Credit: Press
It was a shock when 36 year old Ian Watkins was jailed for 29 years following a string of child sex offences. It was a shock to the world of music that anyone would do something that incredibly unthinkable. More importantly it was a shock to his former Lostprophets band members.
No one wants believe that a person that you’ve spent the majority of your adult life with, partying, hanging out with and generally building a career with, was in fact someone completely different. That behind the public face they were putting on that they were in fact doing some seriously horrific acts.
Recently the ex-band Lostprophets members opened up to BBC’s Newsbeat, who only want to start looking forwards with their lives and focus on their new band No Devotion.
No Devotion bassist Stuart Richardson makes it clear – “Even though I was completely done with him, I hoped it was all a mistake, he was innocent, he had to be.The first time, we knew the band was done. You can’t go back from that.”
In the interview with the BBC, the band members explained how shocked and ultimately angry they were about everything. Fellow guitarist Lee Gaze had this to saw: “There was two sets of it [shock] because there were the accusations – which was one thing. And then there was the actual, ‘Yeah I did do it’ which was a year later. He dragged that out for a year, so we got hit by it twice.”
Now the band are just looking to move on. They’ve formed their own new band, No Devotion, with ex-Thursday front man Geoff Rickly
Stuart Richardson has admitted how nervous they were before their first show in Cardiff: “We just wanted people to love the songs as much as we did and to know that it was accepted and it wasn’t just a pity party. We wanted people to know we were a band and not just these guys who went through something bad.”
This is a new step for the band and a chance for them to prove that they don’t need the monocle of Lostprophets in order to be as important to the music scene. The next step is to try and get judged on their songs, and the new band instead of what they’ve done in the past. It’ll be a tough ride, but I believe they have the passion and devotion to do it.
