The prospect of seeing one of my favourite bands for the first time ever, in the cosy confines of the Academy 2 in Newcastle spurred a dangerous level of excitement in me (In fact, I can only compare my excitement to Christmas 1992 when I received Batman Returns on VHS). I’d imagined the already rich tone of James Dean Bradfield’s Les Paul made more gilded than Snoop Dogg’s wrists when hemmed in to that walk-in-wardrobe of a room. I’d envisioned being well within smelling distance of the irrepressible Nicky Wire’s dress and assortment of feather boas that challenged Dame Shirley’s nom de plume as Wales’ primo Diva. So imagine my horror when I arrive at the Academy and I quickly learn that the gig has been moved to the more spacious environs of the main Academy hall. Still, this is the Manic Street Preachers, a band I have listened to and lionised fervently since my teens. This is the band I’ve been trying so hard to cross off my list for years and now they’re on my doorstep and I’m here. We weren’t going to be treat to a peepshow but I could still catch a strong enough whiff of Nicky Wire’s feathers.
The advent of my love affair with the Manics coincides with a period in their career that most ‘purists’ consider the moment they ran out of steam. In 1996 I was eleven years old and my musical palette consisted of a bit of Jeff Buckley, Talking Heads, Jesus Lizard…... Actually, I’m on a revisionist tirade there. Let’s just throw caution to the wind and be truthful, even if it comes at the cost of whatever credibility I might have had. My palette (term now used loosely) actually consisted of the venerable Aqua and The Real McCoy. Oh, I also had a lot of time for Snow’s ‘Informer.’ I was also busying myself with Tazos and Adidas popper-pants, living blissfully in a World of Hubba Bubba bubblegum - a World where East 17 seemed like the nadir of ‘edge.’
Then everything changed in the space of 4 minutes and 16 seconds.
In that moment I heard, for the very first time, A Design for Life. I hadn’t left the black and white of Kansas for Oz, I’d left the hokey Technicolor of pop and found myself in the sepia-tinged World of…….well, I wasn’t quite sure, but it sure made a lot of sense to me. Ever since that moment, hearing the power of the undulating strings carry the words I knew bore seismic weight, despite being unaware of their meaning, made me realise the true force of art and the hold it can have over you.
The Manic Street Preachers ushered in the formative years of my relationship with music. So much in your youth informs the person you become and I’d say that’s true of music too. I grew up on a steady diet of Motown and I still to this day get a huge kick out of melodic bass lines. The first cassette I owned was Bat Out of Hell and to this day I still groove to bombastic camp with all the vigour of, well, Meatloaf. Yet it wasn’t just the music that enamoured me to them. This was the first band I had sought that had an aesthetic, a set of ideals and an entire package. Up until then I had Steps. Now I was privy to the way music informs so many facets of life; fashion, culture, thought itself. The Manics did that for me. So as I stood in the bingo-hall-cum-hip-music-belt, all of the above not at all lost on me; indeed all of the above obnoxiously rasping and guffawing at me; I - and I say this with intense sincerity – almost wee’d my pants in giddiness.
Because the gig had been re-located from upstairs, the main Academy hall was sparsely-filled with no more than three hundred competition winners. The bar to the rear was cordoned off in an attempt to mask this but there was no way of veiling the gaping thoroughfares that forged their way through the dance floor, like dribbling tributaries. It’s all very disconcerting; my first ever Manics gig and it all seems oddly….flat. I glanced around at the attendant bunch and nobody seemed especially enthused. Most of the crowd were well-worn in the face, decked in denim and had probably seen the Manic Street Preachers ten or twenty times before. After all, the Manic Street Preachers are a band that boasts a vehemently passionate fan base and they have been around since before the Internet. Indeed, I am accompanied to the gig by a gentleman who is experiencing the band for the 22nd time. This makes me feel not only a little inferior but also conscious of my embarrassingly xaggerated excitement.
A local and suitably odious radio DJ abruptly appears to half-baked ‘boos’ to let us know that tonight will be broadcast on the airwaves at some point. Then, without any great commotion for a band that crusaded on controversy since they left Blackwood, Wales to ‘sell more records than Guns n’ Roses then break up,’ they stride on stage. There they are. The unassuming Sean behind the drums, his cousin James up front and the glamorous Wire to his left. Isn’t it strange when you finally come to realise something that has only, up to that point figured in your imagination? The reception is desperately polite but again, rather subdued. ‘Tough crowd.’ James quips before launching straight into ‘Motorcycle Emptiness.’
Before I can even reconcile what is yards away from me I’m already presented with possibly the greatest song from the band’s canon. I can take or leave James’ efforts at aping Slash, but lyrically and as a whole Motorcycle Emptiness is nigh on flawless as a bona fide rock and roll anthem. I find it peculiar that MSP would open with such a strong suit but I like that they would dare to set the bar so high from the getgo. The song takes us back to a time when savvy media manipulation, sloganeering and iconoclasm took precedence over everything else in the band. This succeeded in gaining attention; attention that was not always complimentary, as lampooned in the sarcastic valentine that is ‘You Love Us.’ The whole point of the Manics back then was to get ideas across and discuss grander topics than the coevals of their day. Originality was viewed as redundant and is evidence in both ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ and ‘You Love Us.’ On each song Bradfield is undeniably shredding, but with very little new to offer, musically. What was lacking in ingenuity was foaming with attitude and this along with the aesthetic as cannily rendered by one Richard James Edwards, drew in a huge following to offset the haters.
James Dean Bradfield is displaying his ‘one paltry move’ as he calls it (the one where he hops around on one leg whilst playing guitar) with great aplomb. From the onset it’s clear he is tour ready; the flab he’s steadily accrued over the years (thanks in part to alcoholism which he conquered, thankfully) is rather toned and he’s grown his hair out. He’s also ditched the Marks and Spencer’s garb that plagued his wardrobe from 1997 onwards and opted for black denim and DMs, which gives him an understated cool to go with his front man histrionics. James Dean Bradfield, so very nearly named Clint Eastwood Bradfield, who grew up a Woody Allen lookalike, is finding his cool again after losing his way following the disappearance of Richey.
Following on from the one-man-guitar-tour-de-force that is Motorcycle Emptiness, the band launch into the number 2 hit ‘Your Love Alone is Not Enough’ which keeps the momentum going. Bradfield is playing with breathtaking finesse, carrying most of the guitar parts single-handedly, as he has done for the majority of the Manics’ career (Richey famously mimed his guitar parts live and made minimal contributions to records). There’s a quick pause for a few ‘Hellos’; James and Nicky in seemingly familiar company, talking to the swarm as if they were old friends. Nicky in particular is in a talkative mood which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Replete in 50s pin-up sunglasses (but sadly not a florid dress) Wire springs a few jokes but doesn’t make any caustic comments, certainly none on a par with his infamous ‘Glastonbury’ and ‘Michael Stipe’ utterances. That’s what’s so loveable about Wire - he is outspoken, but not in an obnoxious way. He simply knows what he likes and what he does not. It’s his conviction that has helped carry the Manics through to the present day. As the visionary of sorts, he has, along with Bradfield’s musicianship taken the band into its third decade with great fervour and passion.
Brand new material is rolled out next in Postcards From a Young Man’s lead single ‘It’s Not War (It’s Just the End of Love)’ which demonstrates this passion first hand, along with Wire’s adept ability at penning a solid lyric and Bradfield’s talent for writing a soaring rock song. The sad thing I find about the Manics is that they are split into two clear and distinctive eras – Richey and post-Richey. A lot of fans believe that the band troughed when Richey was declared missing and the Holy Bible is widely regarded as their Magnum Opus. It actually unnerves me when a so-called fan blithely states ‘They used to be good, but they went crap when that Richey left.’ I came along just in time for Everything Must Go, but I love a lot of the work that was done with Richey and I actually regard Edwards as the finest lyricist of his Generation. However, I think when the Manics moved away from their misguided attempts at stadium-rock and began to explore more expansive landscapes, their musicianship flourished. I would be so bold as to declare my love for not only Everything Must Go but also Know Your Enemy and Lifeblood. To me, these are albums that, whilst being guilty of veering into coffee-table territory, still show far more ideas musically than anything from Generation Terrorists or Gold Against the Soul. Call me a heathen, go on.
An acoustic version of ‘You Stole the Sun From My Heart’ steals the attention of all around me and validates my opinions on the later albums. Here, James’ voice is given free-reign to own the melody, his achingly high pitch plumes at once delicately and abrasively. Here he is displaying why he should not only be regarded as one of the finest guitarists in the World, but also one of rock’s finest vocalists. That he is capable of stirring so much within you with his elastic and flowing approach here and conversely with his serrated tact in The Holy Bible’s ‘Faster’ is a testament to his virtuosity. Too many rock vocalists try to sound like the real deal, relying heavily on faux-gruffness whereas James sings high and sings truthfully, without affectation.
The Thinline Telecaster is out. One member of the audience shouts ‘Kevin Carter!’ to which James, smiling, ripostes; ‘Get the man a prize!’ Wire springs around jerkily, his legs looking longer than James’ entire gait. As a unit, the band are extraordinarily tight, with extra help coming in on trumpet for ‘…Carter’s’ middle-eight. I didn’t suppose Sean could simultaneously play his instrumental on brass along with the drums, but it would have been novel to see him try. Next the fans are given the chance to request a song. Somebody harks for ‘Some Kind of Nothingness.’ This is a standout track from the latest album Postcards From a Young Man which features Ian McCulloch singing in duet with James. On record the song is grandiose and teeming with sweeping orchestral movements and McCulloch’s voice is subdued and complimentary to Bradfield’s timbre. Live, the song struggles to recapture these heights and is marred somewhat by deputising second guitarist Wayne Murray’s overbearing and atonal backing vocals.
Still, this is one brief dip from an absolutely solid and all-too concise set. Before I know it the opening arpeggio to the song that started it all for me has begun. I have listened to A Design for Life for the past fifteen years. I have screamed the empowering chorus whilst driving the length and breadth of the country. I have wailed it with abandon in the shower. I have watched it performed on my television and computer from various locations throughout the World. Finally, the song that kicked me in the balls and said ‘Fuck Aqua’ is being played by Sean Moore, Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield in front of my very eyes and ears.
The band that set out to outsell Appetite for Destruction to break up is still here, twenty-odd years later. James has never pursued his solo career. The band has never abandoned its fans – whichever set you fall into. They have not given up to reunite years later and cash-in. They’re not a facsimile of their former selves. They’re on a fucking roll with Send Away the Tigers, Journal for Plague Lovers and Postcards From a Young Man. They’ve overcome the original stigma of being seen as unfashionable simply by virtue of their origins. They’ve overcome the media backlash that their original ‘Manifesto’ garnered. They’ve overcome the death of their Manager. They’ve overcome the disappearance of their friend and leader. They’ve overcome fan backlash. They’ve overcome the apathy that albums such as Know You’re Enemy were met with. No other band like the Manic Street Preachers exists. At the O2 Academy, the grandeur of the setting wasn’t commensurate with the fantasy I’ve harboured since I was eleven of experiencing them live, but the performance was.
Despite extolling on the virtues of Nihilism I don’t think the band were ever more far-sighted than when Richey was at the helm. He calculated the moves which he purported had a limited shelf-life but he knew that this band would outlast them all.
The next person who says they’re shit without him is not only missing the point, they’re missing out.
The advent of my love affair with the Manics coincides with a period in their career that most ‘purists’ consider the moment they ran out of steam. In 1996 I was eleven years old and my musical palette consisted of a bit of Jeff Buckley, Talking Heads, Jesus Lizard…... Actually, I’m on a revisionist tirade there. Let’s just throw caution to the wind and be truthful, even if it comes at the cost of whatever credibility I might have had. My palette (term now used loosely) actually consisted of the venerable Aqua and The Real McCoy. Oh, I also had a lot of time for Snow’s ‘Informer.’ I was also busying myself with Tazos and Adidas popper-pants, living blissfully in a World of Hubba Bubba bubblegum - a World where East 17 seemed like the nadir of ‘edge.’
Then everything changed in the space of 4 minutes and 16 seconds.
In that moment I heard, for the very first time, A Design for Life. I hadn’t left the black and white of Kansas for Oz, I’d left the hokey Technicolor of pop and found myself in the sepia-tinged World of…….well, I wasn’t quite sure, but it sure made a lot of sense to me. Ever since that moment, hearing the power of the undulating strings carry the words I knew bore seismic weight, despite being unaware of their meaning, made me realise the true force of art and the hold it can have over you.
The Manic Street Preachers ushered in the formative years of my relationship with music. So much in your youth informs the person you become and I’d say that’s true of music too. I grew up on a steady diet of Motown and I still to this day get a huge kick out of melodic bass lines. The first cassette I owned was Bat Out of Hell and to this day I still groove to bombastic camp with all the vigour of, well, Meatloaf. Yet it wasn’t just the music that enamoured me to them. This was the first band I had sought that had an aesthetic, a set of ideals and an entire package. Up until then I had Steps. Now I was privy to the way music informs so many facets of life; fashion, culture, thought itself. The Manics did that for me. So as I stood in the bingo-hall-cum-hip-music-belt, all of the above not at all lost on me; indeed all of the above obnoxiously rasping and guffawing at me; I - and I say this with intense sincerity – almost wee’d my pants in giddiness.
Because the gig had been re-located from upstairs, the main Academy hall was sparsely-filled with no more than three hundred competition winners. The bar to the rear was cordoned off in an attempt to mask this but there was no way of veiling the gaping thoroughfares that forged their way through the dance floor, like dribbling tributaries. It’s all very disconcerting; my first ever Manics gig and it all seems oddly….flat. I glanced around at the attendant bunch and nobody seemed especially enthused. Most of the crowd were well-worn in the face, decked in denim and had probably seen the Manic Street Preachers ten or twenty times before. After all, the Manic Street Preachers are a band that boasts a vehemently passionate fan base and they have been around since before the Internet. Indeed, I am accompanied to the gig by a gentleman who is experiencing the band for the 22nd time. This makes me feel not only a little inferior but also conscious of my embarrassingly xaggerated excitement.
A local and suitably odious radio DJ abruptly appears to half-baked ‘boos’ to let us know that tonight will be broadcast on the airwaves at some point. Then, without any great commotion for a band that crusaded on controversy since they left Blackwood, Wales to ‘sell more records than Guns n’ Roses then break up,’ they stride on stage. There they are. The unassuming Sean behind the drums, his cousin James up front and the glamorous Wire to his left. Isn’t it strange when you finally come to realise something that has only, up to that point figured in your imagination? The reception is desperately polite but again, rather subdued. ‘Tough crowd.’ James quips before launching straight into ‘Motorcycle Emptiness.’
Before I can even reconcile what is yards away from me I’m already presented with possibly the greatest song from the band’s canon. I can take or leave James’ efforts at aping Slash, but lyrically and as a whole Motorcycle Emptiness is nigh on flawless as a bona fide rock and roll anthem. I find it peculiar that MSP would open with such a strong suit but I like that they would dare to set the bar so high from the getgo. The song takes us back to a time when savvy media manipulation, sloganeering and iconoclasm took precedence over everything else in the band. This succeeded in gaining attention; attention that was not always complimentary, as lampooned in the sarcastic valentine that is ‘You Love Us.’ The whole point of the Manics back then was to get ideas across and discuss grander topics than the coevals of their day. Originality was viewed as redundant and is evidence in both ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ and ‘You Love Us.’ On each song Bradfield is undeniably shredding, but with very little new to offer, musically. What was lacking in ingenuity was foaming with attitude and this along with the aesthetic as cannily rendered by one Richard James Edwards, drew in a huge following to offset the haters.
James Dean Bradfield is displaying his ‘one paltry move’ as he calls it (the one where he hops around on one leg whilst playing guitar) with great aplomb. From the onset it’s clear he is tour ready; the flab he’s steadily accrued over the years (thanks in part to alcoholism which he conquered, thankfully) is rather toned and he’s grown his hair out. He’s also ditched the Marks and Spencer’s garb that plagued his wardrobe from 1997 onwards and opted for black denim and DMs, which gives him an understated cool to go with his front man histrionics. James Dean Bradfield, so very nearly named Clint Eastwood Bradfield, who grew up a Woody Allen lookalike, is finding his cool again after losing his way following the disappearance of Richey.
Following on from the one-man-guitar-tour-de-force that is Motorcycle Emptiness, the band launch into the number 2 hit ‘Your Love Alone is Not Enough’ which keeps the momentum going. Bradfield is playing with breathtaking finesse, carrying most of the guitar parts single-handedly, as he has done for the majority of the Manics’ career (Richey famously mimed his guitar parts live and made minimal contributions to records). There’s a quick pause for a few ‘Hellos’; James and Nicky in seemingly familiar company, talking to the swarm as if they were old friends. Nicky in particular is in a talkative mood which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Replete in 50s pin-up sunglasses (but sadly not a florid dress) Wire springs a few jokes but doesn’t make any caustic comments, certainly none on a par with his infamous ‘Glastonbury’ and ‘Michael Stipe’ utterances. That’s what’s so loveable about Wire - he is outspoken, but not in an obnoxious way. He simply knows what he likes and what he does not. It’s his conviction that has helped carry the Manics through to the present day. As the visionary of sorts, he has, along with Bradfield’s musicianship taken the band into its third decade with great fervour and passion.
Brand new material is rolled out next in Postcards From a Young Man’s lead single ‘It’s Not War (It’s Just the End of Love)’ which demonstrates this passion first hand, along with Wire’s adept ability at penning a solid lyric and Bradfield’s talent for writing a soaring rock song. The sad thing I find about the Manics is that they are split into two clear and distinctive eras – Richey and post-Richey. A lot of fans believe that the band troughed when Richey was declared missing and the Holy Bible is widely regarded as their Magnum Opus. It actually unnerves me when a so-called fan blithely states ‘They used to be good, but they went crap when that Richey left.’ I came along just in time for Everything Must Go, but I love a lot of the work that was done with Richey and I actually regard Edwards as the finest lyricist of his Generation. However, I think when the Manics moved away from their misguided attempts at stadium-rock and began to explore more expansive landscapes, their musicianship flourished. I would be so bold as to declare my love for not only Everything Must Go but also Know Your Enemy and Lifeblood. To me, these are albums that, whilst being guilty of veering into coffee-table territory, still show far more ideas musically than anything from Generation Terrorists or Gold Against the Soul. Call me a heathen, go on.
An acoustic version of ‘You Stole the Sun From My Heart’ steals the attention of all around me and validates my opinions on the later albums. Here, James’ voice is given free-reign to own the melody, his achingly high pitch plumes at once delicately and abrasively. Here he is displaying why he should not only be regarded as one of the finest guitarists in the World, but also one of rock’s finest vocalists. That he is capable of stirring so much within you with his elastic and flowing approach here and conversely with his serrated tact in The Holy Bible’s ‘Faster’ is a testament to his virtuosity. Too many rock vocalists try to sound like the real deal, relying heavily on faux-gruffness whereas James sings high and sings truthfully, without affectation.
The Thinline Telecaster is out. One member of the audience shouts ‘Kevin Carter!’ to which James, smiling, ripostes; ‘Get the man a prize!’ Wire springs around jerkily, his legs looking longer than James’ entire gait. As a unit, the band are extraordinarily tight, with extra help coming in on trumpet for ‘…Carter’s’ middle-eight. I didn’t suppose Sean could simultaneously play his instrumental on brass along with the drums, but it would have been novel to see him try. Next the fans are given the chance to request a song. Somebody harks for ‘Some Kind of Nothingness.’ This is a standout track from the latest album Postcards From a Young Man which features Ian McCulloch singing in duet with James. On record the song is grandiose and teeming with sweeping orchestral movements and McCulloch’s voice is subdued and complimentary to Bradfield’s timbre. Live, the song struggles to recapture these heights and is marred somewhat by deputising second guitarist Wayne Murray’s overbearing and atonal backing vocals.
Still, this is one brief dip from an absolutely solid and all-too concise set. Before I know it the opening arpeggio to the song that started it all for me has begun. I have listened to A Design for Life for the past fifteen years. I have screamed the empowering chorus whilst driving the length and breadth of the country. I have wailed it with abandon in the shower. I have watched it performed on my television and computer from various locations throughout the World. Finally, the song that kicked me in the balls and said ‘Fuck Aqua’ is being played by Sean Moore, Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield in front of my very eyes and ears.
The band that set out to outsell Appetite for Destruction to break up is still here, twenty-odd years later. James has never pursued his solo career. The band has never abandoned its fans – whichever set you fall into. They have not given up to reunite years later and cash-in. They’re not a facsimile of their former selves. They’re on a fucking roll with Send Away the Tigers, Journal for Plague Lovers and Postcards From a Young Man. They’ve overcome the original stigma of being seen as unfashionable simply by virtue of their origins. They’ve overcome the media backlash that their original ‘Manifesto’ garnered. They’ve overcome the death of their Manager. They’ve overcome the disappearance of their friend and leader. They’ve overcome fan backlash. They’ve overcome the apathy that albums such as Know You’re Enemy were met with. No other band like the Manic Street Preachers exists. At the O2 Academy, the grandeur of the setting wasn’t commensurate with the fantasy I’ve harboured since I was eleven of experiencing them live, but the performance was.
Despite extolling on the virtues of Nihilism I don’t think the band were ever more far-sighted than when Richey was at the helm. He calculated the moves which he purported had a limited shelf-life but he knew that this band would outlast them all.
The next person who says they’re shit without him is not only missing the point, they’re missing out.