Gruff and his brother were smack bang in the middle of this melting pot. By 1984 the former had graduated from biscuit tins to full-sized drums and was playing in a band called Machlud. Meanwhile Dafydd was the manager of a local pop sensation: Maffia Mr Huws. Known as the fab five of North Wales, they inspired countless imitators with their commercial songs and healthy teeth.
As Gruff explains today: ‘They were formed around two brothers whose parents had moved out: they were left to raise themselves at a very early age! And the house turned into a 24-hour jam session. They became incredible musicians and a magnet to loads of other kids.’
Dafydd’s management of the local pop sensation wasn’t the only thing he had going for him: one day he had the idea of staging an outdoor music event in the heart of town. The Pesda Roc festival would take place on the site – now a rugby pitch – where, in the thirteenth century, Prince Dafydd had trained his troops to prepare for battle against the Normans. It was a mischievous, genius idea – and battle was indeed about to commence.
Traditionally there weren’t many rock ’n’ roll freaks in Bethesda; the working-class quarry town had been mostly insulated from the punk craze while developing its own modest subcultures. However, when Pesda Roc kicked off it brought the whole zoo to town, with the high street suddenly crawling with greasy aliens, biker gangs and proto-ravers.
On the first night of the festival, Maffia Mr Huws were headlining the main stage while Gruff and his best mate Rhodri decided to hang back with a few beers. Suddenly from the shadows, a gang of outsiders approached – led by a teenager with a peroxide mohawk.
‘Good evening!’ came the charming burr. ‘I’m Rhys Ifans and these are my cronies. We were just handing out free copies of my fanzine Poen Mefwlfn1 – and were wondering if you’d care for a copy?’
‘Thankyou!’ said Rhodri, taking one.
The Mohawk took a suspicious look around the park, chewing on his cocktail stick. ‘Not a bad festival you have here,’ he mused. ‘Although I must say the locals haven’t exactly held us to their bosoms. One person even attempted to beat the shit out of me …’
‘Ah, sorry to hear that,’ said Gruff.
‘Not a problem. To be honest, it was probably my own fault. I shook him by the balls, you see.’
Gruff and Rhodri nodded slowly.
‘Right, we’d best be off. If you see a man with a spade coming this way, please pass on my sincerest regrets.’
He let out a howling laugh, and scuttled away with the gang.
‘What a charismatic man,’ said Rhodri. ‘Who the fuck is he?’
‘I don’t really know,’ said Gruff, ‘but my sister calls him “the wildest man in North Wales”. People talk about him as if he’s some sort of folk legend.’
‘The wildest man in North Wales? Christ, he must be mental.’ Rhodri collapsed against a tree. ‘So what was it you were talking about a minute ago – about the songs you wrote?’
‘Ah, yeah,’ said Gruff. ‘Basically the walk to school is ridiculously boring, so I’ve started coming up with a few melodies in my head, and working them out on my brother’s guitar.’
‘Hang on, though,’ said Rhodri. ‘Your brother’s guitar is left-handed, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And 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