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‘Well,’ said the moustached man, leaning in with a glint in his teeth. ‘I guess your father just ain’t cool then, is he?’
Within weeks, CB was more popular than ET. As soon as night descended on the valleys, entire networks of teenagers began transmitting messages to one another, using codenames to protect their identities from the police. The police, meanwhile, would be stationed on the other end of town, listening in from their vans. As far as they could fathom, an underground criminal network had come to town; it would be some weeks before they realised it was just a bunch of kids.
Meanwhile, the codenames grew ever more mysterious: Gruff became known as ‘Goblin’, while the weediest kid in school renamed himself ‘The Black Stallion’. It was communication chaos – a kind of primitive social network – and the more it continued, the more an interesting side effect emerged: since all the coded language had been inspired by truckers in American movies, a weird hybrid language began to develop that was part Hollywood bandit-speak, part Welsh tongue.
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With the young people of Bethesda engaged in their social network experiment, it wasn’t long before groups started linking together, joining the dots and forming new realities on the ground. One such manifestation was the emergence of a live music boom, organised almost entirely by left-wing political groups.
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) was the most prolific: their young activists put on gigs to raise cash and awareness for the miners who were being stung by the Thatcher government, while campaigning for equal status for the Welsh language. Their guerrilla activities included artfully manipulating English-language signs, in a cheeky style that would later become popular with organisations such as Adbusters. Their ideology was simple: ‘non-violent, direct action’.
‘Welsh-language culture back then was kind of an outsider thing – you were out there,’ says Emyr Glyn Williams, co-founder of Ankst Records. ‘Now obviously you can get a government grant for all sorts of things, but in that time the “living Welsh culture” was kind of free and independent, and it was based around things like the rock scene.’
The local CND group got involved in live music too, as did a collective of student promoters from the nearby university town of Bangor. The result was a sudden cultural explosion which spawned a new generation of hedonistic, radical Welsh-language pop groups.
Gruff and his brother were smack bang in the middle of this melting pot. By 1984 the former had graduated from biscuit tins to full-sized drums and was playing in a band called Machlud. Meanwhile Dafydd was the manager of a local pop sensation: Maffia Mr Huws. Known as the fab five of North Wales, they inspired countless imitators with their commercial songs and healthy teeth.
As Gruff explains today: ‘They were formed around two brothers whose parents had moved out: they were left to raise themselves at a very early age! And the house turned into a 24-hour jam session. They became incredible musicians and a magnet to loads of other kids.’
Dafydd’s management of the local pop sensation wasn’t the only thing he had going for him: one day he had the idea of staging an outdoor music event in the heart of town. The Pesda Roc festival would take place on the site – now a rugby pitch – where, in the thirteenth century, Prince Dafydd had trained his troops to prepare for battle against the Normans. It was a mischievous, genius idea – and battle was indeed about to commence.
Traditionally there weren’t many rock ’n’ roll freaks in Bethesda; the working-class quarry town had been mostly insulated from the punk craze while developing its own modest subcultures. However, when Pesda Roc kicked off it brought the whole zoo to town, with the high street suddenly crawling with greasy aliens, biker gangs and proto-ravers.
On the first night of the festival, Maffia Mr Huws were headlining the main stage while Gruff and his best mate Rhodri decided to hang back with a few beers. Suddenly from the shadows, a gang of outsiders approached – led by a teenager with a peroxide mohawk.
‘Good evening!’ came the charming burr. ‘I’m Rhys Ifans and these are my cronies. We were just handing out free copies of my fanzine Poen Mefwl
– and were wondering if you’d care for a copy?’
‘Thankyou!’ said Rhodri, taking one.
The Mohawk took a suspicious look around the park, chewing on his cocktail stick. ‘Not a bad festival you have here,’ he mused. ‘Although I must say the locals haven’t exactly held us to their bosoms. One person even attempted to beat the shit out of me …’
‘Ah, sorry to hear that,’ said Gruff.
‘Not a problem. To be honest, it was probably my own fault. I shook him by the balls, you see.’
Gruff and Rhodri nodded slowly.
‘Right, we’d best be off. If you see a man with a spade coming this way, please pass on my sincerest regrets.’
He let out a howling laugh, and scuttled away with the gang.
‘What a charismatic man,’ said Rhodri. ‘Who the fuck is he?’
‘I don’t really know,’ said Gruff, ‘but my sister calls him “the wildest man in North Wales”. People talk about him as if he’s some sort of folk legend.’
‘The wildest man in North Wales? Christ, he must be mental.’ Rhodri collapsed against a tree. ‘So what was it you were talking about a minute ago – about the songs you wrote?’
‘Ah, yeah,’ said Gruff. ‘Basically the walk to school is ridiculously boring, so I’ve started coming up with a few melodies in my head, and working them out on my brother’s guitar.’
‘Hang on, though,’ said Rhodri. ‘Your brother’s guitar is left-handed, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you’re right-handed?’
‘Yeah, but I’ve learned to play right-handed on the left-handed.’
Rhodri blinked, then went eyeball to eyeball with his friend. He explained how it was time to form a band, how the pop world was opening up, and how together they could mess with people’s heads. In the distance, they could hear Maffia Mr Huws drawing the cheers of a thousand people in the night. It was time to form a pop group.
The cards fell easily enough, with Gruff becoming the band’s vocalist, and Rhodri finding his place on guitar. The next job was to find more members, and first to volunteer was a local teenage prankster called Andrew Roberts. Andrew was a heavy metal fanatic with a reputation for insane publicity stunts – a reputation that was about to prove particularly useful.
On the day of their first school gig, disaster had apparently struck: the first band had pulled out, threatening to render the whole concert redundant. Andrew had an idea, though, and volunteered to open as a solo act. An hour later, he strode on stage in a spandex jumpsuit and performed a virtuoso heavy metal guitar solo.
‘The audience’s jaws dropped,’ says Gruff today. ‘He was on his knees giving it everything.’
So hypnotised were the crowd, in fact, that they didn’t notice a discreet wire connecting his amplifier to a cassette recorder. ‘He’d tape-recorded obscure heavy metal solos from his record collection,’ explains Gruff, ‘then fed them into the amp. I think he was miming to Gary Moore solos.’
Backstage, Gruff and Rhodri were getting butterflies. It was ten minutes until stage time, and to compound matters, Gruff still hadn’t decided whether he was a left-handed guitarist or a right-handed one. Panicking at the eleventh hour, he suggested a different route altogether.
‘You want to play an electric drill?’ said Rhodri.
Gruff showed Rhodri the drill.
‘Jesus,’ said Rhodri, studying the power tool. ‘OK. Tell you what, I’ll play the guitar and you sit next to me, drilling into my instrument – like this.’ Rhodri demonstrated the act. ‘But wait,’ he suddenly added. ‘What about the safety implications?’
‘Well,’ said Gruff, ‘if I drill my guts out and die on stage, at least it’ll be entertaining.’
After a few weeks they decided on a name: Ffa Coffi Pawb. It was especially endearing to Rhodri and Gruff because, when pronounced fast enough, it bears a passing resemblance to ‘Fuck Off Everybody’ – although its literal meaning is the more family-friendly ‘Everybody’s Coffee Beans’.
Inspired by New Order, the Velvets and Welsh-language post-punk, Ffa Coffi Pawb began to make crude recordings with a drum machine. In their heads they were John Cale and Lou Reed, learning how to piece songs together for the first time. It wasn’t long before a cassette had been created, which they proudly called Torrwyr Beddau Byd-Eang Cyf,
and attempted to sell at the local pub. Their sales pitch was simple: they would dare people to listen.
‘You’ll regret buying this,’ Rhodri warned a local farmer. ‘The quality is terrible! The music is offensive!’
The farmer, charmed by this ironic self-deprecation, bought the tape and returned home only to discover the horrible truth: that the music, patched together on a ZX Spectrum, was indeed terrible.
Ffa Coffi Pawb didn’t immediately make waves, but their rock ’n’ roll reputation was secure when they were almost busted, at a gig in Bangor. ‘Andrew was miming, I was drilling and a saxophone player was playing free jazz over the top,’ remembers Gruff of the concert, ‘and somehow the police got involved because some kids had broken into the canteen tills while we were playing. Our reputation was tarnished because we had apparently inspired an act of lunacy.’
Their fortunes were about to turn around. A local punk rocker called Rhys Mwyn was getting pissed off that nobody was getting off their arses to create the music scene. He’d already founded a band, Anhrefn, which everybody loved. He’d then started a label, Anhrefn Records, which everybody also loved. The only confusing thing was that nobody loved it enough to try it out themselves. ‘Don’t they know how easy it is to set up a cassette label?’ he thought.
Devising a plan to empower the masses, Mwyn put up posters calling for the most creative musical minds in the area to meet on a weekly basis, so they could swap philosophies, create labels, and make the scene.
Anhrefn were one of the most inspirational groups around – proactive, subversive, almost Dadaist in their sense of humour. What’s more, they offered an alternative to what could sometimes seem like counter-productively negative politics.
‘A lot of Welsh culture was defined by being anti-English in the 1970s,’ says Gruff today. ‘We’re talking about countries that were once at war, so the atrocities were endless, and the conditions that the Welsh people were expected to live in for centuries after those wars were horrendous. But that’s not an excuse to feel animosity for the English people or the English language – it’s about finding the positives in yourself and getting on with your neighbours. People are tied by blood, family, habits, collective TV viewing … and punk bands like Anhrefn were challenging people to be proud of their own identities without disparaging other people’s right to have one.’
When Gruff saw the posters, for him it was a no-brainer to attend Mwyn’s meetings. The discussion group became known as Pop Positif, and it was here that Gruff and Rhodri were to meet the George Martin of their careers – a man whose production skills would tower over the coming decade of Welsh indie coolness. Gorwel Owen was ten years older than Ffa Coffi Pawb, and considerably more musically advanced. He’d dabbled with house music since 1983, and had a reputation as a maverick producer.
At the meeting, Gorwel flipped Gruff and Rhodri a pound for their cassette, and phoned them back the next day. ‘Come to my studio tomorrow at noon. Bring your guitars.’
Gorwel was on a whole new level. For a start, he knew how to work drum machines – which in the age of New Order appeared to be the future of rock and roll. However, he was also a focused man with a no-nonsense attitude. ‘He made sure we didn’t perceive the studio as an extension of our social life,’ says Gruff of his first experience with the producer. ‘It was very studious. For a while we were scared to swear in front of him – we didn’t want to disrespect him, but he was very encouraging.’
For his part, Gorwel was aware that he’d met a sharp bunch of minds. ‘It’s quite rare for a group to be both exceptional songwriters and to have a really open approach to experimenting with recording,’ he says now.
Their first recordings were broadcast almost immediately as a session on BBC Radio Cymru. This wasn’t quite as momentous an achievement as it might sound: at the time, anyone who’d recorded a decent-quality Welsh-language demo could reasonably expect to have it broadcast, thanks to the variety of media set up to keep the language flowing (and the relatively few bands that were taking advantage of it).
During the summer of 1988, Ffa Coffi Pawb evolved into the line-up that was to last the rest of its lifetime. There was Rhodri Puw on guitar, Dewi Emlyn on bass, Gruff singing and Dafydd Ieuan on drums: Gruff had stayed in touch with Daf since their time sharing drum classes at the youth club. After being reunited, the two became musical allies and moved in together.
FURRY FILE: DAF
BORN – Bangor, 1969
CHILDHOOD SUPERPOWER – Flying, swimming
CHILDHOOD SUPERWEAKNESS – Not being able to fly or swim
CLASSROOM DISASTER – ‘Sneaking off to school at five years old in my paisley pyjamas, ’cos I thought I looked like Gary Glitter’
CHILDHOOD VICTORY – ‘Realising that a man-made, invisible, supernatural, totalitarian being, that demanded to be praised lest it condemn you to eternal torture in hell, was a bag of shite’
TEEN REBEL ICON – Ffred Ffrancis, Welsh Language Activist
TEEN GROOMING TIP – Tooth brushing
GEEKY PASSION: Pigs (‘I wanted to breed them and make money’)
FIRST SONGWRITING ATTEMPT – ‘Llanaelhaearn Lleddf (Blues)’,1979
BEACH BOYS VALHALLA – ‘Till I Die’
LIFE WISDOM: ‘Don’t be a cunt’ – Jim Jeffries
As the eighties gave way to the nineties, Ffa Coffi Pawb’s songwriting continued to blossom: Rhodri was inspired by the early work of Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses, while Gruff and Daf began thinking about the craft of pop music, reasoning that every great tune should kick off with a memorable hook.
Gorwel remembers a philosophy that they adopted at this time: ‘I recall them saying that “the studio is just a vehicle for the songs”. That’s very true, of course, but they also understood that the opposite was true: that songs can be vehicles for experimenting.’
The experimenting was paying off too: for one matter, Gruff finally resolved the dilemma of which way round to play the guitar. Trained left-handed, but in possession of only a right, he simply flipped the guitar upside-down.
As 1991 dawned, the runway for Ffa Coffi Pawb was clear for take-off. Not only had they settled on a ‘fab four’ line-up and started writing great songs, but they had an occasional harmonica player too: the Wildest Man in North Wales. From the beginning, Rhys Ifans had a strong belief that he was going to be a professional actor; but of all the musicians he dabbled with, he was undoubtedly the most rock ’n’ roll.
One winter’s afternoon, the band had just finished soundchecking at a small club in Porthmadog when Rhys and Rhodri went outside to see what the crowds were like.
‘Crikey,’ said Rhodri. ‘The only thing missing is tumbleweed. I guess we’ll be playing to the sound engineer again.’
‘There, there, Rhodri,’ said Rhys, slurping a cocktail with a twinkle in his eye. ‘It just so happens that I know precisely where to get a massive crowd from. You go back inside and set up with the band, and I’ll be back in five minutes with an audience.’
‘Five minutes?’
‘Five minutes,’ winked Rhys.
He jogged down the street to a crossroads, then stopped and looked around, smelling the wind for signs of life. Suddenly a cheer resonated from a bar called The Headless Ram. Rhys swung through the door and coughed loudly.
‘Good afternoon, ladies!’ he said, silencing a roomful of leather-bound men. He cleared his throat and started again.
‘Word has it … that there is a rather good biker rock band playing just round the corner at the club tonight. The best biker band in North Wales, in fact!’
The bikers stared at him. One of them folded his arms.
‘And apparently it’s free beer too. I’ll be going now.’ He grinned and slowly began to crab-walk out again.
That night, Ffa Coffi Pawb performed their pop music to a gang of confused, hairy men. As the final notes rang out to reveal an eerie silence, it became apparent that some sort of reconciliatory gesture was required. Rhys stepped up to the microphone. ‘Would anybody like to buy a tape?’
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‘It’s ten past three in the morning, this is Radio Cymru and that was Ffa Coffi Pawb! Now we’ve got something a little bit different for you, a new band from Pembrokeshire. They’re only fifteen years old and this is their first ever session. One word of warning, though: I’ve got a sneaky feeling the lyrics to this one are in English … do you think we can get away with it? Put it this way: it’s the middle of the night, so if you don’t tell the BBC, I won’t. Let’s have it for Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci.’
Before 1991, Welsh bands had relatively few choices regarding who to sign with. The biggest contender was the major label Sain, which had put out some decent folk albums in the 1970s but was by now deemed deeply uncool. As Gruff explains, ‘They’d got into Aled Jones and choirs, sheep farmers singing Elvis songs in Welsh … they were like a dinosaur back then.’ At the other end of the spectrum was Rhys Mwyn’s punk label Anhrefn: it was established and hip – but also radical, niche and somewhat limited in reach. There was clearly a gap for a label that could sit between the goalposts; and that label was Ankst.
Ankst Records was set up as an independent operation by Alun Llwyd, Gruffudd Jones and Emyr Glyn Williams while they were students at Aberystwyth University. The three of them were music fans rather than musicians themselves – indeed, they had no desire to become musicians – and therefore they were free to stay in the background and concentrate on nurturing artists.
‘Ankst were absolutely crucial,’ says Gorwel Owen today. ‘They created a space for the creative process to happen, which is one of the most important things that a label can do.’
The founders of Ankst quickly established it as a launch pad for the new generation of Welsh pop, folk and hip hop – and, being massive fans of Ffa Coffi Pawb – soon approached them with a record deal for two EPs.
‘Gruff is one of those natural musicians – he’s never going to stop writing pop songs,’ says the label’s co-founder Emyr Glyn Williams. ‘Even back then the songs were catchy, clever, psychedelic and musically ambitious. He wanted to make great albums, as he still does now. So for us it was a safe bet to help them, and work with them. They were one of the best bands around at the time, and we were big fans.’
Although Ankst had initially run a Welsh-language-only policy, the emergence of bilingual bands such as Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci had prompted them to reconsider. ‘I think it was the bands that changed Ankst,’ says Emyr. ‘We responded to the circumstances, particularly with Gorky’s because they were bilingual from the beginning, and quite naturally so.’
Ankst were super-enthusiastic about Gorky’s, a band of teenagers from Carmarthen, South Wales, with massive potential. Getting them played on Radio Cymru was another matter, however: it was left to rebellious, late-night DJs like Nia Melville to play them. ‘She had great taste,’ says Gruff. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with language, it was just whether she liked the music or not. Radio Cymru scrapped the show after a year because they thought it was too weird – they couldn’t see how pioneering it was.’
Oblivious to the arguments happening around them, Gorky’s mixture of folk, psychedelic Dadaism and Fall-inspired rock immediately clicked with a young audience both in Wales and England, and suddenly the NME and John Peel counted themselves among the band’s supporters. This was something new.
‘The NME had looked to Wales on and off before this,’ says Emyr. ‘It would usually be an overview with a few bands, but then those bands would never really have careers – they’d never be able to make the albums and keep going. And the interest would be “We’ve done our article on Welsh bands now” – and that would be it.
‘With Gorky’s [the music press] saw what we saw: they were a young, extraordinary band – and I think some of the journalists fell for them, like they became their favourite band. The Welsh thing never got in the way for them, because Gorky’s weren’t stridently political like other Welsh bands, they were quite different.’
While Gorky’s were attracting the attention of the London music papers, Ffa Coffi Pawb had arrived at the end of the road. Over the course of two albums with Ankst their sound had evolved into blissful, reverb-drenched bubblegum pop, owing as much to The Jesus and Mary Chain as to Big Star. However, where this melodic direction had once felt fresh against the backdrop of avant-garde and punk bands, the band eventually came to suspect that they’d become too conventional – and were letting audience expectations lead the way.
Rhodri attempted to head off this suspicion by rebelling against melody: under the influence of dark industrial bands like Nitzer Ebb, he began playing sets full of gnashing distortion and droning single notes.
This was a new lease of life for the guitarist, but it wouldn’t be long before a more literal lease of life – the arrival of his first baby – would distract him from the band. Increasingly, Gruff and Daf were beginning to find themselves alone in the studio to cover what instruments they could. The band’s convictions took a further knock every time they heard the weird electronic music coming off Gorwel Owen’s stereo: surreal, progressive music with samples and twisted beats. By these standards, the band that Gruff and Rhodri had started five years previously sounded suspiciously traditional.
Ffa Coffi Pawb played their final gig at the Builth Wells Eisteddfod in 1993, with Gorky’s supporting and just over a thousand people in attendance.
In the sleeve notes to their final album, Hei Vidal!, they addressed the conundrum they faced directly – but also hinted at the future: ‘I mean for f’sakes it’s 1992, and what are we? Mods, rockers, post-mod rockers? Why aren’t we making techno records?!’
