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I think the public's perception of a rock fan is that they are neandethal, macho shitheads; and there's probably
a massive proportion that are. Especially those who find the issue of homosexuality quite offensive.
If you're saying that sexuality is a basic human drive then you could argue that racism is a natural emotion
too. But you can't write a song like that about racism.
Are we intelligent rock music? I just think that we chose to write about different sorts of subjects. I'm much
more interested in the despair of the average white man than anything else. Which is different to what
Wolfsbane might write about.
I never find it exciting to go anywhere,You get much more true information from literature than from travelling.
Like, if I want to know about France, I'll buy the book… I don't know if that makes me a moron.
No, I dislike my guitar intensely,I can't even be bothered to smash the fucking thing. It doesn't deserve death.
I'm not a violent person at all,When I felt like clubbing this particular journalist to death, I just directed it at
myself. I don't regret it. I don't regret anything.
my way of not screaming when things fuck up. It's just discipline. We never call each other c**ts and wankers
in this band, we just walk away
Whenever I've got close to having any kind of relationship at all I know it's kind of fraudulent, because I still find
other people attractive. I think if I truly loved someone, that wouldn't be fair…that's why I've never had a fucking
girlfriend!!
I think the thing is that most bands are quite bitter people. They would slag off bands all day long, and then
the minute a tape recorder goes on, they say 'I think they’re quite good, they write great songs, I like them as
people'. They won't say it on tape.
We always said we wanted to be on a major. It's the only way you can every reach people. We were never
interested in being a really critically respected independent band cos they were always the bands who let us
down in the 80s, the bands that never said anything, that never looked any good, the thing that made us really
bitter.
Our romance is having total power in that we've just got nothing to lose cos we're secure in the knowledge we
already lost a long time ago.
In Wales, the women are as bored as the men, but the men will go out to the pub and beat the s out of
everyone else; the women will stay at home and concentrate on surviving.
We've never changed for anybody
I think that the whole of the first world, it's suffering is very self-indulgent, there's no real reason to be unhappy
but I think everyone feels that melancholia quite regularly.
I think there's something that you just feel is missing from your life. I think it's very difficult to trust people, very
difficult to find any real emotion.
I think if there's one person in the audience every night or one person that buys the album that understands
us, that's enough for us.
I lived with my grandmother until I was 13 and she was a very contented person, like whenever the news came
on, she'd say: 'I've seen it all before.' I think a lot of old people are very wise." At the same time, he thinks that
life tends to get worse as you get older
Children smile at nothing at all and it takes a lot to make an adult smile. You need something pretty
spectacular.
Nobody ever goes, 'I feel great, life's treated me fine.' It's the classic thing of having an industrial society where
most people absorb things their grandparents would never have dreamed of, and there's just a massive general
air of disillusionment.
I'm the sort of person who wakes up in the morning and needs to pour a bottle down my throat.
We've always been like that. Where we come from, there's a natural melancholy in the air. Everybody, ever
since you could comprehend it, felt pretty much defeated. You've got the ruins of heavy industry all around
you, you see your parents' generation all out of work, nothing to do, being forced into the indignity of going on
courses of relevance. Like a 50-year-old miner, worked in a pit all his life, there's not much joy for him to go
and learn how to type. It's just pointless. And that is all around us, ever since we were born.
sometimes we'll come up with something that we think is really good, and works really well with James'
melody. And I hate having the thought in the back of my head, that we can't possibly print this in a lyric sheet,
because people will misunderstand it.
All rock and roll is homosexual.
All the other stuff - the socialising and drinking and stuff that people say are important parts of university
because it teaches you social skills - is fucking nonsense, because you learn that at infant school or
comprehensive. Or at least, you're meant to. I think if I'd been able to have a flat of my own it would have been
very different because I've never been very good with very many different people. I've always surrounded myself
with just a very few people. To hole myself up in a tower block with hundreds of people I had nothing in
common with was a really bad experience.
All you can do to the past is to never want to be like it.
I have a very childlike rage, and a very childlike loneliness.
I think there's a difference between intelligence and knowledge. There are plenty of people with letters after
their names who only know figures and dates. It's possible to know a lot of facts but not know anything at all.
In terms of the S-word (referring to suicide), that does not enter my mind. And it never has done, in terms of
an attempt. Because I am stronger than that.
"Love is an impossible concept.."
Self-mutilation is a very different issue to suicide. It is a controlled pain personal to you, allowing you to
live/exist to some degree
I feel bitter and twisted right now. It's not going to change however old I am.
If Blackwood was a museum it'd be full of rubble and shit.
We are the casualties of the 20th Century.
"We are young, beautiful scum pissed off with the world.
You get respect in society if you are aggressive. If you fight then people respect you. If you fight back, people
like you for that as well. When I've been beaten up, if I've been in a pub doing nothing wrong, the fact I chose
not to fight back, that I would never throw a punch back, people say I'm weak. I don't think that's a weak thing
at all. I think why should I descend to their level? If I've done nothing wrong, throwing a punch back makes me
as bad and corrupt as them. As evil as them, as stupid as them.
I know I believe in nothing. But it is my nothing.
I am weak, all my life I've felt weak compared to other people. If they want to crush me, they can- but I know I
can do things that other people can't.
The future? That's a big nasty word, isn't it?
In every hotel in the world the only constant is the Holy Bible.
I wanna sing about a culture that says nothing. I wanna say the fact that basically all your life you're treated
like a nobody.
You can only play to a few thousand people live anyway. We don't even want to reach the music papers
anyway, we just wanna reach The Sun, The Star and The Mirror. That's what most people read, that's where
we wanna be.
If you wanna end up with gold disks on your wall, it's pretty easy to go that way. We don't care about that, it
doesn't matter to us.
The music papers are supposedly a barometer of culture, they're the ones holding up these bands and telling
us it's a good thing. But it's Iron Maiden and Queen that've gone in at Number One in consecutive weeks, and
that makes a total mockery of what you're saying. The Stone Roses didn't go in at Number One with 'One
Love'. Everyone said they were going to, but they didn't because people didn't give a toss.'
We are complete failures
The most beautiful thing in London is McDonalds.
You people always think we're naive. Music industry is the easiest thing. The press, easy. Press agents,
easy. All of them, easy. There's all these little boys going round being scared by it, it's all gone wrong, the
independent mentality of the press sums it up. They're all tossers.
We are obsessed with lots of thing, it's better than being obsessed with ourselves.
We read all the classic rock books, which make everything out to be so fast. You're meant to explode
overnight, but that never happens. If you want to be successful, you know what you've got to do: imitate The
Wonder Stuff, dress a bit stupid, and get a support slot.
I really think that is total power. When you've got nothing to lose, and don't care for anything... That's when
you're really free. We're not interested in people who care about tee-shirts. You've seen our merchandise: it's
repulsive! They should make their own shirts. We get letters from people saying they were never into music
until we came along."
..But we're still really lonely. We don't go to parties or anything, we just waste our money. We always wanted
loads of books, but, now I can afford them, I just cut them up and stick them on my wall.
You know the myth of Staggerlee, that he would kill for a stetson? The Manic Street Preachers would kill for a
Sega Megadrive
We always said we wanted to be on a major. It's the only way you can every reach people. We were never
interested in being a really critically respected independent band cos they were always the bands who let us
down in the 80s, the bands that never said anything, that never looked any good, the thing that made us really
bitter.
Our romance is having total power in that we've just got nothing to lose cos we're secure in the knowledge we
already lost a long time ago.
People always ask, were you outsiders at school, were you really weird?;No, we just stayed in our bedrooms
and watched TV. We never had anything else to do.
People should realise what the level of violence is like in most people's lives. It's sad that working class
resentment is always turned on itself; nobody seems to realise that.
We started at a time when rock 'n' roll was dead over here..
Once people realized there was such a band as us, playing honest, straight-up rock 'n' roll, they came to us.
They're all people our age fed up with dance and techno music. They're the 'blank generation' in that they
come to us without any history to judge us by.
Our manifesto is 'Don't do it, kids, never get pass the age if 13'.
It is,the road to ruin! That's grown-up thinking and even people who are millionaires think like that, they always
want more.Stay five years old forever! Real grown-up life is just to hard to handle, so what do you do? Have
another Guinness I suppose...
We get loads of girls at our gigs and we get critisised for that because people think that's too poppy, 'oooh,
you've got girl fans', so we can't possibly be serious. That is soooooo patronising because these people are
saying taht girls aren't real fans, like they can't possibly like or understand the music and they're not going to
have 15 pints of lager, have a big mosh down the front and have a curry on the way home. And they should be
home at home reading Jackie and thinking about blokes. It's crap! In terms of sensitivity and intelligence, girls
understand so much more than men. How that can condemn 50% of the population of the entire world is
completly beyond me.
but it's true! In three generations' time 75% of the animal spieces of the world will be wiped out! And it's all our
fault! We've only got five generations of man left if you ask me and maybe it's just as well - mankind is the
worst thing that's ever happened to this planet!
There's never really been a revolutionary feeling. As soon as you get a basic level of capitalism, revolutionary
feeling dies. That's why you never get any progressive governments anywhere in the world. I mean, the only
government we've ever experienced in our entire life is the Conservative government, which just got re-elected
again, two weeks back. And basically the reason the Labour Party lost is that they're so stupid and dull.
They've this really old-world view of the working class, that the working class still believe in community, the
working class still believe in helpin' everybody else. But when they say they're gonna put up taxes to improve
education and health service, that's what people want. Even a fucking down-and-out tramp on the street, even
in Britain, still dreams of havin' a 25-pound year, havin' a huge house, havin' a big car. And any government
which says they're gonna really stitch up people with a lot of money is never gonna get over that.
Our level of hypocrisy is on the same level of the media and the press.
What we've tried to do is be honest, because at least we can completely expose ourselves.;The difference is
that, because we're honest, people are gonna always have problems with us, which is fine.
Because, for us, really corny, cliche-ridden rock bands singin' songs about girls or livin' in New Jersey or
Harley-Davidsons or like, 'I got my tattoo done on Sunset Strip' - it's so pathetic and it's shit. I mean, rock
music is the music we like. But that brain-dead metal mentality pisses us off so much. And that was why a
band like Nirvana getting so big and on the covers of basically, like, metal magazines...can only be a good
thing because kids that have grown up with all the crap which goes with it - you know, cocaine party, 'I sniffed
coke offa 23 models last night?' You know, that's got nothing to do with fucking real life.
The only perfect circle on the human body is the eye. When a baby is born it's so perfect, but when it opens
its eyes it's just blinded by corruption and everything else is a downward spiral.
We didn't learn anything from other Welsh bands, just never to be remotely like them. It's really patronising,
the way they suddenly decided to learn to speak the Welsh language, when they'd written songs about the
bright lights of Mersey and Liverpool about two years before. And the Welsh language was never important to
us at all. I mean, what's the point in resurrecting something that's completely dead? Dead culture doesn't
interest us.
Most bands look forward to their homecoming gig. I don't expect roses and petals at my feet but the amount
of grief we get here is non-stop. Anything from Welsh bands complaining about us not singing in Welsh to
gangs of blokes pouring lager over me and saying 'What are you gonna do about that?' Tom Jones doesn't get
this.
There's an awful lot of white British kids who have never really gone hungry, always had a roof to live under but
at the same time are desperately unhappy. It's not total poverty, just a poverty of ideas.
Computer games are much more exciting than bands. We had our Sega Megadrive when we were down the
studio making our record (Generation Terrorists) and we were spending hours a day playing on it because it's
so engrossing. You feel involved, which you can't feel with music anymore. It's much better than travelling in
the rain to see a band. But it's so sad that the best human minds on the planet are just trying to invent
characters like Sonic The Hedgehog.
Where we come from, to see any band you like, you normally have to travel quite a way. Faced with a choice
between doing that, or staying home and blowing up planet after planet, then I know what most people would
do. But the idea that video games are killing rock 'n' roll is misleading. They're different mediums.
In Wales the women are as bored as the men, but the men will go out to the pub and beat the shit out of
everyone else. The women will stay at home and concentrate on surviving.
We're not the fucking Senseless Things. We don't want to return to some supposed golden day like they do.
You hear bands like that and they talk as if now is useless and everything in 1977 was so great. We're now.
All you can do with the past is never want to be like it. 'Cos the past has created what we're living in now, and
we're not happy, so it must've failed.
Everyone likes the Happy Mondays 'cos when the working class dance, it means nothing except prole
fashion. The Stone Roses seem to understand the working class, but only in interviews. No one is speaking
for people like us.
People we met in London would never like the idea of meeting a girl in a pub and having a bag of chips and a
fuck in the bus stop on the way home. That's something ordinary, working-class people do all the time. We'd
do that; we wouldn't check into a hotel - it'd be, 'Stop here a minute, I want my dick sucked'. That's the scum
factor.
I've never thought a band could ever do anything that's important. It can change individuals, it can create a
common ground for important issues, but in terms of actually doing something, changing the economic
infrastructure, it's not gonna do that. It never has done.
We are the scum that remind people of misery. When we jump on the stage it's not rock 'n' roll cliché but the
geometry of contempt. We don't display our wounds, we shove them in people’s faces. We are the decaying
flowers in the playground of the rich. We are young, beautiful scum, pissed off with the world.
Wipe out aristocracy now, kill, kill, kill. Queen and country dumb flag scum. We are drowning in a
manufactured ego fucking. Boredom bred the thoughts of throwing bricks.
When you're young you're bored and pissed off. Life seems futile. It does to us, even now.
'Theme From M*A*S*H'
We chose it because it reminded us of a very gloomy time in our lives. It was number 1 when there was a
musicians strike and no Top Of The Pops, which essentially meant there was no music on TV at all.
We just went into a little demo studio in Cardiff and did it in a day. We just kept playing it over and over until
we got it right. It cost us eighty quid to do the whole thing.
Richey (1992)
I couldn't really care less about being a top 10 chart star, the important thing was to do a good job and make
some money for the Spastics Society. I was pleased when it didn't drop down the charts after the first week.
The fact that it went up in the second week was a bigger thrill than going straight in at number 9.
'Roses In The Hospital' (1993, on Gold Against The Soul)
It's just about the idea of something beautiful in a decaying place. It's about people who hurt themselves in
order to concentrate, or just to feel something.
This album it everything we wanted it to be. Every lyric is totally uncensored. Every bit of music we ever
wanted, we have. (on GT)
The thing about Generation Terrorists was that the title was misunderstood. At the age of 10 or 12 everybody
is full of some kind of optimism, yet by the time that they leave school they've given up on everything. In those
five or years your life has been dramatically changed and pretty much destroyed. That's what the title meant.
The whole point was to be hypocritical, to be false. All we wanted to do was to write better songs and find a
better economy with words. We are improving all the time. Everybody knows the first album would be better if
we'd left out all the crap - but we wanted it to be a double, so nothing was left out.
Philip had a big impact on our lives. He was the first person that ever believed in our music; the first to
respond to all the stupidly long letters we would send out to anyone we could think of. He said 'I'll come and
see you do a gig in London '. We said we couldn't get a gig in London . So he drove down to see us in a
crappy schoolroom.
Traci Lords is female power. We wanted her or Kylie on 'Little Baby Nothing' because at the time they were
both women who are perceived as puppets. No one could imagine that they might have their own vision on
how they wanted to be sold.
You know, I miss my dog Snoopy. He died two weeks ago. That's why I shaved my head... he was 17 years
old. I've had him since I was little.
I feel very sad. This is the first time we've done concerts for a while. The last time we were really excited,
talking among ourselves all the time. Now we sit on the four back seats of the tour bus, nobody really talking,
playing computer games, listening to our CD players.
I suggested that I wouldn't play on stage anymore, but I would carry on writing words and doing the artwork
and stuff. I convinced myself that was what I wanted. But it's not enough for me just to do the words. I think I'd
be cheating them, 'cos the touring part is the worst bit - the bit that no band really enjoys. It's the thing that
makes it feel like a job because you know what you'll be doing in three months time at two o' clock in the
afternoon.
Part 2
(Seeing 'Guns N' Roses) was the first time that we realised rock wasn't dead. We had the Stones, The Who,
the Clash and we'd basically given up on hearing a new record that we'd really like. When we first heard this
(Appetite For Destruction) it was so instant and exciting.
'Sweet Child O' Mine' is one of the most amazing love songs ever written and 'Welcome to the Jungle' is one
of the most hateful, but most people just dismiss him (Axl) as a redneck. He's actually one of the few people
I'd actually like to meet and talk to.
Nick tried to get Jocky Wilson's autograph once and Jockey just went 'Fuck off'. Nick's quite proud of that.
We all loved the darts on the telly and things like Pebble Mill. When that closed down we shed a tear.
For us Public Enemy are the ultimate rock 'n' roll band at the moment because they've got style and rage,
which is what it's all about. So many bands are just worthless. We adore people like Kylie because she
doesn't pretend to be anything except someone who makes brilliant pop records.
(Joy Division singer Ian Curtis was) the only musician whose death I was saddened by. I love music, but I
couldn't give a fuck if anybody dropped dead tomorrow, I wouldn't shed a tear.
Everything I've liked has always failed in some way.
Black people have got a far more genuine rage than any white man could ever have. White people feel
repressed, but black people are completely oppressed - so you get a real militancy. Public Enemy combined
that with being glamorous: the way they moved, the way they dressed - it was like Aretha Franklin on smack.
You could say that I had an eating problem because if I ate too much, and I was drinking, I got all puffed up
and blotchy. And I'm too vain to be like that. I couldn't handle looking in a mirror. All is vanity.
In the last year I've been doing loads of exercise. I do about 1,500 sit-ups every day. I do some weights as
well. I take them on tour with me. It's about trying to control my body, to eat less and get fit. I want a flat
stomach, I want a six pack, I want a stomach like Brad Pitt. I'm incredibly vain.
What's heavenly? Pure rock 'n' roll, dolphins, waking up and realising we're the sexiest, most intelligent,
hateful rock 'n' roll band in the whole world.
We are the scum factor of the Mondays meets the guitar overload of Five Thirty/Ride while killing Birdland with
politics.
We are just another band in the racks, but with more intelligence.
You can maybe ignore our songs but when we walk down the street and you see our song titles on our chests
you've got to think of something.
When we do interviews for Japanese magazines they get all upset because they want us to be all obnoxious
and we aren't really. We actually get faxes from the record company in Japan saying, please tell the Manic
Street Preachers to spit on people. It's just sad. That's what people want. It's pathetic.
We read all the books about the Rolling Stones and Kiss and now the saddest thing is that we do all the
things that every other band does but we get no pleasure from it. It's not glamorous, it's not exciting, it's not
like being in a Who documentary at all. We had millions of groupies in Cardiff last night, but it's not as good
as reading about it in the Kiss On Tour book.
Seeing Mick Jagger jumping about doing 'Jumping Jack Flash' was the most important thing in our lives. Isn't
that pathetic? I'd like to do something worthwhile like Nick's brother who helps people who are dying of cancer
- but none of us could ever do anything like that because we'd always be whining 'Ooh, I want to watch a
video, put the telly on'. We just feel sad there are no groups like the Rolling Stones any more. We are here at
the complete death of rock culture.
Neil Kinnock is our MP. His constituency house is on the same street as James' - and he's such a tosser.
Party politics always seemed so irrelevant to us. We got obsessed with cultural politics, it seemed more
relevant; the real issues like how futile life is, how fucked-up modern society is. In terms of music, we went
back and rediscovered the great bands. Everything else seemed boring and worthless.
Even the bands from the past that we love - the Who, the Stones, the Pistols, the Clash - the way all of them
turned out in the end was disillusioning, a letdown. We'll never let that happen.
We still read the music papers from cover to cover. On Wednesday that's all we do. That's all we've ever done.
We will always hate Slowdive more than Adolf Hitler.
Breakfast is always sad on a Wednesday because the music press arrives.
Everybody knows that the Happy Mondays made some fucking great records, but we could never say that,
because it was our blinkered Pol Pot period, and we didn't like what they were supposed to represent.
I think we’re going to have drug problems and end up living in a squat in south London .
I stated drinking in my first term at university. It was something that I’d never allowed myself to do, but it was
just a question of getting to sleep. It was so noisy, and I needed to get to sleep at a certain time and wake at
a certain time. Drinking gave me that opportunity.
It’s true that I drink at least half a bottle of vodka a day, but it’s only on the same level as most people. Say if
we were back home, working: everybody I know would come home from work, go down to the pub, drink five
or six pints, forget about everything and go to bed. I don’t think it’s a big thing.
I’m the sort of person who wakes up in the morning and needs to pour a bottle down my throat… I’m paranoid
about not being able to sleep and if by about eight o’clock at night I haven’t had a drink, I get massive panic
attacks and I’ll be awake al night, and that’s my biggest nightmare. I know that until one in the afternoon I’m
going to be shaky and have cold sweats. By six o’clock I feel good, but by eight it starts coming round again,
the thought of not sleeping. And that’s when I start drinking.
My need is functional. By about midday I need a drink to stabilize me, but I’ve got to drive the group to
rehearsal, so I can’t have that drink. But on tour, I drink all day, just so I don’t have to think about going
onstage.
Typical rock bands drink Jack Daniels and get fucked-up because they have this romantic, glamorous Jack
Kerouac vision of the world. When I sit in my bedroom with a book and a bottle of vodka, I do it because I’m
sad, not ‘cos I think it’s cool. I do it because I want to forget what I’m thinking about.
I was about 12, playing football and a bloke called Brian Summers said, ‘I’ve found some great stuff under my
brother’s bed’. It was quite hardcore porn. We all had a look at it, about five of us, in silence for ten minutes,
then I had to run out of the house quite quickly. I was ill. I was sick.
If you’re on tour you might stop off at a service station and buy a porn magazine. It’s usually chucked away
before you even get back on the bus. It’s banal entertainment. They’re all identical. Films too. You’ve seen
one porn film, there’s no point watching another. The only interest is when somebody gets something like
Animal Farm, chickens and ducks. Yeah, I’ve seen it. After five minutes it’s boring because it’s just the same
thing with a different animal.
I think that sex between two people is quite crushingly dull. All the magazines here… I really can’t find
anything sexy in them. Men with non-erect dicks or man on top of woman, woman on top of man – it just
bores the fuck out of me. Essentially porn is for 13-year-old kids.
We got asked by For Women if we would appear naked, but I have no desire to expose my genitalia. Too
small.
I don’t regard paying for sex as being that different to sleeping with a groupie. It’s all done on the same
functional level.
We all love to play the fruit machines but Sean owed thousands of pounds. The problem got so bad our record
company had to pay off all our debts for us, and they banned us from gambling ever again.
Sex is just an iota removed from a wank.
I think people are becoming more machine like and that’s the imagery I like. Also sex and death are closely
linked. Sado-masochistic imagery, bleeding… I find it attractive. I find it… sexual.
We aren't wallowing in any musical nostalgia like the music papers' Clash/Dylan freaks. We might sound like
the last 30 years of rock 'n' roll, but our lyrics address the same issues as Public Enemy.
We must write our thoughts without any regard for structure or tone. It's up to James to fit it in. Sometimes he
has a really impossible line, or something he doesn't want to sing, so he cuts it. We usually give him a page
of words and let him choose. We've never cared about our lyrics being cut up. Some of our favourite authors,
like Burroughs, did that anyway. Kerouac never used full stops or commas.
We can only really make basic, straightforward white rock music, 'cos we're not patronising people. We don't
pretend to understand the street, or pretend to understand New York City . You know, we live in a crap little
town in Britain .
I currently spend eight or ten hours a day playing Sonic The Hedgehog on my Megadrive. That's all I've done
while the others have been making the LP (Generation Terrorists). It took me a couple of weeks, to get to the
end and kill Doctor Robotnik. Then, every day, I couldn't live with myself unless I tried to finish Sonic in a
shorter time. I should be interested in learning to play my guitar, but Sonic The Hedgehog rules my life. I find
that very sad. It's the same with Nick, having to go up and play on a fruit machine every day.
We'll never write a love song. We'll be dead before we have to do that.
When we write lyrics, sometimes we'll come up with something we think is really good and works really well
with James' melody. And I hate having the thought in the back of my head that we can't possibly print this in a
lyric sheet, because people will misunderstand it.
I've been getting better as a guitarist and I actually did play some guitar on this record (Gold Against The
Soul). But I don't know if that was just to amuse the other members.
When I was young I used to keep myself to myself. I don't feel I have the right to intrude on anyone else, and I
don't think anyone should necessarily want to listen to me. I think my lyrics are valid. I guess it's egotistical to
publish your lyrics, but we always publish them because I want people to read them.
I don't think we've ever made happy records. Maybe we've had uplifting moments, but I don't think lyrically
we've ever been particularly joyous.
Sleep is constantly throughout every lyric I've ever written. It's a big thing because I'm scared to go to sleep.
'Cos the things I get in my head I don't like. That's the reason I started drinking - to knock me out.
I would like to be able to write 'I'm feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic', but I just can't. I think that's a
brilliant lyric, but I haven't felt supersonic since I was about ten years old.
The whole indie mentality that grew up from punk onwards just seemed so bullshit to us, because the most
subversive, really important group in the world were Public Enemy, and they were on Colombia (CBS/Sony,
the Manics' label). The level of corruption on an indie label is just on a smaller scale.
Music industry is the easiest thing. The press, easy. Press agents, easy. All of them, easy. There's all these
little boys going around being scared by it. It's all gone wrong. The independent mentality of the press sums it
up. They're all tossers.
We know it's a pointless existence being in a band. It's not a worthwhile job, like being a doctor or a nurse.
There are people who work for nothing saving badgers or otters.
Whatever happens to us, at least we'll know that we always tried to be a brilliant band. We've set ourselves up
to be compared with the greatest rock bands ever. We've always set out to be something worthwhile, that
meant something real and valuable; to make records about ideas and attitudes that are important and real,
and that no one else is doing. To be the band we never had when we were growing up.
We signed to Sony for a lot of money, but none of us bought anything, except for portable CD players and
stuff. Then, two months later, another one came out that was thinner and I bought that one. It was no value in
my life, it just means I have a smaller CD player.
My mind is not cluttered with the day-to-day necessities of staying alive. I'm not worried about 'if I don't pay
this bill the gas is gonna get cut off'. Because I just chuck some money to somebody and it gets paid.
I'm just as happy having people loathe me as I am to have them love me. Music's got safe and ordinary; it'd be
good if a few more bands tried to get those sort of opinions forced on them.
We know they (Sony) completely own us, they can do anything they want with us. They can drop us... In fact
they said, 'If you want, you can come in and smash the place up, it would be good press'. It wouldn't be good
press - we'd end up paying for it.
We wanted to sign to the biggest label in the world, put out a debut album that would sell 20 million and then
break up. Get massive and then just throw it all away.
Whether we sell millions and millions of albums, or we fail abjectly, we'll still have said everything we have to
say in one double album. We don't want to look beyond that, because we'd just be treating it as a career. If
you throw it away when you're the biggest band in the world, then you're bound to get respect.
Living in a tower block with hundreds of other students was a really bad experience. I think if I’d been able to
have a flat of my own, my memory would’ve been very different because I’ve never been good with very many
people. I’ve always surrounded myself with just a few.
When I’m driving my car and the traffic light turns red I think it’s because I’m in the car. I feel persecuted…
When I cut myself I feel so much better. All the little things that might have been annoying me suddenly seem
so trivial because I’m concentrating on the pain… I’m not a person who can scream and shout so this is my
only outlet. It’s all done very logically.
When it came fro me to do my finals, I suddenly realized that I can’t go in to do my finals pissed. So the way
for me to gain control was cutting myself a little bit. Only with a compass – you know, vague little cuts – and
not eating very much. That way I found I was really good during the day. I slept, I felt good about myself, I
could do all my exams. I got a 2:1 so I wasn’t a 100% success, but I got through it. I did it.
You just get to a point where if you don’t do it to yourself, you get a felling that something really terrible is
going to happen, and when that moment comes, it’s the logical thing to do. It doesn’t hurt. You’re not
screaming and shouting. A couple of days later you feel like a sad fuck, but that’s part of the healing process:
after that you feel really good. People that harm themselves, be it through anorexia or razors, know what
they’re doing.
I was really fucked off wit (journalist) Steve Lamacq. I didn’t know what I could possibly say to make him
understand. How easy and cheap is it for me to just hit him? I would never want to do that. I would rather cut
myself, because I feel I can justify that. Whereas I can’t justify hitting him.
I tired talking to Steve (Lamacq) for an hour to explain ourselves. He saw us as four hero-worshipping kids
trying to replicate our favorite bands. There was no way I could change his mind. I didn’t abuse him or insult
him, I just cut myself. To show him that we are no gimmick, that we are pissed off, that we are for real.
The journalist was trying to say we were manufacture and just hero-worshipping past bands. We play rock ‘n’
roll and we live rock ‘n’ roll, Rock ‘n’ roll is our lives.
We’re completely happy that people despise us – but when you get a writer who should be in fanzines saying
that he doesn’t believe we meant it and that we’re just a manger’s invention, then I got so pissed off that I had
to do it. That guy couldn’t conceive that people can be so frustrated and pissed of that they’re prepared to hurt
themselves.
It was the only way to get through to a 24-year-old who thinks like a 45-year-old.
People should realize what the level of violence is like on most people’s lives. It’s sad that working-class
resentment is always turned on itself. Nobody seems to realize that.
I’m weak, all my life I’ve felt weak compared to other people, if they want to crush me they can. But I know I
can do things that other people can’t
I wasn’t coping very well and I thought my body was probably stringer than it actually was. My mind was quiet
strong. I pushed my body further than it was meant to go. And then I went to hospital in Cardiff . That wasn’t
much good. The band came down to see me and it was pretty obvious that there wasn’t much point in me
staying there.
It’s very romantic to think ‘I’m a tortured writer’, but mental institutions are not full of people in bands. They’re
full of people with so-called normal jobs. Or were full. 68,000 beds have been closed down in the last couple of
years, which I wouldn’t have been aware of unless I was actually in one.
The best thing is knowing that no one can do a fucking thing about it. People can’t actually hold you down
and force food into your mouth. And someone can’t be near you 24 hours a day to stop you doing something
to your body. And ultimately they’ve got no right to, because it’s your body.
The worst thing I did was to keep trying to be normal, which is how I ended up in hospital. Now I wake up in
the morning and I know what I want to do – I want to write, it makes me feel better in myself… I value writing
songs, I do regard myself as a good poet. O work hard. Songwriting is an art and I really try my best at it.
The band is getting better and better, the lyrics are too. I’ve found better ways to express myself… I don’t
think I’ve changed what I say but maybe I’m saying it in a different way.
Early evening I walk around Soho on my own as I have so few friends. It starts to rain. And even cheap
dreams don’t stop the rain.
I’d love to love someone seriously, but considering what I’d expect and what would be expected of me it
seems quite difficult. I feel nobody would want to live with me. To love somebody involves getting tapped by
jealousy. It’s really hard. I never wanted to love somebody insincerely – and I don’t mean sexually, but
intellectually and mentally too… Seriously, if I was in love with a woman, she’d have to be more attractive than
Bette Davis, more than anyone else. I’d peel every picture off my walls.
Tony Hancock’s suicide note (‘things just went wrong too many times’) is one of the most beautiful things I’ve
ever read.
The last thing I wanted to do was end up a fucking junkie alcoholic mess like Shane McGowan. The thing
about self-harm is that you are aware of what you’re doing. That’s how you justify it… It’s the arbitrary factors
that determine your life.
In terms of the ‘S’ word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has done. In terms on An Attempt.
Because I am stronger than that. I might be weak but I can take pain.
If I can’t sleep I tend to have destructive ideas and I have to do something to root then out. I couldn’t sleep and
all I could think of was shaving my head, so I did. I can sleep now, I was almost in love with my hairstyle. But
in the end I just felt like abandoning things like that.
One of the biggest things we needed when we were young was excitement. Music was the most important
thing in our lives. We probably are the loneliest people… I think we’re the loneliest people I’ve ever met. Music
and videos were everything.
We always open our mouths before we think. But that’s part of where we come from, part of having fuck all to
do all day and saying things to each other simply to create arguments. It was a way of getting through the
day.
Things get taken to stupid proportions everytime we talk; we come out with Mark E Smithisms. We’re so
comfortable in each others company – we’re talking about 15 years of friendship – that the whole politically
correct mentality, avoiding saying certain things when we meet someone new, doesn’t really apply.
People have still got this stupid idea that I’m a loud, aggressive person. That by the things I’ve done I’d be
hyperactive, talking all the time, running around going ‘rraaarrrrrr’, smashing people in the face, kicking down
doors. Which is not the case. I’ve never destroyed anything in my life, apart from a few guitars.
I’m not stupid. I might come across as stupid. That’s nothing to do with academic qualifications. I think
there’s a difference between intelligence and knowledge. There are plenty of people with letters after their
names who only know figures and dates. It’s possible to know a lot of facts but not know anything at all.
I think everybody’s first love is themselves. Some more than others. Some can divide themselves and give
something of themselves to another person, which I’ve never been able to do because I’ve never trusted
another person enough.
If I was in a pub and someone attacked me, and I knew I’d done nothing wrong, I would happily take a beating
without doing anything, and feel really superior. I would never hit somebody back. If I’d done something wrong
it’s different. But if I was minding my own business, I could easily take a kicking. I’d think, ‘I don’t give a fuck
‘cos you are scum. You’re way down there and I’m above you ‘cos I can take it’. It’s a bit Biblical, ‘turn the
other cheek’ and all that.
I have a very child-like range and a very child-like loneliness.
I am a very melodramatic drama queen, I can’t help that. Everything I’ve ever liked in literature has been along
those lines. I guess I identify with victims.
The band have never called me Richey. They’ve always called me Android, or something like that.
I’ve always found it to express how I fell, even from when I was a little child. It’s a very British emotion – they
keep things bottled up inside them. Some more than others.
We started at a time when rock ‘n’ roll was dead over here. The UK was in the grip of dance, rap and the acid
house thing. All that Manchester sound stuff that sounded so contrived… The only real rock ‘n’ roll was
coming out of America . We were consciously reacting against all that. Our friends laughed at us because
they said there was no audience for us. But we felt we had to do something to bring back rock ‘n’ roll, so
that’s how the Manic Street Preachers came about.
When we started we used to go into Natwest, all the banks, and try to get a loan. We’d tell them, ‘this
country is dead musically, there’s got to be room for an exciting rock band’. We’d show them the New
Musical Express; ‘look at that, anything good in there? Now look at us, we’re really exciting’. We told them
we were going to be this really massive rock ‘n’ roll band. They couldn’t see it.
Once we got our minds set what we were doing, we didn’t play a single gig in Blackwood. It was straight to
London and scrounging money to get on the pay-to-play circuit. You know, £50 for 15 minutes. Next thing
was getting the press out to shows. This is extremely difficult in England because the music press wields the
power to make or destroy taste and they don’t like anything. They don’t discover themselves.
We’re very cynical people. We saw bands do all the pubs where we lived, do 200 gigs a year, get really big
local followings, and they’re still under the illusion that somebody from Sony Music will be driving through the
middle of South Wakes and go, ‘Hey what a good band, let’s sign here’. And of course we knew they never
would. We knew we had to move to London .
While we were at University, James was on the dole and Sean worked at the civil service. He funded us,
basically – when we were traveling about in Transit vans and paying to play at the Rock Garden. James was
learning guitar – he’s more dedicated than any of us.
We set out to be truly despised and hated.
In the beginning, when we formed, we wanted to sign to the biggest record label in the world, put out a debut
album that would sell 20 million and then break up. Get massive and then just throw it all away. By the time
we were giving interviews and saying that to the press, though, we didn’t believe it. We knew we couldn’t quiet
do that. But if we had aimed any lower in the beginning, I don’t think anyone would’ve paid as much attention
to us.
We went down to (the) Underworld (club) one night. It was unbelievable. There were like five bands and loads
of journalist, all drinking at the same tables. We were naive, but we never thought there would be that really
close level of friendship. With most of the cool bands, you know the same people are going to write about
them all the time… We just get people who really detest us.
People always ask, ‘Were you outsiders at school, were you really weird?’. No we just stayed in our
bedrooms and watched TV. We never had anything else to do. We made no effort to make other friends
because we felt so happy with each other.
We’re the sad victims of 20th-century culture. The cinema in our town, which is the poorest and most boring
town in the country, closed down when we were eight, so what do you do? You go out and get pissed and
have fights, or you stay in and get on with your boredom. We were happier to go along with the boredom.
The most exciting thing was sitting around reading the rock press. When New Musical Express said things
like Eddie Cochran is an anarchist, we went ‘yeah’. We fell for all that because our lives were really boring.
Nick tried joyriding once. He stole a car when he was 17. He didn’t drive it into a shop. He just sort of rolled
down the street, didn’t get very far. He was a stunted joyrider. I think he fell asleep at the wheel.
Depression is just our natural mood. Where we come from, there’s a natural melancholy in the air. Everybody,
ever since you could comprehend it, felt pretty much defeated. You’ve got the ruins of heavy industry all
around you, you see your parents’ generation all out of work, nothing to do, being forced into the indignity of
going on ‘courses of relevance’.
Up to the age of 13 I was ecstatically happy. People treated me very well, my dog was beautiful, I lived with
my Nan and she was beautiful. School’s nothing – you go there, come back and just play football in the fields.
Then I moved from my Nan ’s and started a comprehensive school and everything started going wrong. In my
20’s, there’s nothing that’s been spectacular since.
Comprehensive school was the most depressing time for all for us. They either write you off or fit you in. If
you’re not academically gifted, it’s ‘fuck you’. If you are, it’s ‘the banks are coming next week for a talk, and
we think you should go’.
Most people look back on their childhoods with more fondness than their early twenties or their teenage years
which are pretty horrendous. As a child, you put your head on the pillow and fall asleep with no worries. From
being a teenager onwards it’s pretty rare that you don’t end up staying awake half the night thinking about
