A musician who once supported Lost Prophets on a UK tour has revealed what Ian Watkins was like behind the scenes where he kept his distance and acted oddly during their only interaction
A musician who once supported Lost Prophets opened up about his “bizarre” backstage interaction with disgraced Ian Watkins.
The notorious paedophile died inside HMP Wakefield earlier this month after an alleged attack in his cell – and a man who once toured the UK with the former rockstar has since given insight into his strange character.
“We toured with them (Lost Prophets) for about six weeks and it was abundantly clear that something was up,” Josh Friend, member of the group Modestep, said.
He recalled that things were “just a little bit off” from the first soundcheck and that although the rest of his bandmates were nice, Ian was supposedly rarely in the same room as them.
And speaking on the Andrew Gold Heretics podcast, he added: “I only had one interaction with him the entire six weeks we were on tour which was super weird.”
Before explaining what happened, he offered the following context: “Such a bizarre interaction… so just to give you an idea of his mental state around this tour, some of the dates he would show up on stage wearing a Parka and sunglasses.
“He would just sit on the floor, put the microphone down on the stage, and just sit there the entire show while the band are all just standing there like, ‘What do we do?’”
Then, opening up about his sole conversation with the frontman, he continued: “He was clearly doing a lot of drugs at this point.
“So the biggest show of the tour was Cardiff Arena. And one of our main bits of equipment stopped working just before the doors are about to open. So we literally had it open, were soldering something together inside a piece of equipment, literally minutes before doors open.
“And he just walked over to me, with his Parka on and sunglasses, looked at me, I was like, ‘oh’, [he] waved his hand and went ‘everything is going to be alright’ and then walked off. And that was the only interaction I had with him the entire tour. Pretty weird.”
The Cardiff gig took place on April 28, 2012, and the following year, in December 2013, Watkins was sentenced after pleading guilty to a string of child sex offences, included the attempted rape of a baby.
And after being jailed, Mr Justice Royce said the case “plunged into new depths of depravity”.
Offering a glimpse into Watkins’ mindset before he was eventually arrested, Josh spoke of how “distant” and “weird” he was throughout the tour.
He added: “He was just kept away from everyone. I think he had his own tour bus. I think the other band kept completely separate from him.
“The only time we would see him was on stage and a lot of the time he was either not singing, or they would have a backing track with his voice on it and he was messing up all the words and sometimes just laying down on the floor and just not performing at all. So you could tell his mind was elsewhere, you know, other stuff going on.”
Watkins, 48, lost his life earlier this month, and inmates Rashid Gedel, 25, and Samuel Dodsworth, 43, were charged with murder over the alleged attack. This week, two other men, 23 and 39, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.