‘We got a drive-by egging in Baltimore’: Super Furry Animals on making The Man Don’t Give a Fuck

Dafydd Ieuan, drums, vocalsGruff was the first person I ever met who could just churn out songs – good, catchy ones. I joined his band Ffa Coffi Pawb, but by 1992 they’d split and Gruff and I were living in Cardiff, as were Bunf, Guto and my brother Cian, the other future Furries. We started out doing techno sets, and I had a little home studio where we demoed ideas for songs. Our first singer, the actor Rhys Ifans, slept on a mattress in the corner.I had this Steely Dan album, Countdown to Ecstasy. There were bits I really liked. One lyric from the song Show Biz Kids – “You know, they don’t give fuck about anybody else” – just tickled me, because I was very immature. I still am. The song is about rich kids in LA partying and doing coke or whatever, but I thought if we took that line in isolation it could be used as a protest anthem. At the time, I was thinking of the John Major government, but over the years it’s proved applicable to every shower that’s come along.We took the idea to our producer Gorwel Owen. In his studio, he looped the