Gruff Rhys Talks 'Hotel Shampoo,' Super Furry Animals Split Rumours

Since first hitting the road Super Furry Animals in 1995, Gruff Rhys has staked a serious claim as being one of the few genuine Renaissance men of British rock music. From leading the Welsh psychedelicists through nine near-faultless and truly creative long players, two solo records, a Mercury Award-nominated concept album about John DeLorean with side project Neon Neon and a collaboration with Brazillian musician Tony Da Gatorra, Rhys' endless imagination has marked him out as a genuine one-off who is fast becoming something of a national treasure. And that's before we even consider his fascinating and at times hilarious road movie, 'Separado,' that traced the impact of the Welsh migrants that settled in Patagonia.

As he prepares to release his third album and accompanying art installation, 'Hotel Shampoo,' Spinner met with Rhys to discuss the album's inspiration, stretching his considerable talents and the truth behind those Super Furry Animals-to-split rumours.

"My choices are pretty random," he says...

Where did you get the idea for the Hotel Shampoo art installation and how did that impact on the creation of the album?

I started making it 15 years ago when I started touring and staying in hotels. It was mind-blowing for me and I started collecting hotel shampoo as souvenirs. I felt that maybe Super Furry Animals were a flash in the pan and we'd get to tour for maybe a year and so into the second or third year of touring I was thinking of making a lake out of shampoo but that wouldn't work on an environmental level so instead I started building a hotel out of shampoo bottles.

I hadn't organised them at all, I just kept hording for about 13 years and they were taking over the house so about two years I began to put them all in boxes and thought that it would also be a good name for a hotel -- Hotel Shampoo. The album is quite piano based so I thought it would be a good soundtrack to a hotel bar. The songs were kind of looking back on when we stopped touring so I was writing all these melancholy songs and looking back at the period that I'd been collecting this shampoo. In my head it made complete sense but the only risk was naming the album 'Hotel Shampoo.' It's a strange name for an album. I think it's a high-risk name because "shampoo" is possibly a tricky word for people to trust in. It's a weird word.

Given the amount of time you've spent in hotels during 15 years on the road, how difficult is it to relax at home?

I've managed to rest for the last two or three years. So for the previous 15 years it's been full on so the last three years have been the most restful that I've ever had. I took six months off and looked after the kids. But it's strange because I didn't play my guitar then. I broke it but it meant that I had more time to listen to music. I like to listen to internet radio and the traffic news and get all the info and see how the congestion is getting on.

Your music exists in its own world and rarely makes any reference points to any contemporary activity. Do you consciously avoid what's going on?

No. I mean, with the record I've put out I didn't try to engage with contemporary music at all; I just wanted to make a simple, downbeat record. It's difficult to keep up with everything but I enjoy the new stuff that I end up buying. My choices are pretty random.

You've reigned in your tendency for extended workouts here. Did you deliberately set out to keep the songs to around the three-minute mark?

Yeah, kind of. I just wanted to make a really simple record. On my last solo record, 'Candylion,' I had a 15-minute long ballad called 'Skylon' and I didn't think that I could improve on that. One of the things lacking in my songwriting is a narrative and a story and 'Skylon' was my attempt at writing a story in a song. Most of the songs are fragments of my memory and little flashes of experience.

You've been involved in music, you made a documentary film in the shape of 'Seperado' and now you've got the 'Hotel Shampoo' art installation. Is there any other media that you'd like to tackle?

I think that the film and the installation centred around my life as a musician so I've got no ambitions to go anywhere beyond that. To do something outside of that, I think I'd lose my bearings. 'Separado' was like an investigative concert tour and the hotel installation was a by-product of the touring. As for books, I haven't figured out a way of stretching an idea out beyond songs so I can't see how that could possibly work. I haven't really got any ambitions in that field unless I can write a well-written 600-page song!

The tour for 'Candylion' was characterised by a spectacular stage set that had you performing in a giant TV. Have you got anything as grandiose planned for this tour?

No. I'm opening this tour with an instrumental surf band from Wales called Y Niwl and they're as well as being the world's highest altitude surf band, they're going to set the tone and they're also going to help me play my stuff in a surf style.

The backdrop on the stage is going to be a giant postcard which will put you in a kind of washed-up, Californian hippie state of mind. It'll be a very melancholy, 70s MOR kind of surf kind of approach.

I'd also encourage everyone to bring surf boards and I pledge to sign any surf boards that are brought to the gigs. And if anybody's got any plastic palm trees, they should bring those along too. And your own sand but swimming trunks and bikinis are discouraged because it's winter.

How do you decide what's going to be a Gruff Rhys project and what goes to Super Furry Animals or elsewhere?

I don't make the distinction when I write the song but I suppose it depends on the kind of record that I want to make. At the moment I'm trying to live my life a little bit where I can spend time with my kids and take months off at a time which doesn't lend itself to being in a touring band which I'm sure Super Furry Animals will be again. A couple of the songs on the album were recorded as Super Furry Animals songs but they didn't fit into the album we were making at the time.

The Neon Neon thing was amazing because it gave me a new way of writing songs because the theme came first and then the direction of the music so it became incredibly simple to write. We also narrowed John De Lorean's life down to his ten most spectacular moments such as conception, birth, a fling with Raquel Welsh and the police bust and so on and it's amazing having a theme and writing a song about it.

It would be amazing to do another Neon Neon record at some point but obviously we're all on different continents and Boom Bip is working on a new solo record.

What's the state of play with Super Furry Animals? Some rumours have suggested a split?

No. We made a pact on the first record that we'd be together forever. I think we're becoming a normal band where a lot of bands take five years between albums. We usually take a year or two between albums which means working non-stop so it's nice to live our lives a bit. So when we do get around to recording our tenth it'll have to be pretty spectacular and it's something that shouldn't be done half-assed. There's no rush. I don't think you should rush to make an album for the sake of it.

It's near impossible to keep a pact like that but it's still a beautiful idea and we've been together too long to stop. On the other hand, it's healthy to do other things to keep our brains active and stay sane.