vibes
would have liked to have made
Stereophonics
Javier Weyler:
Keeping up with the Joneses
Drummer Javier Weyler speaks to Luc Ciotkowski
(despite some technical problems) about being
in Stereophonics and the release of their ‘best of’
album, Decade In The Sun, this month.
WORDS & INTERVIEW by Luc Ciotkowski
“F
fffffffffffffffffffhh……”
I hissed at my telephone,
shook my head and con-
templated throwing the
thing at the tiles of the
office floor. A resigned
sigh is the last thing you can hear
on that track on my digital voice
recorder before it clicks off, and at
that actual time I was left to curse
a well-known Spanish telephone
service provider (my chief suspect
for the technical fault). It’s not
every day that you get the chance
of a telephone interview with a
member of one of your favourite
bands, so when I talked to Welsh
rock band Stereophonics’ Argen-
tinean drummer, Javier Weyler,
and the phone line got cut off not
once but twice, I was obviously
disappointed, well, gutted. Still,
I got a few questions in with Javier,
and he and the Universal Music
people were kind enough to call
me back when we were cut off the
first time.
So, yes, the Welsh band’s drum-
mer was born in Argentina and
raised in Venezuela. The story
of how he joined the band is
quite well known. Stereophonics
members Kelly Jones and Richard
Jones met Javier in a London
recording studio in 2003. Over
a couple of chance meetings, in
Argentina towards the end of
that year and again in a record-
ing studio in April 2004, where
he played on some demos for
their next album, they made
friends and a few months later
they invited him to join the band
permanently.
10 nov 08
bothered by this, but the public
Me being used to hearing stories
of how people have ended up in
Madrid, I was curious to know
Javier’s trajectory from Venezuela
to that recording studio in Lon-
don. “I started playing when I was
13 years old and I had
a band in Venezuela.
Did a couple of
records and I wanted
to take it to the next
level. London is one
of the best places for
music. I’d liked The
Rolling Stones and The
Beatles and that kind of music.
London’s associated with that.
Originally, I went for one year to
study engineering and produc-
tion. Then, I started working in
different studios in London, and
Stereophonics were at one of
the studios I was working in. We
became mates, we got on great.”
The band are currently promoting
their first best of album, Decade
In the Sun: The Best Of Stereo-
phonics, which comes out on 10
November before a UK tour in
December. I asked Javier how they
decided the track list from over
10 years of songs: “The difficult
thing was to select songs that went
well together. Kelly sat down and
went through the catalogue. Then
we had to get the running order
right. But we’ve been cooking it
up for many years- the guys have
been for four or five years anyway.
There are so many good songs to
choose from, six records’ worth of
songs. There are lots of bands that
do a ‘best of’ after two albums!”
So, were there any songs that he
the cut that didn’t? “No, not
really. With the second disc (there
is a deluxe edition with a second
CD), we could put on another 20
songs that include B-sides.”
Depending on how you interpret
it, the title Decade In The Sun
may sound a little misleading as
a summary of the Stereophon-
ics’ experience since their rise
to fame with their first album
in 1997. That first collection of
songs, Word Gets Around, shot
them to stardom, number six in
the UK album chart and a Brit
Award for Best New Group. Their
five subsequent studio albums
have all hit number one in the
UK, they are undoubtedly the
most successful Welsh band of
their generation and also one of
the biggest acts in the UK. It’s
true that the sun has shone on
them over the last decade, but a
little black cloud has been walk-
ing around with them, too.
Stereophonics’ relationship
with the British music press was
uneasy from the start. Had they
appeared two years earlier, they
might well have had a much
easier ride from journalists,
but they didn’t. The
medium that had
spent the mid-nineties
overdosing on Britpop
could no longer stom-
ach bands, like Stere-
ophonics, who sang
about working-class
culture. Music writers,
like other sections of UK society
at that moment, wanted to escape
or ‘trade up’ for a while and
Stereophonics suffered for their
realism. They received labels such
as ‘bland’ and ‘meat and potatoes’.
Outright war was declared when
lead singer Kelly Jones penned
the song Mr Writer on the band’s
third album, Just Enough Educa-
tion to Perform, as a retort to the
dishonesty and easy criticism
of music journalists. Lines like,
“Why don’t you tell it like it is?”
“What do you really know?” and,
“I’d like to shoot you all”, seemed
to deeply upset ‘Messrs Writ-
ers’ across the UK. Kelly Jones’s
‘Whiskey’ vocals became ‘sandpa-
per’ vocals, a ‘sexy, 40 honey-
filtered cigarettes a day voice’ was
now described as ‘whingeing’
or ‘wrenching Ford
Cortina’.
While they con-
tinued to sell out
concerts and make
number one records,
fans weren’t overly
www.europeanvibe.com
sacking of drummer Stuart Cable
had many expecting an end for
the band. But this was where
Javier came in and the fifth
album, Language Sex Violence
Other?, became another UK
number one and got begrudg-
ingly better reviews. People were
talking of a new energy around
the band. I asked Javier about
this and the effect his arrival had.
“I think it was a combination
of things. They had lost Stuart
(Cable). Losing a band member
and friend, it was a difficult time.
They would be the best to talk
about that. Really only they can
talk about that. Then, they had
just made a more soulful record
(You Gotta Go There To Come
Back). And, I mean, the band has
always changed styles. And it
was my job, to be like that. I was
really hungry because I’d just
joined.”
Last year’s Pull the Pin received
further begrudgingly good
reviews and was yet another
commercial success. Guitar-
ist Adam Zindani joined and
the band have completed their
decade in the sun with a healthy
glow in their cheeks. Javier, who
describes having to learn five al-
bums’ worth of material when he
joined the band as, “More chal-
lenging than difficult”, said his
favourite songs from before he
joined the band were, “Local Boy
in the Photograph, Bartender
and the Thief, and Mr Writer.
When I joined, I went through
the catalogue album by album,
so I got to think about that a bit”.
Admitting he didn’t know the
band right from the start, I
asked Javier what song he first
remembered hearing from
Stereophonics. “Mr Writer. I saw
them perform it on Jools Hol-
land and I thought, ‘Fuck, these
guys can play.’” A few years later
on, he’s releasing a ‘best of ’ with
them and gives no indication of
stopping. “The ‘best of ’ is great,
too, because it’s a way for new
fans and people in territories
where we’re not known so well
to discover the songs.”
Decade In The Sun:
The Best of Stereophonics
Stereophonics
Release: 10 November
Considering the readiness of most
bands to bring out ‘best of’ albums
at regular intervals, it’s a rarity to find
such a compilation that spreads across
six albums. If you know the group,
I need say nothing. If you don’t, this
the perfect chance to discover them.
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