To be honest I’ve remained fairly quiet when it comes to speaking online about the subject so this will be one of the first times I’ve been able to fully express my feelings on it (I’m by no means a writer in any respect so if this seems drawn out/poorly structured/a load of crap/etc. please bear with me).
I’m going to start off by saying that for many years Lostprophets were undoubtedly one of my favourite bands; I remember first seeing them on Kerrang when I was round at my Gran’s house aged 12. Nu-metal was the “in thing” and I was just getting into bands like Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Korn and so on and I remember seeing the video for Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja for the first time – skateboarders, baggy jeans, spiked hair, DJ decks, everything just looking so early 2000’s. “Woah… These guys are cool!” my 12 year old self thought. In years to come my opinion wouldn’t change even slightly, nu-metal is awesome! Deal with it ;).
Anyway since that day I had been a huge fan of Lostprophets; I’d bought their albums and listened to them countless times, most of my top played tracks on iTunes (sadly an Apple product…) a while back were some of their tracks. The thing I love most about music is how you can relate to the mood or emotion of a certain song and how you can remember how you felt or where you were whenever you hear that song played. That’s one of the things I loved most about Lostprophets.
I spent a lot time in high school listening to them and I can vividly remember both the good and the bad times because of their songs. To side track slightly, I was what is referred to as a “mosher” in high school. Being a mosher wasn’t cool if you went to the school that I did. The social hierarchy for the most part (in the early years anyway) seemed to be that if you were a ned (in other words a complete fucking tosser douchebag arsehole waste of space) then you were looked upon like you were the Dog’s Bollocks. I know that a lot of people I know can relate to getting a hard time from these knuckle draggers for liking heavy music, but I digress…
Even out of high school and into uni I continued listening to Lostprophets and even went to see Ian DJ up in Floor 5 at the Union one night. There were a lot of people there who were very excited to see him, myself included. I remember standing watching him and thinking “he looks a bit off… He must be on something…” however after asking somebody about it the next day I was told that he was straight edge – no drinking, no drugs. Seems fair. Must just be a bit of an odd guy...
Which brings me to the day that I found out that Ian was being accused of paedophilia. I remember being on a graphic design internship and taking a break to quickly check Facebook to catch up on how people “can’t wait for it to be the weekend” or what their thoughts and opinions on the weather are when I noticed a post that I vaguely recollect as saying “So, turns out that Ian Watkins is a paedophile”. I ignored it at first thinking it was just somebody trying to be funny about a band that they didn’t like, however as I went further down my Facebook feed I noticed the same thing appearing over and over again. To confirm my curiosity I did a search and what everyone was saying turned out to be true; Ian Watkins was accused of being a paedophile.
Still a massive fan of Watkins and his band, I didn’t know what to think. My first thought was that it was all just a big mix-up and that they got the wrong guy. My second thought was “what if it’s actually true?” Surely someone like him who so many people adore and look up to couldn’t be capable of what he is accused of?
A few days later it came to light that he had “furiously denied” the claims against him. That gave me some relief in that if he was so confident to make a statement such as this then it may have been some kind of set-up, a hoax or even a mistake. I occasionally did searches on the web every other month or so to see if there had been any developments. For the most part, nothing had happened except for when Lostprophets made an announcement on their website stating that they would no longer continue as a band. Perhaps they were breaking up because they thought that, even if Ian was innocent, their reputation would be tarnished just from being connected in any way with a case such as this?
Last month however, once again via Facebook (I know a good bunch of wannabe news broadcasters, eh?), it was coming up all over the place “Ian Watkins Pleads Guilty”. I could hardly believe it. I know this whole article probably sounds like it’s written by some daft fan boy but when you listen to any band for as long as I did Lostprophets you build up a connection with them and their music and, being very honest, this news was very difficult to take in. Somebody who I looked up to when I was younger actually turned out to be this vile creature barely worthy of being referred to as a human being. The list of crimes that he had plead guilty to were absolutely sickening… And to confirm what I thought when I saw him DJing, it turned out he was off his head most of the time on who knows what…
I knew that his sentence was to be passed on the 18th of December so while on a break at work I decided to look up on a news site to what he’d got. 35 years… I read further into the article and found that he had referred to what he had done as “mega-lolz”. How does someone so happily throw away 35 years of their life and not even show so much as a shred of guilt or remorse? Ian Watkins is clearly a very ill man and there is no question that he got what he deserved (not that his aforementioned statement did him any favours…)
I know a lot of folk are saying that they’ll never listen to Lostprophets again, that’s fine and I completely understand why. I wish I could say it would be as easy for me to say the same however. The band made some incredible albums, my favourite being Start Something, and the quality of the work that was put in by all of the members hasn’t changed even in light of everything that has happened. I know a lot of people will disagree and I accept that, but even with that being said it would be difficult to ever listen to those albums in the same way ever again. Whether it be Fake Sound Of Progress, Sway, Wake Up, 4am Forever or Hello Again – all songs that I have very fond memories of – as much as I enjoy the work itself it will be almost impossible to listen to those tracks and not be reminded of the terrible things that Ian Watkins has done.
Thank you for reading.
