Kelly Jones - Personal Life

Personal Life

Kelly Jones was born to Arwyn and Beryl Jones in the small Welsh ex-mining village of Cwmaman, spending his childhood with them and his two older brothers, Kevin and Lee. Both of his parents worked in factories, however his father also found time to coach youth football and pursue his own singing career. The name of Arwyn's backing band, Oscar and the Kingfishers, earned him the nickname 'Oscar' among friends and family. He went on to secure a record deal with Polydor, who renamed him 'Arwyn Davidson' due to the sheer number of Joneses in the music business at the time. Despite making multiple recordings, sharing The Hollies' manager and supporting slots with the likes of Roy Orbison, Arwyn had minimal mainstream success and only released one single: a cover of the Graham Nash song "Simple Man". During Jones' youth his uncle, a boxing referee, got him interested in the sport, and he later competed at a high level in South Wales. Following this Jones moved onto football, where he played for his county. Jones is known for his preference of wearing vintage clothing, and owns at least twenty leather jackets.

Jones met his first girlfriend, Emma Dunn, a hairdresser, at the age of 15. They stayed together for almost 12 years and just before they split up, they had become engaged. In 2002 Jones went to (his friend and band photographer) Julian Castaldi's home, kicked down his front door, smashed his window with a brick and then vandalised his two cars with a scaffolding pole, whilst under the influence of alcohol. This was because Jones had recently discovered that Castaldi was courting Dunn, four weeks after they had ended their long-term relationship. Castaldi called the police and consequently Jones was arrested. However Castaldi did not press charges, leaving Kelly Jones with a £2000 fine for damages. Jones commented that "What I did was completely out of character - but what he did was wrong", later writing the song "Rainbows and Pots of Gold" in response to the event. After splitting from Dunn, Jones dated an interior designer, Rebecca Walters (Becka). In January 2005 Rebecca and Kelly had their first child together, Lolita Bootsy Jones. In 2007, they had another daughter called Misty Jones. Rebecca and Kelly split shortly after the birth of Misty. He is now dating the MTV journalist Jakki Healy. They have been together since 2008. Unlike numerous musicians and entertainers, Jones and his family have a low profile in tabloid media coverage. Stuart Cable claimed that it was differences between his then partner Lisa Rogers and Kelly Jones' partner Rebecca Walters at the time which violently came to a head publicly at a restaurant in Paris, eventually leading to his sacking by Jones after he made a sarcastic joke about the incident the following day, although Cable was reportedly missing many concerts as he was in a "cocaine clinic" Kelly Jones and Cable patched up their differences a year after they split up, being in regular contact for the 5 years prior to Cable's death, and even performing on stage with bass player Richard Jones, at a long serving Stereophonics crew member and mutual friend's wedding. Both Cable and Jones were due to meet for a drink on the day of Cable's death, which was also the day after the Stereophonics played their highly anticipated Cardiff Stadium gig.