Interview with Super Furry Animals from Issue 8 of Welsh Bands Weekly, 1999



“This is a song called Turning Tide, and it’s dedicated to that person down there. Hope you get better soon.”

Brixton Academy, 3 November 1999, and some unfortunate bloke has been dragged out of the crowd and lies unconscious on a stretcher in the security pit. For the past 15 minutes or so, paramedics and first aiders have been tending him, his weeping girlfriend anxiously looking on, while a distressed Gruff Rhys makes regular checks on the bloke’s progress.

An eventful night, then.

I can safely say I’ve never seen Super Furry Animals more entertaining, more relaxed, more chatty. A far cry from the days when you could watch them from the front row of the LA2 and not spill a drop of your pint, the days when Gruff wouldn’t speak other than to introduce the next song, tonight he lightly mocks the crowd during Fire In My Heart, stopping every now and then to allow the audience to sing for him, standing cross-armed and grinning as we do his job. He’s more of a showman tonight than I’ve ever seen him be. The crowd is going absolutely fucking berserk. Come the grand finale, when the furry aliens stand motionless on stage throughout the duration of The Man Don’t Give A Fuck, an excited dreadlocked boy vaults the security barrier, dodges two security guards and mounts a single handed stage invasion, dancing wildly before the furry aliens until the stage manager eventually drags him off.

Nine days later and I’m recounting the gig on the ‘phone to Furries’ bassist, Guto Pryce. I tell him that I’d been discussing the Brixton gig with journalist Simon Price, and that it was definitely one of the best gigs we’ve ever seen them do. I’ve probably seen them play about 20-30 times now, but that has to be the best gig. The sound is getting brilliant and there’s less mistakes.

Guto laughs. I quickly recover – I’m not saying you ever did make loads, I tell him, but it’s tighter.

Luckily, Guto agrees. “Totally. We’ve played some shoddy gigs over the years, especially when we were starting off. We’re aware of that and I think we’re getting much better now.”

Compare that to the first time I ever saw Super Furries play, which was June 1996 at the LA2, and the place was half empty and you could actually get down the front and still hold your drink without getting knocked over. I can remember Gruff announcing the songs but never saying anything else, no banter at all. Compare that to how it is now; it’s more of an extravaganza now.

“If you don’t get better there’s no point doing it,” says Guto.

Super Furry Animals have just returned from a gruelling tour of America and Britain. Are they starting to recover yet?

Guto: “Just about, but we’re on tour again on Tuesday.”

You’re not! Where you off to?

“Europe. Scandinavia, Holland, Germany, Spain, France.”

How long for?

“Another month. Until the Cardiff gig.”

“The Cardiff gig” being their planned extravaganza at the International Arena on 20th December. Blimey! You must be so knackered!

“You sort of get used to it by now,” laughs Guto.

It was a tour that attracted some fantastic reviews, particularly Neil Kulkarney’s review of Llandudno in Melody Maker. What does it feel like to see someone enthusing about something you’ve created? It must be amazing.

“It is good that people get it, like,” Guto admits. “Although, did you see the one in the Independent? There was a shit one in that, so it’s funny, people have got different tastes as well. We have good press usually, so it’s really nice.”

You seem very much like an ‘industry’ band, as in the chart buying public don’t really catch onto it…

Guto laughs. “Yeah, I wish they would!”

The first interview with Super Furry Animals I ever saw was in the Melody Maker about 4 years ago, and you were arguing over whether chart positions mattered or not. So you still haven’t really changed your minds on that one?

“ Well, we wanna get aired,” Guto says. “That’s the thing. If people buy your record and it doesn’t get into the charts, for whatever reason, if they’re bought in not-chart return record shops then… that’s alright, you know.”

The industry is well into you though, aren’t they? Everyone in the know...

Guto: “Erm… Yeah, they seem to be, but Q magazine hates us!”

Well, there’s always some wanker…

The thought occurs that Super Furry Animals seem like a sort of cult band; it’s like those in the know seem to really get it, the musicians and journalists, but less so the record buying public. Are you happy with this notoriety or would you be happier if every single went to number one?

Guto doesn‘t hesitate. “Oh, I’d be happy if every single went to number one! We make music to be heard. In a way, it’s very nice having a fanbase, we’ve never been elitist, we’ve never said we want to play to so many people and that’s it. But at the same time we’ll never compromise ourselves to play to more people. It’ll happen our way.”

So you’re very definite about how you want to do things?

Guto: “Oh yeah.”

You’re not industry puppets?

“No – it wouldn’t be very much fun!”

I suppose it’s true that if your hobby becomes a career it stops being fun.

“Yeah,” Guto agrees. “We’re very privileged to be in the position we’re in, travelling the world and playing music. We’re very lucky. You shouldn’t ever forget it. I’ve had shit jobs and doing that you realise how lucky you are. I’m sure there’s people in this world who earn six, seven grand a year doing shit jobs and getting paid fuck all for doing it as well. I’m not paid millions and I’m far from rich, but I get by and I’m my own boss and I have a lot of fun, I go on tour with my mates and things. You get people who complain about their celebrity status or whatever, but they’ve gone out of their way to be celebrities in the first place.”

Do you (the band) have any regrets?

“Not really,” says Guto. “We try… we have, yeah, but we try our hardest to look forward and be positive, and do something about it. If there’s a problem with the way things are running, we do something about it and move on.”

You don’t think, ‘I really wish I’d done that differently’?

“Well, yeah,” Guto concedes. “I mean there’s interviews in the press, for example, where you wish it had gone differently. It would be nice to have an interview where you’re talking about music... .there’s a thing in Select which was a bit annoying, they didn’t talk about the music, they talked about the so-called ‘antics’ of the band, what we get up to. But we’ll just be more careful the next time.”

Is there any question you hate being asked in interviews?

Guto’s answer is immediate. “I hate the one when… it doesn’t happen too often, but when they go ‘Are you mad?’ that’s quite offensive. And lazy. Because when they think you’re doing things differently they immediately think you’re mad or whatever.”

Or on drugs...

Guto: “Yeah, and it’s like, ‘no!’ and it’s slightly offensive.”

No doubt you probably have taken drugs, but the fact is you’re five very creative people.

Guto is in agreement. “Yeah! Exactly! That’s what we want to do, so that’s what we get a buzz out of. The way we do things is the way we enjoy doing it. I dunno, it’s a weird one. I can’t understand bands who do things that they don’t actually like. The way they produce records that they don’t actually like, I just don’t understand it.”

They’re doing it just for commercial reasons?

“Yeah! “It’ll sound better on the radio” reasons. I think our records do sound good on the radio, but we don’t get in a super duper producer to come in and make them sound like a radio song or whatever.”

The Furries have been busy in the studio themselves this year – they’ve recorded an album of Welsh language songs. It’s called Mwng and is due for release in March. Why do a separate Welsh language album?

“We had some Welsh songs when we did Guerrilla,” Guto explains, “but we thought it would be better if we put them all together instead of a token Welsh song here and there, on a b-side and maybe one or two on an album. We though it would be nice to put them all together. ‘Cos the thing with Mwng, it sounds like an album. It was recorded pretty much live in the studio, and they just go better together.

How well do you think it will do? Will the fact that all the songs are in Welsh affect sales?

“I dunno… I think it’ll do fine,” says Guto. “We’ve got a fanbase which buys our records so that’s cool, y’know? When we put singles out, even if we don’t get any airplay we know the fanbase will buy the record. Which is a really nice feeling, to know you’ve got people behind you.”

Will you release singles from Mwng?

“Yeah, we’re thinking of it, yeah. We’ll release one, maybe. Yeah, why not? Obviously it’s not gonna sell a million copies on the first day of release or whatever, but that’s not a reason not to do it.”

So chart position for a Welsh single won’t really matter that much?



“No, it never has,” Guto insists. “We just want our records to be heard. It’s not a competition, it’s not a sport or nothing.”

I know the band have just got back from a hefty tour, so this is not an easy one to ask… will there be a tour to promote Mwng?

“That’s what we’re thinking about at the moment, really,” says Guto. “We’d like to do something different… I’m sure there’ll be something, some shows. ‘Cos it’s a live based album as well, so it’ll be really good to play it all live.”

That will be really interesting actually, to see how English fans react to a whole set of Welsh lyrics like that.

“Yeah,” Guto agrees. “We might get booed off stage, I dunno. But at least we’ll have tried.”

I shouldn’t think so. Anyone who comes along to see SFA knows you’re Welsh, knows that Welsh is your first language.

“Yeah, that’s it,” says Guto. “I think we’ve got pretty open minded fans. ‘Cos we can do the… people enjoy the electronic bit at the end, and they’re into everything we seem to be doing.”

Well, the common denominator there is the music. It’s the one thing everyone’s got in common. That’s the beautiful thing about music, that it transcends all boundaries. This might sound like hippy dippy shit, but it’s true!

Guto laughs. “You’re right!”

It’s this common denominator that drives over 3,500 people across the world, from countries as far apart as Brazil and Japan, Australia and North America, to join the Super Furry Animals egroup, a sort of communications centre for Furries fans. It was set up three years ago by an Amercian fan, Karen, who puts an unbelievable amount of time, effort and sheer devotion into maintaining the list. I’ve recently become a member myself, I tell Guto.

Guto is very enthusiastic about Karen and the egroup. “She’s fantastic. It’s quite humbling when you see how far people travel to see you, or how much work she does on the internet. It’s quite humbling.”

She does work very hard.

“Yeah! She’s brilliant! And [on the American tour] she kept on bringing us records as well, which was great!”

Since joining the egroup, I’ve noticed that a lot of people are asking whether the Furries will release a compilation of their videos. I put the question to Guto.

“No!” he laughs. “No is the answer!

Why not?

“I myself hate all of our videos,” he laughs. “They’re totally shit! Fire in My Heart was good, and Northern Lites was good, but mostly they’ve been a waste of money! But that’s just my opinion. They’ve been alright, like, but if you’re going to do a video compilation I think they should all be very, very good.”

What about International Language of Screaming? That was a good video.

“Aye, but it was comedy,” Guto sighs. “We wanted it to be horrible and scary, but it ended up like a fucking Carry On horror!”

But you’re not scary or horrible, that’s the point! You can’t come across like that!

“But we want to be!”

But that’s not Super Furry Animals! You’re cuddly, fluffy creatures! Apparently I’m not alone in thinking this:

“I don’t think we’ve been understood by most of our video directors…”

What has been, as a general consensus, the band’s favourite video?

“The Demons one was very good because it involved us going to Colombia for a week’s holiday! That’s the way I look at it, really!”

What about songs? Do you have times when you go on stage and think, ‘there’s no fucking way I’m doing this song ‘cos I hate it now’?

“Yeah, you do get it I suppose,” Guto admits. “Like, Something 4 The Weekend is the big contentious one at the moment within the band; some people like it and some people don’t. It’s mostly because we want to move on, but we know that people come to see us to hear our singles and hear the songs they know as well, so we try to play the old stuff as well as new stuff. You’ve got to be fair to people who come to see you as well. If you just played totally unheard stuff people would be pissed off, I imagine.

Super Furry Animals’ live show is evolving at a fast rate, the latest additions being the aliens who appear during The Man Don’t Give A Fuck. Who’s in the costumes?

Guto laughs. “Anyone we can find, usually! Someone we’ve nabbed from the audience five minutes from the end, chucked on!”

I wonder if these improved live shows are part of the overall ‘plan‘. What’s the super furry objective, if there is one, and when that’s fulfilled will you give up?

“Oh no, the objective is music, and I think we are fulfilling it and we want to continue doing it,” says Guto. “We’ve got a lot more ideas to come…”

It seems like a limitless supply really, doesn’t it?

Guto agrees. “Yeah! We’re lucky that we don’t have to struggle when we go to the studio. We don’t have to worry about the actual songs, we just worry about how we record them, ‘cos that’s what you do in a studio. But we’re always a couple of albums ahead anyway, in our heads.”

How do you find time to write new songs?

“You don’t need time to write songs, y’know?” Guto corrects me. “All you need is your brain! We’re always getting ideas, and when you go to the studio they all come out.”

Wrist slapped there Debs!

Guto: “Why?”

Just the way you said ‘you don’t have to have time!’ Oooh, okay! Admonished there!

Guto chuckles. “No, I was just thinking aloud, like! We do write songs and we are on tour a lot but we do get by. Even if it’s whistling in the shower. You’re always thinking up little melodies. That’s another thing I don’t quite understand, is bands having problems coming up with new songs. Because we’ve got so many ideas. We can’t wait to get into the studio.”

And your songs are not just guitar/drum/bass/voice sort of thing… there’s so many layers there…

“By the time we get to the studio, a lot of the ideas are there, so it’s more about ideas on how to arrange them.”

What do you miss most while you’re on tour?

“Good food!” Guto laughs. “When I don’t get good food I get grumpy and tired!”

I’ve noticed that the boys’ girlfriends are around quite a lot during tours. Do they go on the whole tour?

“God, no!” Guto chuckles. “They would probably go mad! It’s not the most pleasant place to be anyway, on the bus! No, you don’t see them at Derby and Stoke. You don’t see them at the less glamorous places!”

Being on tour so much of the time, I don’t suppose you have a great deal of time for relaxing...

“Fuck it, I’ve forgotten how to relax, to be honest! Playstation and records, TV, food, wine, all the good things in life!”

Do you get a lot of chance to see other bands? If so, what’s the best band you’ve seen this year?

“I think a lot of the bands that we see are bands who play with us… You do get a lot of good bands. Topper played with us at Llandudno on the second night, and they were brilliant.”

Among other things the band have achieved this year, they’ve just become sponsors of Cardiff City Football Club. What exactly does this involve, and how long does it last for?

Guto: “It involves zero stress from us ‘cos we’re just having the shirts printed up and that’s it, we don’t have to do any hanging out or anything. Even when it came down to the photo shoot, we got the aliens to go down instead! It makes life easier for us all.”

Last time I interviewed Gruff, he was saying about sending the bears on tour to Japan to save you having to do it!

“Yeah!” Guto agrees. “Live is a laugh, but anything else I’m just not bothered about.”

You’ve never really been a meet ‘n’ greet type band though, have you?

Guto laughs. “No! God, no!”

When I see you at aftershows and that, I’m very hesitant about coming over to say hello…

Guto puts me straight: “You should!”

But you always look like, ‘oh god, it’s another one of those schmoozling events!’

“When it’s fans we don’t mind,” Guto explains. “But when it’s industry, one of those horrible industry ones, I do mind!”

You’ve got to go and shake someone’s hand which is the equivalent of licking their arse…

“We don’t do it very often, we’re lucky,” says Guto. “Creation are not that sort of label anyway, we’re mates with everyone there, we get on with everybody.”

Are you comfortable with your position, or are you still embarrassed occasionally? I saw that Gruff seemed to be more comfortable and talkative at V99 and Brixton than he had been at previous gigs.

“No,” says Guto. “We’re never embarrassed on stage ‘cos we’re very confident in what we do. We only get embarrassed if someone asks for our autographs! But you get used to it, it’s nothing we’ve craved after. It’s gonna happen, it’s inevitable, but it still gets a little bit embarrassing. In shops, in town, it’s not very often it happens but it is embarrassing. But on stage, if you’re gonna be embarrassed you shouldn’t be there. We’ve got a lot that we want to put across and we want people to hear it.”

The band have probably had a couple of years that have been full of amazing experiences. What’s the best experience SFA have had this year?

“America was excellent, that’s the one I think,“ says Guto. “America was the last amazing thing that happened, so that’s the one that sticks in my mind. It’s just going to new places, that’s the thing that I really enjoy. San Francisco was fantastic.”

What’s the most amazing thing that could ever happen to Super Furry Animals in the future?

“Fucking hell, I don’t know! I mean, continue doing what we’re doing, but bigger and better. That’s the aim. But we’re very comfortable with the way things are going. It’s sort of going gradually, so it’s been really nice and it hasn’t been too hectic. Every tour we’ve done has gone up a bit in venue size, and we feel comfortable with it.”

And of course, there’s the CIA next month…

“Yeah! Well, that’s the big one, I suppose.”

What makes you feel proud of yourselves?

“Music, definitely, because the records will always be there, hopefully, and I’m very proud of the records. And the gigs as well. Hopefully a lot of people will come back out of the gigs enjoying it, and hopefully they’ll see something different and have a memorable experience. I don’t want to be cocky, but I think it happens a lot of the time, I think we’re getting very good at playing live. So I’m proud of that. I hope I’m right!”

He’s definitely right. Super Furry Animals have never been so enjoyable, so creative, so entertaining and so downright loveable, no matter how much they want to come across as a bit scary sometimes. A cat may spit and scratch, but behind those lethal claws there’s a cuddly, fluffy animal just waiting to be adored.

To become a member of the SFA e-group or for up to date news on the band, visit their official website: http://www.superfurry.com.

© 1999, Debs Prowse

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