In the early 2000s, one rock band from Pontypridd, Wales, achieved dizzying heights of international success: The Lostprophets.
Now, the band is known more as a stain on the industry after frontman Ian Watkins was jailed over horrific crimes on December 18, 2013.
The disgraced singer, 48, was killed last week while serving his 35-year sentence after being convicted of 13 child sexual offences, including conspiring to rape an 11-month-old baby and three counts of sexual assault involving children.
‘It should go without saying that the primary victims of Watkins’ atrocities are the children he violated,’ friend of the band, Ian Winwood, told Metro.
‘[But] it’s important to say that also caught in the bomb blast, though, were innocent people.’
Left in the wake as the harrowing truth of Watkins’ crimes was unveiled were his four shellshocked bandmates.
Lee Gaze, Mike Lewis, Stuart Richardson, and Jamie Oliver were tarnished with suspicion as the Lostprophets were relegated to a disturbing footnote in music history.
‘He poisoned the well of shared achievements,’ Winwood said. ‘He stole their past. Certainly, up until the moment he died, he stole their future, and they are completely without a voice to bemoan this publicly, because how can you?
‘How can you complain about that in the shadow of what Ian did to the young children? What do your complaints sound like compared to that? They’ve become voiceless.’
The Lostprophets, who had secured two top 10s and a number one in the US, disbanded immediately, but the real people were left to come to terms with the predator in their ranks.
While things had been rocky between Watkins and Gaze, Lewis, Richardson and Oliver for several years, this was still a man they had known — albeit not completely — for two decades.
‘I mean, imagine hearing that and the worst, the absolute worst, that you thought was that your singer was weird and heavily addicted to drugs,’ Winwood shared.
Bassist Richardson has two little girls, telling Winwood he is haunted by concerns that he may have left them in the room alone with Watkins at some point.
Watkins admitted to using his celebrity status to abuse children belonging to two fans, appearing in a 17-minute video abusing one child in the presence of the baby’s mother.
Journalist Winwood first met the Lostprophets in the early 00s, interviewing them regularly for Kerrang Magazine and sticking close by throughout their rise and fall.
His unique friendship with the band was documented in his book Bodies: Life and Death in Music, which revealed an uncomfortable early glimpse into the rock and roll lifestyle on offer.
Before the band was even signed, Winwood claimed he witnessed an industry insider provide the group with pornographic videos and offered that they could select a performer to spend the night with.
The Lostprophets declined.
Eventually, fame corrupted the singer and Watkins dove headfirst into heavy and blatant abuse of drugs and alcohol.
His wild partying and erratic behaviour enabled him to disguise the true monster beneath — but still wore thin on his bandmates.
‘I was aware of tensions between the musical core and Ian long, long before the end,’ Winwood shared. ‘I can only imagine the sort of drain of being in a band with him increasingly, as those years passed by, certainly in the final five or six years.’
Watkins failed to turn up for interviews or even shows, which resulted in a flash of rage and a beating from Richardson, who later apologised.
‘The next day he came up and he was crying his eyes out,’ he told Winwood for the book. ‘He just kept saying it: “No, I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.”
‘At the time I thought, “What is that all about?” Now I think it was the closest he came with us to an admission of guilt.’
Winwood described the man he once considered a friend as ‘impossible to interview’, ‘unmanageable’, and ‘unlikable.’
The rift between Watkins and his former friends continued to grow, with the band itself hanging on by a thread in the face of a declining career well past its heyday.
This is partly why Winwood believes, wholeheartedly, that the remaining four did not know about the vile crimes committed by their bandmate.
He argued: ‘Consider this; that the other members knew of what he was doing, and in order to keep the show on the road, they conspired to keep it quiet. From their own wives as well, with whom some of them had children.
‘That’s five people that are required to do that, and they’re all united in saying, “we are going to keep this terrible secret quiet for the sake of a music career that’s causing us misery”. It would poison someone and it would leak.’
In the end, it was repeated drug smuggling and possession accusations which resulted in South Wales Police searching his home.
There, they recovered a total of 27 terabytes of data storage from computers, which had a reference to abusing children as the password.
On average, one terabyte drive is capable of holding 472 hours of broadcast-quality video or 150 hours of high-definition recording.
In an instant, the band became an elephant in the room, decimating their legacy over the grotesque crimes of one man.
‘One of their songs is not going to be revived,’ Winwood said. ‘Like, they’re not going to appear on a Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, or a future equivalent of those kinds of films. It’s now toxic.’
Winwood’s feelings about Watkins’ death are complicated but he said that at least the ticking clock counting down to his release is gone, the band and his victims no longer have to live waiting for this to be dragged up again.
‘I find it very difficult to not trace that trajectory in my mind,’ Winwood shared of listening to Lostprophets’ music now. ‘I probably won’t, because I can just hear him.
‘I knew him for 12 years before he was arrested, and for the first six years of those, I would have considered him my friend.’
He expressed hope that the surviving bandmates could find a way to reclaim and ‘salvage’ their music from Watkins’ ‘toxic dump’.
‘It’s a source of terrible and legitimate sadness for all the young survivors for whom Ian was imprisoned in the first instance,’ Winwood said. ‘But the band are also survivors of that tragedy.’
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