Original URL : http://www.personadondada.com/?p=86
It always makes me happy to see the Manic's getting on these lists (:
“You know the myth of Staggerlee, that he would kill for a stetson? The Manic Street Preachers would kill for a Sega Megadrive.”
– Richey James Edwards
Hey remember 1992? What a year of possibilities, huh? The musical landscape was truly a-changin’. It was a divisive time in our culture; let me tell you, in my school you were either a Vanilla Ice man or an MC Hammer man — there were no in betweens! And of course, if you were above the age of 9 at the time, you were probably aware of that newfangled “Seattle Sound,” with Nirvana’s surprise ascendance making record execs scramble to sign a new crop of unknown bands that encapsulated grunge’s lumberjack chic.
Across the Atlantic in England, it was a bit of a different story. The two major operatives in hip music were shoegaze, a style apparently defined by its performers’ uncanny ability to untie each other’s shoes onstage using only their eyes, and Madchester/acid dance. It was a strange time indeed, and an even stranger time for a wild entrance by a socialist-posing, Rimbaud-quoting glam band that shamelessly favored Guns ‘n Roses-style sleaze metal and Clash-style polemics over moody Dinosaur Jr. and Pixies-esque eccentrics.
But that’s exactly how the Manic Street Preachers rolled.
Not only that, but before the Manic’s debut album, Generation Terrorists, was released, the band stated publicly that they planned to release one album that would be bigger than Appetite for Destruction, headline London’s Wembley Stadium for three nights, and then burn out.
Richey James Edwards
A little backstory: The group, originally called Betty Blue, was formed in Wales by school friends James Dean Bradfield (guitars), Sean Anthony Moore (drums), Nicky Wire (first guitar and then bass) and Flicker, who soon departed and was replaced by the band’s own over-thinking-man’s Sid Vicious, Richey James Edwards. It was Edwards who was responsible for most of Manic Street Preachers’ outrageous Sex Pistols-style posturing in the press, as he spouted off pretty little quotables like “We will always hate Slowdive more than we hate Adolf Hitler.” In a notorious interview with NME in which writer Steve Lamacq questioned the band’s true devotion to the punk ethic after signing to Columbia Records, Edwards angrily carved the words “4 Real” (um, make that a number and a word) into his arm with a razor to prove his sincerity to his art.
So by the time Generation Terrorists was released, there was already too much riding on it for the album to become the wildly successful hit the band promised. And sure enough, it wasn’t; the album sold a respectable 250,000 copies and peaked at #13 on the British pop charts, but that was certainly nowhere near the cultural Molotov cocktail that Edwards and co. desired. In hindsight this may well have had everything to do with the burgeoning grunge phenomenon that overshadowed any group in 1992 that reeked of hairspray. But one could also argue that hard rock fans just didn’t dig their juicy riffs served with a side of the band’s ham-fisted, dilettantish “poetry.” Here’s a taste of the pseudo-Marxist gumbo of lyrics that make-up the otherwise fantastic anthem “Motorcycle Emptiness”:
“Life lies a slow suicide / Orthodox dreams and symbolic myths / From feudal serf to spender / This wonderful world of purchase power.”
Video for the album’s first single, “Stay Beautiful”
Kurt Cobain these guys weren’t. But then again, they weren’t exactly Winger. Winger, for better or worse, probably wouldn’t chant of “I accuse history!” in a rock anthem about drug abuse. There’s something fascinating and respectable about the complete bloated ambition of Generation Terrorists, from the 70-minute running time to the quotes that accompanied each song on the original record sleeve’s tracklist. (”‘Progress is a comfortable disease’ — ee cummings” accompanies “Slash ‘n’ Burn,” “‘I talk to God but the sky is empty’ — Sylvia Plath” accompanies “Motorcycle Emptiness,” and so on …) The Manics take on all of the modern world’s big abstractions — consumerism, drug abuse, the working class, liberalism, Nazism, America, war, poverty, rock and roll — like a doe-eyed college freshman who’s just read his first Noam Chomsky lecture. On paper it sounds kind of like if Filippo Marinetti fronted Motley Cruë.
But if you can believe it, despite all the band’s amateur nihilist rhetoric, Generation Terrorists is a genuinely fun, balls-out rock album, albeit completely out of touch with its own time. Stalwart producer Steve Brown brings an incredibly polished hard rock sound to the band, who for all its anarchist ways, can really play. The album reminds me of something Greil Marcus once wrote about Fleetwood Mac: I’m paraphrasing here, but it was about how you can take lyrics that sound benign and dull on the written page and wrap the perfect music around it and they suddenly spring to life. In the Manics’ case, you can take an utterly ridiculous art-school manifesto and string it around kick-ass Hanoi Rocks riffs and they basically sound like kick-ass Hanoi Rocks songs. It also helps that Wire’s slurred, Welsh dialect is mostly incomprehensible throughout, so you could be blissfully ignorant of the lyrics as you listen.
Generation Terrorists
Six singles were released from Generation Terrorists, including “Motorcycle Emptiness,” the upbeat “Slash and Burn” and the near-grunge “Stay Beautiful.” But honestly nearly every track on the album sounds like it could’ve been a single, each one pumped up with a banging chorus and non-stop gain-heavy riffage from Bradfield. “Born to End” could’ve been an outtake from the Clash’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope, “Natwest-Barclays-Midlands-Lloyds,” despite grim lyrics about “Words of euthanasia, apathy of routine,” is incredibly catchy.
Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, it seems that Generation Terrorists was born to self-destruct. After it failed to live up to expectations, Bradfield said of the album, “If you make a record as good as Appetite for Destruction it sells; if you don’t it doesn’t.” After two more albums that failed to become hits and the mysterious disappearance of Richey Edwards in 1995 (he’s been presumed dead ever since), the band changed its sound to fit a Brit-pop mold along the lines of Oasis to greater critical and commercial acclaim. Never again would they release anything as, well, balls-out as Generation Terrorists. But for all its flaws, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable album, perhaps because it flaunts its contradictions so carelessly and youthfully. I’m also a sucker for big, bombastic, flawed, overreaching albums.
Original URL : http://war-child9.livejournal.com/32716.html
4st 7lb by Manic Street Preachers.
There's nothing ridiculous or fun about 4st 7lb. It's a first person account of anorexia from Richey Edwards, the bands troubled lyricist and guitarist who disappeared in 1995 and hasn't been seen since. If there was ever a song where you didn't know why it was great this is it. It's incredibly dark, the melody and riff is bizarre. It just works to make something that again, carries you away, even if it's not to the happiest place in the world.
Just found it nice to see, this is what they had to say about EMG, :
"A lyrically honest album. The bands first since the dissappearance of Richey Edwards. Musically a release for the band."
url : http://chrismckeag08.spaces.live.com/Music/cns!CDA20091AD967B9!962/
I found this blog post about Richey and Nicky to be quite interesting. See for yourself..
Original URL : http://sowemeetagain.blogspot.com
This is Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire.
Nicky is the one in the hat who looks a bit like a rabbit, and seems very proud of Richey's existence.
NME (which I despise but whatever), used to call them 'the Glamour Twins'. When the Manics first came onto the scene in their leopard prints and makeup, set against political slogans and more than a little nihilism, they were extraordinary.
I'll avoid giving a potted history of MSP here, but everyone knows that Richey disappeared right before the band were due to go to America, and hasn't been seen since. It's been something like twelve years now, and he's still out in the wide blue yonder. Alive or dead, at least he did what he wanted to do.
The thing I find saddest about the whole deal is that Nicky was left behind. The reason I'm writing about these two is because they were best friends, two halves of the same soul kind of friends. From hearing Nicky talk about Richey, it sounds like he's still not complete without him there.
I'm not trying to focus on the bad parts here, the reason I love them is because they were so great together as friends. They understood each other in that way where you don't have to really talk. You know, the way you can start speaking in the middle of a thought or pick up on something you were talking about hours ago and the other person will know exactly what you're on about?
I've said before somewhere, I don't think you have to be 'in a relationship' to be soulmates. I think your friend can be your soulmate. I think these two were soulmates. It seems to me from hearing them talk about each other anyway. That's why I find it so heartbreaking that one of the Twins went away and left the other half a person.
Nicky said in an interview somewhere that he hadn't written about Richey for so long, because he was afraid of 'using' him.They used to write all the lyrics together, line by line. The first album after Richey disappeared, he wrote a little bit from his point of view, trying to figure out why he'd been abandonned.
Praying for the wave to come now
It must be for the very last time
It's twelve o'clock till midnight
There must be someone to blame
I want to fly and run till it hurts
Sleep for a while and speak no words in Australia
After that, anything he wrote about him was pretty buried. Until their first single off their latest album 'Send Away The Tigers'. For me, knowing a little bit about the band's history, it's the most heartbreaking song I've heard in a long time.
