The Welsh group
Manic Street Preachers are one of the greatest bands to have never been
accepted by America. Their arguable masterpiece, 1994’s The Holy Bible, has largely been overlooked by American critics and anglophiles alike.
The album’s omission from the ‘90s rock pantheon is both shocking and
somewhat logical. On one hand, its scorching, post-punk inflected hard
rock was packed with enough deceptively catchy riffs to appeal to a
large base of music fans. On the other, inviting songs about capital
punishment, eating disorders, and the Holocaust into your ears probably
isn’t something the average listener wants to do on a daily basis, if at
all.
Those who have heard The Holy Bible are guaranteed to admit here’s never been anything else quite like it in rock music, even if
the harrowing tales of former (presumed dead) Manics lyricist and
guitarist Richey Edwards don’t quite make for pleasurable listening.
This April brings a once in a lifetime opportunity for those of us in
North America who get The Holy Bible, or have lived it, or just
love it. After a hugely successful series of UK dates in honor of the
album’s 20th anniversary reissue last year, the remaining Manics—singer /
guitarist James Dean Bradfield, drummer Sean Moore, and bassist Nicky
Wire—are bringing The Holy Bible to the states and playing it in
full. Before setting foot on US soil, Bradfield generously chatted on
the phone with me about the newness of touring North America and being
led by lyrics.
* * *
How did the decision to bring the Holy Bible tour to North America arise?
James Dean Bradfield: The Holy Bible did quite well on
import in America. We did an American tour about seven, six years ago I
think? We really enjoyed the experience. There’s no doubt, in terms of
commercial success, we don’t mean much in America. So, coming to America
still feels like a new experience to us, because we haven’t really
toured America that much in our lives.
But, despite all that, we have had a lot of requests from a lot of
people that had bought the record in America to come and play it there.
We thought, “Hell. What’s the downside?” None of us are young, there’s
no pretending that, and anything that feels like a new experience to us
is good! Bringing The Holy Bible to America will feel like a new experience to us. I think we’ve only ever played “Faster” off The Holy Bible in America.
I was actually there at the last tour, for a couple of the dates.
JDB: Which show?
I came to the show in Philadelphia… (at World Cafe Live)
JDB: Ooh, there weren’t many people at that show [Chuckles].
There were enough! It looked pretty full to me.
JDB: (laughs) I think it will be a bit better this time, to be honest.
I was there and I was at the Webster Hall show in New York.
JDB: The Webster Hall show I really enjoyed. I mean, I love
Philly as a town. The center of Philly is a great place to walk around,
and the fact that it was the first multi-year capital of America makes
it a fascinating place, so I loved actually being there, but yeah… I
remember there not being many people in the crowd. But Webster Hall was a
great show.
It’s remarkable I can remember those two gigs, because if you’d ask
me about a concert I’ve done in Britain, it’d be hard for me to remember
‘cos I’ve played in Britain and mainland Europe so much. But, I’ve
played in America so little that every show is quite a distinct memory
for me.
The tickets for the UK leg of the tour sold out in minutes and the
announcement of the North American tour was met with a lot of
excitement. Has The Holy Bible’s gradual rise in popularity ever surprised you?
JDB: Not really. I kind of knew when we were doing it that
there was something about the record. I knew I was part of
something—with Nick, Sean, and Richey—that was going to have some kind
of resonance. I knew it would be intrinsic to quite a high minority of
people, if you know what I’m saying? There would be a very large
minority of people that the record would connect to, and that it would
mean something to them, it would be tangible to them. The album was so
locked in to dissecting certain politics, certain events, certain
histories, certain psyches, that I knew the record would mean something
to somebody out there. For want of a better phrase, I kind of felt as if
I was part of something that could become a cult classic, definitely.
And then all that kind of rational thinking went out the window when
Richey went missing (in 1995).
So I stopped thinking about the record after Richey went missing,
because it was indelibly connected to something which was quite a
traumatic memory. So I think we kind of parked The Holy Bible in our psyches somewhere when we carried on with (1996’s) Everything Must Go, and we kind of tried to protect him, we tried not to touch it. But then ten years later, we realized that The Holy Bible
had sold so many more records post-Richey’s disappearance than it did
while he was around. It wasn’t much of a surprise to me, but it kind of
crept up on us because we tried to protect ourselves from analyzing it
because it seemed like such a pure thing that we didn’t want to sully it
with anything.
How has perception of The Holy Bible changed over the years? How do you think future generations will regard it?
JDB: Well, I think there are two categories of records that
kind of endure. I think there’s the one kind of record that people say
transcends the time that it was recorded in, and it can be recalibrated
and you can reimpose it upon any period, and then there’s the other kind
of record that sums up the period it was released and created in. I
think the second category is what The Holy Bible is in. I think
it’s a snapshot of a certain psyche in the early ‘90s, it’s a political
snapshot of the post-war era in Britain and Europe, and it’s kind of
built in the steps of new Europe’s creation, to a certain degree. It’s
not a timeless record, I think it’s a record that really sums up a
distinctly different time period.
Do you think the internet has helped in building a larger US audience for The Manics?
JDB: To be honest, no. I am 46 years old and I’m not into delusion any more [Laughs].
I don’t think this (tour) is us re-engaging with the American market
and hoping to break it, that couldn’t be farther from our hearts or
heads. I think we’re just coming over for the experience of playing in
front of an audience that has never really seen us play these songs. In
Britain and Europe and Japan, we have played some of these songs in
front of fans that we know want to hear them. In America, barely any of
these songs have ever been played, and we’ve had so many letters over
the years from people saying, “I’d love to hear ‘Archives of Pain’
played live,” or, “I’d love to hear ‘Die in the Summertime,’ I’d love to
hear ‘ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforoneday…’.”
This is just a chance for us to actually have those people in front
of us and hopefully make them happy! Which sounds like an anomaly from
somebody that’s part of such a nihilistic, mad fucking record as The Holy Bible,
but it actually will be quite touching for us to play these songs in
front of an American audience that has never seen it before live. That’s
kind of the deal for us, really. We have no delusions or illusions of
having any kind of commercial success off the back of this experience.
I think it’s going to be a very cathartic experience for the
people going to the shows. Just hearing “Faster” at those shows six or
seven years ago was extremely cathartic for me.
JDB: Yeah, we don’t take any of this lightly. I think the one
thing you gotta bear in mind when you actually take on something like
this—which has become quite a popular thing in the modern era, people
performing a “classic” album in front of a crowd—is you’ve really got to
do the record justice. You’ve gotta play the record pretty much as
close to how it sounded, you really gotta live up to how the record
sounds in terms of emotion, in terms of physicality, in terms of intent,
detail. You’ve really got to try and make sure that you don’t at all
make any mistakes that kind of belittle the record, so to speak.
The thing you’ve gotta be aware of is that you’re being faithful to
the spirit of the record, and the technicality of the record as well.
Because The Holy Bible, in its own strange, fucked up, convoluted
kind of way, is quite a muso album. It has quite complicated time
signatures, there are lots of words interlocked into the drums and
guitars, and it’s not something you can pick up and just play after one
day’s rehearsing.
How hard was it to get Sony to release the album in 1994? Was putting it out through a major label a triumph in and of itself?
JDB: I’d love to give you the usual corny story, where the
musician’s saying, “We fought tooth and nail with our hearts bleeding to
get this record out on a major label,” but our experience was nothing
like that. Our label, Sony,
didn’t question the fact that it was obviously a record that was very
dark and that didn’t have any natural singles on it—the lead-off single
from The Holy Bible was “Faster”. The record company didn’t once
question that, which is remarkable, really. We’re living in this day and
age where record companies are even more conservative than they used to
be. If a record doesn’t sell after one album, there’s a very good
chance that you don’t get a second shot. This was our third record, and
the record company never once questioned the artwork, the content within
the lyrics, the way it was mixed, the way it was recorded—which was in
quite a lo-fi way. And a lot of that has to do with our A&R man at
the time, Rob Stringer, who is now the head of Sony
in America. He gave us complete artistic freedom. So that’s a strange
story really. When you’re hearing people talk about such stuff, talk
about the battles they go through with the record company, about how
there was just some kind of insipid censorship within the record
company—but our experience was utterly the opposite. So, there’s no sob
story there.
It could never happen today, I think.
JDB: No, it wouldn’t, and to be honest it didn’t happen as
much back then either. We just had somebody that was extraordinary in
charge of the record label, and that was Rob Stringer. He had a vision
for the record too, not just us. Not all band stories are the same, I
don’t think.
I read that the record label had offered you a luxurious studio setting to make what became The Holy Bible, but you turned it down and opted for recording it in Cardiff’s red light district.
JDB: We’re talking about 1993, 1994 here, and that was kind of
standard practice back in those days. You go to a residential studio
and you record a record. Residential studios back then were really
lovely places to create and record. But we knew that it was just wrong
for the music. Especially with the lyrics that had inspired the music.
We knew that it would be a wrong decision to try and create this kind of
music, which had threadbare emotions and hard political intent and
acute observatory historical references in it. We knew that if we ended
up trying to create this music somewhere in Surrey, England, which had
four poster beds and every technical specification you could wish for,
there would be something slightly off-message about that.
I suppose, in our youthful, delusional state, we thought there should
be some kind of “method” recording, our version of method acting. We
should immerse ourselves in a shitty environment to try and replicate
the edge in the music. And that’s what we did. We hired a studio which
we had used before in Cardiff, which was kind of in the red light area,
and had no mod cons. It was a very, very monotone kind of experience.
And we decided we wanted that kind of utilitarian vibe to try and rub
off in the music, I suppose. It all sounds pretentious and I wouldn’t
want to repeat it all now, but we were young.
The Holy Bible is actually what got me into post-punk
music. I realize the musical approach came from being influenced by
post-punk at the time and it serves the lyrics well. Was there ever a
thought that, in choosing that style, you were going to be in complete
opposition to what was trendy in the UK at the time, i.e. Britpop? Did
you feel there was a need to go against it?
JDB: No, I think our music’s just always been led by the lyrics.
That’s given credence and truth by the fact that I need lyrics in front
of me to write music. Nicky and Richey would always give me lyrics, and
99% of the time I would always write music with the lyrics in front of
me, and I would try and let the lyrics inspire the music. I was being
given lyrics like “Yes”, “Of Walking Abortion”, and “Archives of Pain”.
Looking at these lyrics, there were twists and turns in there. There’s
some kind of indecipherable, fucked up iambic pentameter in there, and I
knew that these weren’t normal kind of lyrics, they weren’t even normal
for us, really. And I just knew that the music had to twist and turn
and convulse with the lyrics, as the lyrics were themselves. So it’s
really as simple as that. I love the lyrics, and I remember being given
“Die in the Summertime”, and I remember being given “Yes” very early on,
and thinking I must follow this muse that Richey created. Richey had
written 70 to 75 percent of the lyrics on this record, and I was being
given this stuff and I just knew I had to follow his direction.
Otherwise I’d be betraying the lyrics themselves.
I don’t really think we were reacting against anything. I think we
were just so secluded and so self-insulated against what was going on
with the start of Britpop and stuff that we didn’t even pay attention to
it. Again, it’s that delusional state of just thinking that you’re
right, and I think that’s the place we were in. By the time we’d
finished mixing “Faster”, we still thought it could be a top ten hit,
that’s how fucked up and deluded we were! [Laughs] Everything was led by the lyrics and they still are.
But we came out of the back of The Holy Bible and of course we wrote “A Design for Life” and Everything Must Go,
which kind of got co-opted into Britpop. We never intended it to be as
such. But we didn’t care by then. I think we just wanted the music to
breathe, and we just wanted to try and drop some of the subtext that had
been written around the band. It’s a funny journey from The Holy Bible to Everything Must Go.
If you listen to “Faster”, then listen to “A Design For Life”, I think
you can see how much a band can change in the space of one album.
“Faster” and “Design for Life” are the two lead singles off two separate
albums, and it was merely two years between them. And it just goes to
show how much a lyric can influence a musician. When Nicky gave me “A
Design for Life”, I just felt a certain freedom in the lyrics, I felt a
certain sureness in the words that were being written. They wouldn’t
have to be understood, they were just stating fact and emotion. On The Holy Bible, despite the nihilism and despite the misanthropic bent, sometimes the lyrics are so pleading to be understood. Whereas on Everything Must Go, they’re just breathing and stating the facts.
In the liner notes of the tenth anniversary edition of The Holy Bible,
the album is described by Keith Cameron as “a triumph of art over
logic”. This description has always struck me, and I was wondering
whether you, as the creators, feel it is an accurate statement?
JDB: It’s always nice when somebody else says it, because you
can never say that about what you’ve done yourself, because it makes you
an arrogant fool if you make such a statement about your own record or
book or film or piece of furniture—whatever you’ve created. But I can
see some kind of logic in that statement. I don’t really think a band
like us, that comes from a very left wing area and place in history,
ever expected to write a song like “Archives of Pain”, which talks about
capital punishment and talks about it within a song—openly questions it
and openly investigates and doesn’t condemn. I don’t think a band like
us, from a working class area in South Wales, were ever meant to write a
lyric like “Faster”, that has ambitions of overcoming everything with
the power of your own will and your own self made intelligence. And I
don’t think that would be married to that post-punk influenced music. So
there is a natural ridiculousness of us coming from South Wales, from a
very working class, proud area; actually doing a record like this was
nothing anyone expected. We didn’t either. So I kind of accept Keith’s
statement, and Keith is one of the best music journalists Britain ever
produced, so I’ll stand by his statement. It’s always better when
somebody else says it.
I guess that’s what critics are for!
JDB: Yeah, and other stuff too [Laughs].
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