Super (Furry) Leeds

When we were making the latest issue of the mag and the section on Leeds’ links to Wales, Moxco asked me if I’d like to try explaining Neil Warnock swapping Luciano Becchio for ‘Wales international’ Steve Morison through the story of the revolutionaries who escaped the tyranny of Britain to start a New Wales in Patagonia. I would love to say it will make more sense if you buy the mag and read it, but it won’t. Still, buy the mag! (Please, dear god, buy the mag.)

It was a good excuse to rewatch Gruff Rhys’ documentary Separado, so I was happy to give it a go, and a good excuse to fall down a rabbit hole of Gruff Rhys and the Super Furry Animal’s music. Those kinds of evenings are relatively regular for me, and more often than not the rabbit hole leads to the Super Furries’ gig in Toulouse during Euro 2016, played in front of, in the words of guitarist Bunf, “1,000 mad Welsh fans, and some very confused French ones.”

I’ve watched that gig loads of times previously. I always wish I was there, but even though I wasn’t it always makes me feel happy. But on this occasion, basking in the glow of Ethan Ampadu, Joe Rodon, and Dan James (and now Connor Roberts) inspiring Leeds to promotion, life felt particularly fucking good.

It’s only right that we celebrate and embrace our Welsh roots at Leeds. Not only are Ampadu and co carrying the flag left behind by Gary Speed and John Charles, but it’s literally in our blood. Academics have suggested that in the middle ages, Leeds (or Loidis back then) was the capital of the Kingdom of Elmet, an independent Celtic region of Britain with links to North-West Wales. To this day, people in West Yorkshire are genetically distinct to the population in the rest of the county.

I also wish I was at that gig because my experience of Euro 2016 was very different. I spent the opening two weeks of the tournament travelling around France with some friends loosely following England, until we realised we’d have a much better time going wherever England fans weren’t. After a night in Marseille running away from Russian hooligans and plain-clothed police throwing tear gas like it was confetti, I was always jealous whenever we bumped into Wales fans who were having the time of their lives. The England fans we met were mainly badly-dressed lads from Essex with a taste for cocaine and racism, whereas the Wales fans were wearing fun bucket hats, listening to the Super Furries, and proving it’s possible to be patriotic without being a prick. “It was an incredible time,” said Gruff Rhys. “I remember going into a book shop in Toulouse and it was full of people in Wales shirts reading books — no flying chairs in sight. I pissed myself laughing.”

As for the gig itself, just watch it. It’s ace. The sound isn’t always great, and they’re barely three songs in before they mess up the start of ‘Bad Behaviour’. But they don’t stop playing, they just crack on, making it all the more triumphant when they pull it all back together for a bubblegum pop chorus that makes me want to punch the air. You could call it a metaphor for Leeds’ win over Leicester; I’m hoping it’s a metaphor for the entire season. By the time they’re playing the end of ‘Juxtapozed With U’, Gruff is holding a card with a simple instruction for the audience — ‘PROLONGED APPLAUSE!’ — as if he’s just watched Joe Rodon make a sliding tackle.

The Furries earned their street cred with Wales’ support after appearing on a S4C documentary in the away end of a 7-1 defeat in the Netherlands before playing a gig in Eindhoven later that night. In their video for ‘Play It Cool’, they climb into a TV so they can play for Wales in a game of FIFA, Gruff sticking the winner past Brazil in an orange kagoule. “They made such pioneering, fantastic records, and never seemed to make a creative misstep,” said comedian and broadcaster Elis James, who was in Toulouse that night. “I also loved that they were undeniably, unmistakenly Welsh, but completely cliche free. It was a modern Welshness I recognised, wrapped up in music that I thought was better than anything else around.” As Gruff once said of former Wales manager Bobby Gould, “I’m all for eccentrics usually — just not when it comes to something as important as football.”

The gig was played in between Wales’ last-minute defeat to England and their 3-0 win over Russia that meant they topped the group. Tickets were only £7. Ahead of the tournament, the Furries released what might be the maddest football song of all time, ‘Bing Bong’, which had originally been written for Euro 2004 but had to wait another twelve years for qualification. “It’s a bit bonkers, it’s silly, it’s exciting,” said Bunf. “It’s not so much, ‘Look at us, we’re back with a new song!’ It’s more like, ‘Look at us, we’re a bunch of idiots!’” Right before playing ‘Bing Bong’ in Toulouse, their brass section led an impromptu rendition of what Salt-N-Pepa are now obliged to call The Junior Firpo Song (even if the Wales fans were singing about Hal Robson-Kanu instead). After closing their set, dressed in yeti costumes, with a twenty-minute techno interlude during ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’, keyboard player Cian Ciaran led the crowd singing the national anthem before ditching his bandmates to go out on the lash with the Wales support.

Naturally, there’s another Leeds link via Bryn Law, who was following Wales in a camper van and told David Owens in a brilliant oral history of the night:

“As soon as the gig was announced, I knew it had to be built into the itinerary so an extra night in Toulouse was built in. The tickets were so cheap as well! I’ve got to know the lads down the years and I went to see them playing in Leeds just before the Euros. I took (Spirit of ‘58 owner) Tim Williams with me as he wanted to get bucket hats to the lads that they could wear in France.

“We went and met the Furries afterwards and had a few beers on the tour bus. As we were chatting, they outlined their plans for the concert in Toulouse, the tour bus was going to provide a base in the park where the festival was taking place. I described how I was going down in a camper van. One of the lads, it might even have been the tour manager, asked if it had a shower?

“I was picking it up over there but the description said it did. Suddenly a plan was formulated, the tour bus didn’t have a shower, so I could park up next to them and become official shower supplier to the world’s greatest rock band!”
…
“There was more to come from this night though. Gruff had told me to send him a message afterwards and he’d sort us out with backstage access. He was as good as his word. He came out to find us himself. Then we spent the rest of the night lazing in deckchairs, chatting with the chaps, discussing shower arrangements.

“They were a bit disappointed with the way it had gone, because of the technical issue, but I tried my best in my own fanboy way to convince the team that I’d just had one of the greatest nights of my life. I always think it’s important to thank people who make the music we love if we ever get the chance. I hope I took my chance that night.” ⬢