Putting the ales into Wales

Jeff Evans discovers the beers and breweries of Wales

Growing up in South Wales in the 1970s, my interests were rock music and beer. Sadly, there was not much to shout about locally on either account.

The big bands seldom crossed the Severn Bridge and there was little of indigenous musical note. It was the same with beer. I might have acquired a taste for beer but I went thirsty looking for it in a valley where all the pubs served factory-brewed fizzy keg bitter.

Thankfully, time is a great healer and, like my spotty face, the complexion of both bands and beer in Wales has improved immeasurably. Indeed, there is a strange analogy between the fates of the two subjects. In the late-70s/early-80s, local music heroes were like flattened hedgehogs – rigidly middle of the road. There was Shirley Bassey, and Tom Jones, before his rehabilitation into the rock fold.

If you had a good memory, there were also Amen Corner and Man, and if you could bear the rasp, Bonnie Tyler. One-hit wonders such as Racing Cars revved up the charts and then roared off into the distance. A lot of people liked Shakin’ Stevens, but I always wondered why he couldn’t shake his own.

Today, on the other hand, Wales is one of the United Kingdom’s rock hotbeds. The Manics, Stereophonics, Feeder, Super Furry Animals, Catatonia, Lostprophets, Bullet for My Valentine, Funeral for a Friend – pretty impressive name-dropping for someone uncomfortably the wrong side of 40, don’t you think? – have put the Principality well and truly on the world’s rock atlas, and the ex.....

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By Jeff Evans

Section : Regional Focus

Page number : 35