‘Someone needs to get an AK-47 and sort ‘em out’

It seems music journalists aren’t the only people KELLY JONES, frontman of the Witnness-headlining Stereophonics, is going to sling up against the wall when the revolution comes.

In a recent, unbelievably blunt interview with Hot Press, the Welsh frontman tore strips off of everyone from Anne Robinson (‘a knob’) to Hear’Say (‘cunts’) to indie bands (‘almost frightened to break a sweat’) to Westlife (‘maybe I will buy that gun’).

On Hear’Say: ‘You spend a year, maybe eighteen months working on a record and then those cunts steal the number one from you with their pop-by-committee. I wouldn’t mind, but if they hadn’t got that gig they’d have auditioned for Cats or a summer season in Blackpool. Somebody needs to get an AK-47 and sort ‘em out.’

On Anne Robinson: ‘Her saying that Wales is rubbish… There are plenty of people in my local boozer who’d like to discuss the topic with her. Preferably down a dark alley at closing time.’

On indie music: ‘I just find a lot of those purist indie bands dull – especially on stage where they’re almost frightened to break a sweat.’

Jones also told Hot Press about his encounter with Paul McCartney, his advice from Noel Gallagher on how to tour with U2 (which Stereophonics will do this summer) and his deep admiration for the Manic Street Preachers, despite thinking that ‘they look like three naughty boys on their way to Scouts’ and that, as he succinctly put it, ‘they ought to get out more.’

It’s not all fire and brimstone with the ‘Phonics, however. Kelly Jones on his band’s friendship with ex-Boyzoner and Big Brother survivor Keith Duffy: ‘We’ve met [him] a couple of times and he’s a really, really nice bloke. It’s a bit one-sided, in that he loves our music, and we hate his, but apart from that we get on like a house on fire.’

The truth hurts. And Hot Press has got it. On newsstands from Thursday 19 July