It’s not often you get a band biography written with such passion as To Hell and Back with Catatonia, Brian Wright’s epic story of music, recovery and battling against the odds. Usually, you get some two-bit hack or a ‘fan’ wanting to cash in on someone else’s success… they string together a few quotes from interviews long past, they dig up old photos, and maybe get an ‘old friend’ of the band to spill the beans. They then sell a bucket load of books to fans hungry for information, without ever having checked whether what they’ve published was actually correct in the first place.
Despite Catatonia’s recent split, To Hell and Back remains relevant because it’s not a kiss-and-tell, it’s not about Cerys’ love life, or about exposing the ‘real Catatonia’. This book is about the long, hard journey of one fan from the depths of despair back to the ordinary world, a journey that is just as fascinating now as it was when Catatonia were accepting awards and denying rumours. This book stands head and shoulders above the majority of band biographies currently on sale because you know it’s been written with care and consideration, and you trust Brian implicitly, because this book is his story as much as it is Catatonia’s.
Brian Wright had been in the music industry for a long time before his life fell to bits. He’d played in rock and pop bands, and as a solo folk artist he’d worked in venues and he’d helped to manage bands in and around Sheffield. Music was in his blood, it was a huge part of his life, until a series of events made him give up almost entirely.
“After my second wife died,” explains Brian in his open and down-to-earth way, “I had a very bad brain haemorrhage, and then my mother died. Whilst I was trying to recover from that I suddenly realised that I’d lost everything, and I started hitting the bottle, wanting to get out.”
Luckily, before Brian could drink himself to death, he heard something in the music of an unknown Welsh band that triggered a strong reaction deep in his subconscious.
“There was something about Catatonia’s music that clicked,” he says, “and it was the music [not their appearance], because I was in a different room. I hadn’t a clue who they were, but my friends found out and took me to more of their gigs, and then the gradual recovery process started from that. They awoke the music in me again, and over the years I picked up all the things that I’d left behind. As it dawned on me that I’d nearly thrown everything away, it was my love of music and belief in music that drove me back.”
That first chance encounter in Clwb Ifor Bach, perhaps in ‘93 – Brian’s not sure exactly when the gig was because “dates from that time are basically just a blur” – gave Brian the motivation to get his life back in order, even though now he refuses to accept that his was rough.
“Well, I won’t say I had a hard time, because you live each day as it comes, and you can’t plan your way out of any situation, you just go from day to day. Looking back, yeah, to some people it might look like a hard time, but at least I had all the bad stuff condensed into a short period.”
During this time, though, Catatonia were underachieving with great regularity and battling through problems that would have made less determined people just throw in the towel and give up.
“If they hadn’t gone through all that crap, and hadn’t come through, then I know I wouldn’t have. I think it was Oasis who said ‘never put your trust in a rock and roll band’, but that was the only thing I could put my trust in, I’d blown everything else, and I was just grateful that they were gonna be there to give me that stepping stone. Not knowing them personally at that time, I knew there was no guarantee that they were always going to be there, but that was just something I pushed to the back of my mind.
“I was too frightened of talking to them, or getting too close to them, in case the sort of mental bonding that I’d got with the music was shattered by whether they thought I was an idiot, or whether I thought they were crap, as people. I couldn’t risk that. I had to listen to them for the music, there was no way I could take on board any feelings for individuals.”
Wanting to know more about Catatonia and what they were up to, Brian started to look for information, but there was little available and many press releases were no more than stories made up by the band for a bit of publicity.
“Initially, I found out a lot of stuff about Catatonia via talking to fans, but nobody really seemed to know too much about them. When I tried to get information about the band from the record company [Ankst Music] and people in the Welsh music industry, they made it quite clear that they loved my company and would talk to me about anything, but they wouldn’t talk about each other, which I totally respected, I thought that was brilliant. But it didn’t get me away from the fact that I couldn’t get any information about them, apart from the stuff that came out in bog standard press releases, which was nearly all fiction.
“I was fortunate that I’d managed to get information on a sort of fan-link basis – people used to give each other all the details that they’d got, and anything that they’d found out. After a while, I seemed to be one of the few people that had quality information, not scandal, but stuff regarding the history of the band. At that time I came across Welsh Bands Weekly and got chatting with Debs, and I was amazed to find out that I knew things about Catatonia that she didn’t!”
Debs encouraged Brian to think about writing a book, a thought that he’d had around the same time.
“By that time I’d got like this strange feeling that I had to get this all out. I thought I had information that I could share with other fans that wouldn’t upset the band, but which would explain what they were about and give a reasonable history of them.”
Initially, the band and their management didn’t seem to think that there was anything in the Catatonia story worth writing about and Brian was given the brush off.
“They said that there were no plans for an official biography, could I come back in 12 months and they might have made their mind up. Then Debs suggested that I just write a chapter, show it to the band, show it to the management, and show them what it’s like.”
After a lot of hard work on the initial chapter plan, and having started the first draft, Brian found out that another unofficial biography was coming out, making the search for a publisher willing to take a risk and agree to publish a second unofficial biography that much harder. Brian’s commitment to the quality of his book and to Catatonia, however, won over both the band and the publishers.
“I had given a commitment to the band, which I kept to, that I would never go ahead and publish the book if they had any objections to it and if they had any problem with anything that was in it, I would take it out. When they became aware that there was another biography coming out, the band said, ‘Yeah, go ahead and get a publisher for yours, we have no objections’.”
To Hell and Back with Catatonia is a fascinating read, as much to discover how Brian coped with his troubles as to learn more about Catatonia. But for an author to reveal so much about his own life, and for that life to be so entwined with the history of a band, is unusual.
“Originally I wasn’t going to put anything in about myself, it was going to be just purely a Catatonia biography, but people thought I’d got a particular slant [i.e. his own personal story], so when I followed that through, the band’s private lives didn’t come into it ‑ there’s more about my private life than there is about theirs. If I’d gone into their private lives, I would have had to go into more depth about mine, and that would have been a four volume set!”
The book has taken two and a half years to reach the light of day and has been a labour of love for Brian.
“Whether it got published or not, I had to write it,” he says. He’s keen to emphasise, though, that he’ll not be making any money out of the book at all.
“The royalties from the book are going to PACT, a children’s cancer charity which is based in Sheffield but it covers a good bit of central England. The book’s been an opportunity for me to put something back, having taken a hell of a lot out, and this is the ideal vehicle for me to do that. I’m grateful that Catatonia have given me my life back, so it’s only fair to give something back if I can.”
From anyone else, that might sound sanctimonious and trite. From Brian it is an expression of heartfelt gratitude that he had the luck to come across Catatonia at a time when nothing mattered and life was a burden.
One of the things that’s most notable about this book is that none of the photos, by Dave Hardacre, have ever been published before, which makes a nice change from books that just trot out old and jaded press shots.
“Dave’s collection of photographs is brilliant! He read a draft of the book, and said ‘I’ve got to have an input to this book!’ He knows the band, they know him, they each respect each other, and there were so many gigs mentioned in the book that he had actually photographed.
“It was easy to pick the photographs that should go in,” Brian explains, “but it was harder to leave the ones out that couldn’t go in. We tried to balance the photographs out to give everybody a fair share of the limelight, although obviously most of the photographs are of Cerys. Dave’s got photographs going back to the very early days, so we could cover their entire career – people haven’t really appreciated a lot of the older photographs. But what we didn’t want to do was use photographs that had already been out, or use ones that were similar. We tried to capture moments that were, to us, quite unique in their history and in Dave’s photographic career.”
Of course, writing any book about Catatonia is a hazardous affair – they are notorious for making up stories and feeding the media a load of rubbish. How on earth could anyone sift the wheat from the bits that look just like wheat?
“I don’t even know if it is all correct,” admits Brian. “It’s correct from my point of view, it’s correct from the information I’ve been given from members of the band, yet I’m not going to put my hand up and say that I’d be naïve enough to believe everything that Catatonia have told me.”
But surely, over the years it must get easier to know when they’re telling porkies?
“It was easier to spot things that I thought weren’t true, but they are such a band of piss-takers, that anything could be true. There were some stories I knew were true, and some that I knew weren’t, but it was the grey area that was the problem. When you follow a band so closely, you get to know what people are capable of, and what they aren’t.”
After a friend of the band suggested that Brian put together a tick-chart to show which stories were true or false, Brian drew up a list and gave it to the band.
“I’ve kept the returned copy,” he smiles, “with the handwriting on that told me whether certain stories were true or not. So if anyone comes round and says ‘Who told you these were true?’, I’ve still got it!”
The problem with a biography of living people is deciding where to stop.
“The ideal cut off point would have been when they went into hibernation for the 18 months, but with the other book coming out, and with trying to get a publisher, the last chapter was always going to be left open until the last minute. The unfortunate thing was that we knew the album and the single were coming out shortly, but we couldn’t hang on for the title. I was 99 per cent certain that the single was going to be Stone by Stone, but didn’t know the album title, so we had to go ahead and print without it. It would have been nice to include that, but then you’d be thinking, ‘Well yeah, it’d be nice to see how the single went’, and then the album, and so you never finish. In some ways it’s out of date when it comes out because there’s no new songs in it, but then again, biographies about living people are always out of date.”
Being so close to the band, having seen pointers in the past, did Brian know that a split was imminent?
“They had repeatedly told me that there was not going to be a split,” he says, “and then one night Paul approached me and said ‘We always said you would be the first to know.’ I knew then that it was all over. I spent an hour talking with Paul and his partner. He asked me not to say anything about the split and told me when the press announcement would be released.
“My interpretation, and that is all it is, is that they had been trying to salvage the band for about 18 months but it finally became apparent that they could no longer continue. I have been very fortunate in the fact that I have received two items of correspondence from Cerys since the split and I cannot find anyone else who has heard anything. I have seen Mark and Paul several times and we have had some good conversations, so nothing has changed there.”
So what does the future hold for the members of Catatonia? It seems that the lads are set to continue in some form:
“Paper Scissors Stone was actually written 12 months before it was recorded so there is a store of unreleased material in the boys’ locker. They have been busy writing and rehearsing since the split and are striving to continue. They have mentioned some ideas to me but nothing as yet is confirmed, but I am certain they will be back sooner rather than later.
“I have offered any assistance and support that they may require and the same offer has been extended to Cerys. It was nice of Paul to tell me that ‘This time you'll be with us from the start.’”
In hindsight, all the signs were there to be seen, and Brian details some of the problems in To Hell and Back, so it must be painful to see things turn out this way.
“On the one hand, it annoys me that I could identify all the problems well in advance and was justifiably critical of the band and a certain individual's management. In Cerys’ case it nearly destroyed her - she has been done no favours.
“But what upsets me is that I wrote the book from the heart, and the epilogue was written first. It was intended to tell a story and give a warning about the perils that Cerys and hence Catatonia were facing. It was not written for personal gain. But because the other, unauthorised, biography suffered from delays, the release of mine was also delayed. Hence what was intended to be a warning for the band was ultimately consigned to be an obituary.”
It’s a crying shame that Catatonia, one of Welsh music’s brightest lights, should come to such an end. It’s ludicrous that no one stopped to think for a moment about the pressures on Cerys and the boys, and whether their workload could be sustained. It’s sad that no one in a position to really do something actually bothered. Whether that was down to wilful neglect or plain idiocy we may never know, but what we are left with is a back catalogue that includes some amazing songs, the enduring image of Cerys and the lads giving it their all, and a book which is as touching as it is truthful.
It’s hard to see how Catatonia, and their fans, could fail to like To Hell and Back, with its gritty reality, and its love and respect for the band coupled with a forthright honesty – Brian’s not afraid to criticise decisions that he feels weren’t in the band’s best interests. But it’s not an obituary, in the end, it’s a celebration of talent, perseverance and survival… lets hope that the band learn from the fan, and see that there is, always, a way forward to a brighter future. |
