A simple plan

By REBECCA BARRY

It's a rare sight these days - a rock band accustomed to screaming masses sitting side-by-side on stage, relying solely on the music to impress their audience. But for Stereophonics, simplicity is a virtue.

The Welsh band wouldn't normally perform to a crowd less than 2000, but on Wednesday night 400 people queued outside Auckland's Galatos to see their private promotional gig for new album You Gotta Go There To Come Back.

"People are wondering what the [expletive] we're doing here, and I quite like that," says gravel-voiced singer Kelly Jones, who channels everyone from Travis' Fran Healy to Rod Stewart when he opens his mouth. "Nobody's got a clue who we are."

It's the opposite on the other side of the world, where they are Britain's biggest-selling rock act. Their four albums have sold more than five million copies. New single Maybe Tomorrow is the most-played British track on British radio.

"I don't think there are many singers, lyricists or decent song-writers in the world," Jones says, eyebrows furrowing. "I think if you listen to our albums they've got all of those elements."

He used to turn mundane observations about other people into songs - their first album painted a picture of life growing up in a small South Wales village where he met his bandmates, drummer Stuart Cable and bassist Richard Jones. They figured, "Rather than playing AC/DC songs on our own we thought we might as well play them together".

Now, at 29, he finds inspiration in his own experiences, a break-up with his partner of 12 years fuelling songs such as Jealousy and Since I Told You It's Over.

When the band last visited New Zealand they hung out with Neil Finn, a boozy all-nighter captured in the song The Bartender and the Thief. "It's not fiction. Whether it's jealousy, divorce, love, marriage, I went through lots of different stuff. If you don't deal with it you can't grow."

He admits that can make it hard to listen to his own music at times. Rainbows and Pots of Gold, about an estranged friendship, he finds a particularly gruelling listen.

"No matter what happened you still miss seeing your best friend. The national newspapers completely blew it out of proportion and he [his friend] had never heard the song.

"It was supposed to be an olive branch, let bygones be bygones. He just read the newspaper and it became this big thing, it was a nightmare. I hadn't spoken to him for three years so the first time I did was to explain to him it wasn't what the newspapers had written. He was cool, actually. He said, 'It's all right, I know what the press can do'."

So does Jones. Critics have consistently bagged Jones' "cliched" or "meat and potatoes" approach to song-writing and scoffed at hits such as Mr Writer, which asks music journalists to "tell it like it really is".

One gig reviewer responded by doing just that: "Coats were stowed away," he wrote. "Pints were bought, songs were sung, air was punched, coats were collected again. Oh, and the drummer stuck his tongue out."

"It's not that I don't like the press, it's that the press don't like me," says Jones. "Most of the reviews of the record that I've spent a long time making are very sharp and snappy, clever and cocky and never really mention a song.

"I understand [British music magazine] NME's job is to find bands like the Strokes, Kings of Leon, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the Datsuns. We were on the cover in '97 probably three times that year because we were new. Now I realise what the job actually is. It doesn't bother me because we sell more records than they do magazines."

He says the Stereophonics are more concerned about their longevity than fame, which explains the classic, bluesy, rock nous of Help Me and Madame Helga, why Jones is obsessed with legendary musicians the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Aretha Franklin, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder, and why the album's cover art is not of the band but an old black and white photo taken in a pub.

Even their record label V2 -they were the first signatories to Richard Branson's baby - treated the band as a long-term investment, encouraging them to do the hard slog on the road rather than worry about album sales.

For the past four years they have toured relentlessly, quietly building a fanbase without too much hype. They want the music to speak for itself, says Jones.

"You listen to my generation," says Jones referring to his age-group not the Who song, "and you want to drink or fight somebody. You listen to Louis Armstrong's A Wonderful World, you want to fall in love."

"The White Stripes are a great band, but as soon as they stop wearing red and white where the [expletive] do they go?

"I'm not wearing eye-liner and cutting my wrists and trying to be all angst. You get Marilyn Manson to sit over there, give us both a guitar and I think I'll walk away winning. That's it really. You don't need makeup and a [expletive] light show."