Fuck Yeah Gruff Rhys!

(The original page for this interview is here.)

“Born in Haverfordwest in south-west Wales in 1970, Gruff Rhys is the lead singer of Super Furry Animals. He also formed the electro-pop outfit Neon Neon with DJ Boom Bip. Their album Stainless Style, based on the life of the De Lorean Motor Company founder John De Lorean, has been nominated for the 2008 Mercury prize. Super Furry Animals headline the Green Man festival tomorrow. Interview by Will Hodgkinson

In 2003 we played at the Rio Free Jazz ­festival. There wasn’t any free jazz, and nor is the festival free — it’s sponsored by a ­cigarette company called Free. They were very generous though. Most festivals give you a wristband, but they gave us licence plates.

Victor Jara was a Chilean guitarist and songwriter killed during Pinochet’s regime. On September 12 1973 he was rounded up in a stadium, along with thousands of others, and his hands were chopped off so he couldn’t play guitar. He continued to sing, though, and they killed him. He’s an inspirational figure, and he gives me a sense of perspective on my own life.

This owl is 6ft tall and it looks after my daughter in her bedroom. The eyes light up, which will not only scare off intruders but also works as a reading lamp.

A friend gave this “Nuclear power? No thanks” badge to me. Now it’s ­evocative of another era, but the reality of nuclear power is stronger than ever. The government is trying to bring in new planning laws to allow the construction of ­nuclear projects without local consultation.

Here is an interesting badge. It could mean keep left politically, which is a noble thing to do, or it could be applicable to traffic. Actually it is the name of a chain of shops in Japan.

Caleb was always on TV when I was young, and he was like The Fonz — very cool — despite being a man in an anteater costume. Seeing him at a carnival in 1975 is my first memory.

This is a plastic version of a cartoon character called Calimero, possibly of Italian origin, who is found all over the world. Rather like Jesus Christ or Karl Marx, he notices injustice everywhere. But being a cartoon character he doesn’t take himself seriously and this gives him more gravitas. I watched a Welsh ­language version of the cartoon as a kid.

Here’s the Welsh national paper the morning after our victory over Italy. It united a nation in ecstasy and is the greatest football game I’ve ever seen. The Manic Street Preachers played before the game and Bryn Terfel sang the ­national anthem.

This is one of the first singles I would have heard as I think it was my big sister’s record. Edward H Dafis were very popular among the Welsh-speaking rock community of the 70s. I also like the song Ar Y Ffordd (On the Road), a hard-hitting rock number about the joys of hitchhiking. It made me want to travel.

This is a PT-80, and I’ve been touring with it for three or four years. It comes in handy with Neon Neon. It has fantastic 80s preset beats.

“I’ve been using this for solo shows. I won it playing darts in a fair. You spin it around your head and the air creates a note in the key of B. It’s much easier than playing a guitar.

Here is my alter ego, Gruffzilla, who guards the house. He’s 20ft tall and cheaper than a dog.”

Words: Alex Steed
Images: Beatrice Neumann

Throwing back to synth pop and a late car god, Neon Neon detail the rise of the dark side of modern celebrity and its chin-implanted, sex-pot-dating messiah

Neon Neon is a collaborative project conceived and executed by Cincinnati-based producer Boom Bip (aka Bryan Hollon) and Welshman Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals. Like many steeped in post-modern popular culture, Hollon and Rhys noticed that what was once a subtle, yet notable trickle of pop ’80s nostalgia had since transformed into something of a dam breach. With films like Charlie Wilson’s War bringing back memories of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, Reagan-era testosterone-fueled franchises like Die Hard, Terminator, and Rambo finding new lives in the new millennium, one might start to believe that The Evil Empire was still a force to be reckoned with.

Perhaps moved by the collective media subconscious, Neon Neon’s contribution to this slew of yesteryear referentialism is like a soundtrack to a film that was never actually made. With help via appearances by Spank Rock, Yo Majesty and Fat Lip, Stainless Style sees the life of John DeLorean (yes, the car designer). Like any form of nostalgia, it says as much about today’s cultural landscape as it does the past. Style is a conceptual album that offers its narrative via guest spots, a touch of electro-pop and a favorable (not noxiously sentimental) foray into ’80s synth-pop reinvention. This album strives to cinematically tell DeLorean’s story and successfully (and coherently) accomplishes this task.

The sound, claims Hollon, originates from his own long-standing fascination with the prospect of molding “Debbie Gibson pop” with a dance format. “I wanted to work with a verse, a chorus, and another verse. I wanted a bridge then a chorus and then I wanted [the song] to end. I wanted to work with total pop so I pieced together some of the songs and sent them to Gruff and we tried to imagine where it brought us inside of our heads when we listened to it.”

“We were talking a lot about the future,” Hollon continues to say of a conversation he and Gruff had early on in the project. “We had a fascination with it when we were kids. We knew that we were going to do a concept album and we kept talking a lot about our childhood. Then, people were obsessed with the future. Clearly, all roads pointed to John.”

While its image evokes scenes of zany Doc Brown and Matty McFly traveling through space and time in a car with gull wing doors as much as grainy security footage of DeLorean getting busted to trafficking cocaine, does the reference go beyond functioning as a mere gag? Is it shallow in its simple irony or is it representative of something more substantive? DeLorean, Hollon suggests, is extremely relevant in today’s Lohan/Spears-of-the-week celebrity culture. In fact, he was one of it’s modern icons.

“The subject matter is totally relevant to what is going on today,” notes Hollon. “DeLorean was obsessed with the concept of celebrity. He had a chin implant and all kinds of plastic surgery. He said — as did others — that he was the first celebrity engineer. He even dated Raquel Welch.”

Not coincidentally, “Raquel”, a subtle synthy track with obsessive undertones of longing with the line, “I saw you as a movie star / Now you’re driving in my car” is already an online favorite. On the cover of the album, framed in part by ’80s fonts that indicate the artists’ name and the title of the disc, we see what is presumably Welch’s hypothetical hand, outlined with magnificently tailored, man-killer fake nails. The delicate hand is wrapped gently around what is (also) presumably DeLorean’s stick.

Things did not end so glamorously for thee real-life DeLorean. He died of a stroke, mired in personal bankruptcy after years of legal battles following the closure of DeLorean Motors. Of his subject’s legacy, Hollon pauses, then speaks slower and sounds more contemplative. “DeLorean represents what we now have come to realize is the American Nightmare,” he reasons. “He went down this horrible road of celebrity obsession, and this seems very relevant today.”