Interview #99: Stuart Cable

KerrangTV, had the ultimate rock countdown this Easter with the top 100 metal and rock music videos ever! The Rock 100 is the most loved, most played and most controversial music videos ever and aired on KerrangTV on Sunday, April 16.

The show was hosted by Stuart Cable, who is a Kerrang favourite. He used to be the drummer in Stereophonics and now hosts a programme on Kerrang Radio and has hosted the Kerrang Music Awards twice. The Rock 100 show was also hosted by Page 3 models, Michelle Marsh and Lucy Pinder.

I Like Music caught up with Stuart during filming to talk rock videos and a bit of Bllcks; find out about Tom Jones and the female fainting incident, plus the real story behind being sacked from the Stereophonics.

“I Like Music because… it puts a big smile on face.” Stuart Cable

ILM: So, you’re hosting KerrangTVs ultimate rock countdown this Easter with the top 100 metal and rock music videos ever! Firstly what are your fave all time rock videos?

Stuart: Oh my word, that’s a very good question! The first one that springs to mind would be You Shook Me All Night Long, ACDC. That’s pretty cool and there’s a great band called Linhead Skinhead when they played Knebworth Fair with the Rolling Stones in 1976 – just a live video. I like live videos, it captures that kind of band.

ILM: You’ve been in a few videos yourself. What was the best and worst moment from filming any of the Stereophonics videos?

Stuart: Probably the best fun when we were just having a laugh was doing the Bartender And The Thief video. We were stuck on the River Kwai about 40 miles away from any type of civilization, and we had half the Thai army there, and it was really cool. We shot until the early hours of the morning, and it was really tiring but good fun. And the worst one to work on was when we went to do the video for Just Looking, and the director had the idea of shooting it in Scotland. And there were these different scenes, like a wedding scene and we were driving the car and we go in to the lake, so all of that got shot. We were there for two days, and on the second day by mid-afternoon we had this tremendous snow blizzard, and the electricians refused to work because of health and safety and so on. So we had to think of an alternative, so we had to catch the sleeper train overnight from Glasgow down to London, book a studio, do the outside shots in the studio and work all through the night. And then we got straight in the car the next morning and went straight to the airport and straight to Japan, so that was probably the worst, just because of the tiredness element.

ILM: A grueling schedule then.

Stuart: Yeah, well in those days with the Stereophonics it was always grueling. We wanted to go out and work and there’s no shortage of work if you want to go and get it really, you can go and play all over the world, but it was good fun.

ILM: You now host a programme on Kerrang Radio and have hosted the Kerrang Music Awards twice. Now this show, and ‘Cable TV’, you must be getting pretty good at presenting and hosting?

Stuart: I wouldn’t say I was good at it, more average at it, and people just seem to like what I do. The Kerrang Awards, I’ve always loved the awards ceremony, from the day I went there as a punter, and it’s pretty straight forward to follow the autocue, and it’s a good laugh and not as strict as something like the Brit Awards, we can waiver off the script and have a bit of fun with people when they come on stage. It is something that I like doing; not as much as I like playing drums and playing in front of people, but it’s a different kind of format of entertainment, but it is good fun. And it is good fun and I have done quite a lot of it now, and when you say things like that and think back, shit yeah I have done quite a bit now.

ILM: And your personality gets to shine through more when you’re presenting than as a drummer at the back of the stage. So people get to see the real you, and they obviously like what they see.

Stuart: And that’s a bonus for me, people get to see the other side of Stuart Cable rather than me just a face playing drums.

ILM: What’s been the most hilarious moment during filming?

Stuart: I’ll tell you a funny one that springs to mind when I did a thing in Wales with Tom Jones. We did an hour long Tom Jones special for Cable TV, and it was really hot in the studio, and we got to the part where the women start to throw their knickers at Tom, which Tom tries to skirt away from now, but I think it’s a very important thing, especially if you’re doing a history of Tom life then. So we were there talking and this fucking woman collapsed! She’d fainted, and I turned to Tom and I said, "see, you haven’t lost it Tom," and he lost it because he started laughing, and I started laughing, it couldn’t have happened at a fucking better time. And from fifty yards too – deadly.

Anyone I had on the show were up for a good laugh, Howard Marks for example. I think he’d smoked about five joints before he came on and he just couldn’t speak, and I was like, "c’mon Howie, you’ve gotta help me out man, you’ve gotta answer some questions," but he threw caution to the wind with that.

ILM: The show is also being hosted by Page 3 models, Michelle Marsh and Lucy Pinder – bit of a bonus?

Stuart: For me or for them? [laughs]. When I first found out about it I was a bit skeptical about the girls, but I’ve had a chat with them and they really like their rock music, so that’s cool. As long as they’re here for the music rather than the ratings, and I think it’s for the former rather than latter, so that’s cool.

ILM: Who is top of your interview wish list?

Stuart: Probably one of my heroes from music really, the awkward thing is half of my heroes are fucking dead. I’d love to interview the drummer from Rush, Neil Peart. To have a chat with him that’d be really cool. And someone like Jack Nicholson would be really fun. To do an hour special with Jack.

ILM: You’ve always been a homeboy, preferring home comforts of Castle Cable - a small estate near Cwmamanm to the city. Having traveled the world, is that still your favourite place on earth?

Stuart: Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. I always come back there. When we started Stereophonics, I never said I wanted to leave Cwmaman. All I wanted to do was better my lifestyle and my job prospects really, and to get out of the kind of rut a lot of my family and friends got in to. Because decent jobs that pay good money there are very hard to come by. I still love living there and will always live there. I’m not interested in cities one iota.

For example, I got to London today and, as soon as I got off the train, you know the big tickets you can get, that look like plane tickets? They’d sent them to me through the post and, obviously, you can’t get through the barrier with them because they don’t fit in the slot, so I said "where do I go to get through this?" and he just points. And I said, "we have moved on from the many years ago of grunting, we can fucking converse with each other." But as soon as you get to London people feel they don’t have to speak to you. I really hate that.

That’s why I love Wales; I just go out at the weekends with my friends and I don’t get a moment’s hassle, I just go out, get drunk, come home and I’ll never move from there ever in my life. I’m not interested in cities at all. I don’t even like Cardiff. Well, I like Cardiff, but it’s a city, so sometimes when you go out there it does become a pain in the arse. The valleys and the countryside, for me, are great.

ILM: Absolutely, it’s clean, it’s quiet, it’s beautiful…

Stuart: Of course it is, and what I love about it as well, if there’s ever a problem or someone breaks in to your car, you always find out who it was within a couple of days. It’s such a close knit community someone will say, and everyone watches everyone elses back. If somebody started giving me grief in the pub, they’d be five people who’d stand up straight away, but in London you’re totally on your own and nobody gives a shit.

ILM: And everyone rushes around so fast too, looking grumpy and you’re like, chill out!?

Stuart: Yeah, "slow down, have a drink."

ILM: In March 2002, you fronted a national billboard campaign, Bllcks, to raise awareness of testicular cancer. And as a result you must’ve saved some lives and certainly raised awareness. How does that feel?

Stuart: That’s mad actually because in actual fact after I did that thing I had a woman contact me who’s son had found early stage prostate cancer and he’d lost a scrotum but was still alive, and she said to me it was down to that, and I was like, "fucking wow, that’s great man." I just got asked to do it and I thought it was a great cause because I was guilty 110% of not checking myself as well, as I think most people my age are.

But I remember going to Cardiff and getting to the NCP carpark and there were fifteen bus stops in a row and I was stood there waiting for the traffic to go past and there were fifteen posters of me about 6ft by 6ft and I was like, "ohh no," and as I crossed the road a bus went past and I was on the back of the bus as well, and I was like ‘"or fuck sake." But it was great fun and it did exactly what it said on the tin. And I just thank the people for giving me that opportunity because I think it was a really important one.

ILM: When you look back on your life you’ll know you used your fame for something worthwhile and for entertaining people too, so it’s all good.

Stuart: Yeah, it’s hard to comprehend. I mean, I play down what I do quite a lot because I think I’m not that important. But when you get people asking you and you feel quite privileged and think it’s quite nice of them to ask, and then when you sit down and think about it, you realize it would be a really good thing to do because kids look up to people like me, I hate saying that, because I hate blowing my own trumpet. But people were telling me I was cool and kids in Wales looked up to me, but I never see myself like that, I’m just the guy with the crazy fucking hair who likes to have fun man.

ILM: Any top tips for young drummers hoping to make it big?

Stuart: A lot of work, you’ve just gotta stick at it, find the right band, rehearse as much as you can and don’t give up most importantly. You’re always going to have more people knocking you than singing your praises, so just stay with it. And the one thing which is the most important thing for any band is you’ve got to have good songs, it’ll always come back to that. The drummer is only really as good as the song he’s involved in really. You can’t change a melody or guitar riff with a drum kit. Just get together y’know. It’s not going to happen to everybody, but if you get lots of fun out of it, then that’s a bonus.

ILM: Also, lots more young people are getting into playing music and learning instruments. Perhaps you could take yourself off teaching people to play and inspiring young people? They’d listen to you I think.

Stuart: It’s funny you should say that! When I was in the Stereophonics I got to know Alan White really well who was the drummer in Oasis at the time. And we got really friendly. And him and I had this idea of just going round the Country, and having kids come to the gigs and us teaching them how to play our songs. But it never came to fruition, but I thought it’d be really good for the kids. If you think back, when I was a kid I would’ve fucking loved that, some guy from the band teaching me to play songs that he’s played on. Obviously then we were thinking of getting the tracks without the drums on so they could play along, and pick people out of the audience to come up and do that. But maybe that’s an idea for the future. Maybe I’ll take your advice and go and do it.

ILM: OK, so I feel I have to bring it up – being sacked from the Stereophonics by Kelly Jones. Did you write a letter back to Kelly after you got his infamous letter?

Stuart: At the end of the day I thought that was kind of the markings on the wall, y’know. Kelly’s kind of power-driven madness, to send Richard and myself… I can’t really remember what the content of the letter was, but I think it was something along the lines of, he wanted to make an album that was this way and that way. Then he got to the point where he wanted to fucking produce the record and then produce the next record. And it got to the point where I just thought well this isn’t really for me, I’m a puppet on a string here. And I was going to leave the band, and obviously he got wind of it, and got in before me and sacked me.

I’m very happy to be out of it like you wouldn’t believe. Y’know, when you’ve got one person dictating the whole shebang it just becomes a bit monotonous really, when you sit in meetings and your voice isn’t heard and it’s you either do it my way or the high way kind of thing, it just got boring and I just had enough of it.

ILM: So give us one more reason why I Like Music readers should tune in to the KerrangTVs ultimate rock countdown on Easter weekend?

Stuart: All the viewers and readers of Kerrang have voted for this and the vote this year has been fantastic, bigger than any other year before. The videos are really fantastic. And listening to rock music is a great way to spend Easter weekend, and great to sit in front of the telly and watch some rock videos.

Rock 100 - the 100 greatest rock videos ever, is going out on Kerrang TV, presented by Stuart Cable, Lucy Pinder and Michelle Marsh on Easter Sunday from 2pm. Rock, wit, fun and babes, what more could you want?