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,fn2 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
