u4e834102-ebc5-5711-ad6c-a2719590492e)
To Marianne and Acorn
CONTENTS
Cover (#ueb9f38fc-0591-5c49-9ab4-244d2435dad9)
Title Page (#uaeada7a4-efa5-555f-bf3f-8b303d4c1886)
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Dramatis Personae
Prologue
Chapter One: Mountain lessons / Hot Puke / The pirates of Bethesda / Citizens band
Chapter Two: Festival time / The wildest man in North Wales / Heavy metal hoax / Ffa Coffi Pawb
Chapter Three: Ankst Records / Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci / Why aren’t we making techno? / The long walk home
Chapter Four: The teacher / Rock and squat / Cardiff in the sun / The rave
Chapter Five: SFA Soundsystem / The man don’t give a dub / Rhys says adios / Into space
Chapter Six: Birth of a ringtone / London turns on / Moog Droog / The wisdom of Robert Plant / Outlaw aircraft carrier
Chapter Seven: Tour of Cornwall / The number 23 / Fuzzy Birds / Outlaw hunting / Something out of Killing Joke
Chapter Eight: Fired from a cannon / Hanging with Howard Marks / Meet the press / Baz
Chapter Nine: Turning Japanese / F-16 Jetstreams / Cian-do attitude / Off the map
Chapter Ten: Painting demons / Bouncy castle licence / S4C on the attack / Overtaken by a wheel
Chapter Eleven: Rise of the Shinto gods / Air panic / Gringos in the mist / Unbridled freedom
Chapter Twelve: Deep sleep earthquake / Big trouble in Bogotá / Death to the monarchy
Chapter Thirteen: William Hague’s letter / Ice hockey hootenanny / Britpop turbulence / Electric harps
Chapter Fourteen: Taekwondo music / Love letter to El Niño / Das Koolies
Chapter Fifteen: Placid Casual, Acid Casuals / Bear in a vice / Gods and monsters
Chapter Sixteen: Kamikaze at Glastonbury / Bouncy ghetto blaster / Mash it up / Creation goes down
Chapter Seventeen: Recovered histories / The Roman road / Smoking goats / Pop strike / America
Chapter Eighteen: East coast negotiations / Lost in time
Chapter Nineteen: Intermission / Experiments with earthquakes / The Skull God / Furrymania / Yeti psychosis
Chapter Twenty: Wasteland Gods / Travels in a space buggy / Pizza trippin’
Epilogue
Footnotes
SFA Mixtape
Song Title Translations
Thankyous
About the Publisher
AUTHOR’S NOTE (#u4e834102-ebc5-5711-ad6c-a2719590492e)
With the band’s consent – and hopefully not too much distress from anyone I’ve forgotten to ask – some of the sections in this book have been ‘cinematised’: that is to say, scripted up and CGI’d into narrative-friendly shape. That said, everything you’re about to read is based on the subjective truth of interviews taken during the research process. It’s also worth noting that, although this is a book in the English language, many of the conversations replicated here – particularly those spoken by the band – would have originally taken place in what Gruff describes as a ‘cracked youthful version’ of the Welsh language.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE (#u4e834102-ebc5-5711-ad6c-a2719590492e)
SUPER FURRY ANIMALS
Cian Ciaran
Dafydd Ieuan
Gruff Rhys
Guto Pryce
Huw Bunford
FFA COFFI PAWB
Gruff Rhys
Dafydd Ieuan
Rhodri Puw
Dewi Emlyn
WALES MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Gorwel Owen
Record producer
Rhys Mwyn
Founder, Anhrefn and Recordiau Anhrefn
Dafydd Rhys
Brother of Gruff Rhys, founder of Pesda Roc festival
Emyr Williams
Co-founder, Ankst Records
Rhys Ifans
Actor, fanzine writer, Super Furry Animal
LONDON MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Brian Cannon
Photographer, filmmaker and creator of imagery
Alan McGee
The boss, Creation Records
John Andrews
Marketing manager, Creation Records
Dick Green
Super Furry Animals representative, Creation Records
Andy Saunders
Press officer, Creation Records
Ian Mahoney
SFA tour manager 1995–8
PROLOGUE (#u4e834102-ebc5-5711-ad6c-a2719590492e)
There, blinking in the darkness, were five shaggy-haired individuals in dressing gowns. The Super Furry Animals had woken up in a rural cottage at four in the morning, with only half-remembered instructions to help themselves to coffee. As they all sat around a large oak table, the one with dark hair suddenly flopped onto its surface with a primeval groan. He was shaken awake again.
A sixth man swaggered in wearing only boxer shorts, smoking a pipe and ticking off the final checklists from his notebook. His name was Ian Mahoney. He was the tour manager.
‘Right!’ clapped Mahoney, joining his comrades at the table. ‘This is where we are.’
He placed a cornflake over a small village in South Wales called Penybanc.
‘And John is waiting for us on the farm … over here.’
He placed another cornflake two centimetres below.
‘John has got the armed vehicle. We will rendezvous with him at 0600 hours – which gives us one hour – then we will mount the vehicle and drive across here …’ he slid the cornflake north, ‘and the festival is over here!’ It landed over a small village called Llandeilo. ‘Any questions?’
The singer tilted his head like a curious dog.
‘Good. Now let’s go! Go! Go!’
