Stereophonics

The story of Stereophonics is usually told as that of three friends from a Welsh mining village who reached the top together. That is not how it happened. Stuart Cable, drummer and co-founder, was sacked in September 2003, a year and a half before the band landed the only singles number one of its whole career, and he died seven years later at the age of forty. "Dakota" was recorded without him. The rest is a group that piled up nine No. 1 albums in the United Kingdom, a figure beaten in that country only by the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and a gravel voice that sang to ordinary people for thirty years. Both things are part of the same account, and the order in which they are told changes everything.

Cwmaman, 1992, and a name that did not last

Stereophonics formed in 1992 in Cwmaman, a mining village in south Wales of little more than a thousand inhabitants. Until 1996 they were called Tragic Love Company. The three of them were Kelly Jones on vocals and guitar, Richard Jones on bass — who, despite the surname, is no relation of his — and Stuart Cable on drums.

Kelly Jones wrote like a chronicler: the characters of the village, the weekend fights, the jobs that run out, the people next door. Word Gets Around, from 1997, and Performance and Cocktails, from 1999, turned them into local heroes and into a big band across Britain. Just Enough Education to Perform, from 2001, brought "Have a Nice Day" and installed them on the radio for good.

Cable was, at that stage, half of the group's public character: talkative, cheerful, the one who spoke when the singer did not want to speak. In parallel he began to build a television career in Wales, with shows of his own, and that is where the crack opened.

Sacked in September 2003

In September 2003 the band sacked Stuart Cable. The reason given was a lack of commitment: he was devoting too much time to television and was missing rehearsals and band engagements. It was not a departure by agreement or a pause: it was a dismissal, and it was decided by the other two founders with whom he had put the band together eleven years earlier.

His replacement, the Argentine Javier Weyler, came in in 2004 and stayed for several years. That change of drummer is the one that usually disappears from the summaries, and it is precisely the one that puts the story in order: when the group's highest moment arrived, the founder was already out.

Dakota was recorded without him

Language. Sex. Violence. Other? was released in 2005, entirely with Weyler on drums. Out of it came "Dakota", a brighter song than almost everything before it, built on a repeated riff and a long crescendo, recalling a youthful love. It reached No. 1 on the Official Singles Chart.

It is their only singles No. 1 in the United Kingdom. Not the first: the only one, in more than thirty years of career. Where the band really piles them up is in albums, and there the figure is remarkable: nine number ones in the United Kingdom, the last with Make 'Em Laugh, Make 'Em Cry, Make 'Em Wait, on 2 May 2025.

With those nine they left behind Oasis, Ed Sheeran and Led Zeppelin, who have eight, and drew level with Bob Dylan and Take That. Ahead of them, in the whole history of the British albums chart, only the Beatles, with fifteen, and the Rolling Stones, with fourteen. It is a fact that is almost never mentioned and that measures the band better than any adjective.

Seven years later, in Llwydcoed

Stuart Cable died on 7 June 2010, aged forty, at his home in Llwydcoed, near Aberdare. The inquest established the cause: he choked on his own vomit as a result of acute alcohol poisoning. He had five times the legal blood alcohol limit and had been drinking heavily for three days. The verdict was accidental death.

Between the sacking and that night seven years passed in which Cable went on working in radio and television and put other bands together. Kelly Jones has paid tribute to him on several occasions since. But the bare fact is uncomfortable and it is better not to soften it: the man who founded Stereophonics did not play on Stereophonics' biggest hit, and what killed him was alcohol.

What to remember

Stereophonics is one of the most consistent British bands of the last thirty years, with nine No. 1 albums in the United Kingdom and a songbook built out of small-town stories and a voice that sounds like cigarettes and small hours. And it is also the band that sacked its founding drummer in September 2003, raised its only singles No. 1 in 2005 without him and buried him in 2010. Both sentences describe the same group.

The death of Stuart Cable, at forty, from acute alcohol poisoning after three days of heavy drinking, is the kind of ending the press dispatches in half a line and that deserves more. In Chile, SENDA's Fono Drogas y Alcohol, 1412, takes calls free of charge and in confidence twenty-four hours a day, including from anyone ringing about a member of their family. It is the only part of this story that can still be changed.

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Sources

Stereophonics is a Welsh rock band formed in 1992 in Cwmaman, in south Wales, by Kelly Jones (vocals and guitar), Richard Jones (bass) and Stuart Cable (drums); Kelly Jones and Richard Jones are not related. Until 1996 the group was called Tragic Love Company. Its first albums were "Word Gets Around" (1997) and "Performance and Cocktails" (1999); "Just Enough Education to Perform" (2001) included "Have a Nice Day". Stuart Cable was sacked from the band in September 2003, for a lack of commitment and for the time devoted to his television career in Wales, and was replaced in 2004 by the drummer Javier Weyler. The album "Language. Sex. Violence. Other?" (2005) was recorded with Weyler and without Cable, and included "Dakota", which reached No. 1 on the Official Singles Chart and is the band's only No. 1 single in the United Kingdom. Stereophonics have nine No. 1 albums in the United Kingdom, the most recent of them "Make 'Em Laugh, Make 'Em Cry, Make 'Em Wait", on 2 May 2025; with that figure they overtook Oasis, Ed Sheeran and Led Zeppelin, who have eight, and drew level with Bob Dylan and Take That, trailing only The Beatles (fifteen) and The Rolling Stones (fourteen). Stuart Cable died on 7 June 2010, aged 40, at his home in Llwydcoed, near Aberdare; the inquest determined that he choked on his own vomit as a result of acute alcohol poisoning, with five times the legal blood alcohol limit and after three days of heavy drinking, and the verdict was accidental death. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Official Charts Company, BBC News and other press coverage.