Manic Street Preachers - Flawed, Contradictory and The Most Significant Band of Our Generation (Feature)

"We’ll release one double album that goes to Number One worldwide. One album, then we split. If it doesn't work, we split anyway. Either way, after one album, we're finished"

So claimed James Dean Bradfield in 1992. And at every available opportunity, the band repeated this laudable intention to anyone who would listen. And to a lot of people who wouldn’t. But, 17 years later the Manics are about to release their ninth album. Clearly, the boys from Blackwood were always the contradictory types.

But if they split tomorrow, they wouldn’t just be leaving behind nine bits of round plastic. They would be leaving behind a legacy greater than perhaps any band in the last 25 years. ‘Life-changing’ is a term which is grossly over-used, but it is an incontrovertible fact that the Manics have positively influenced the thoughts, tastes and values of thousands of people.

Erupting onto the music scene at the start of the 1990s, they accurately described themselves as “a mess of eyeliner and spraypaint”. They were a dream come true for the music press. Four rent-a-gobs from a Welsh backwoods (sorry, Blackwood), they looked fantastic, and hated everything from Slowdive to Smash Hits to Glastonbury and everything in between. It was almost irrelevant what they actually sounded like.

As it happened, their debut album Generation Terrorists stood up well. It was everything they promised it would be: Intelligent, caustic, and it saw James Dean Bradfield attempting to ‘out-Slash Slash’ at every possible opportunity. Many of their most iconic moments were on there, including ‘You Love Us’ and ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’. That the album was a touch overproduced and plagued by filler in the form of a pointless cover and a horrific remix of ‘Repeat’ is hardly important, merely misplaced ambition.

Whether they ever really planned to split after the first record or not, alas they inevitably came back with Gold Against the Soul just over a year after releasing their debut. At this point, if the wheels didn’t quite come off, they certainly wobbled a fair bit.

Against all odds, Wales’ most idealistic firebrands fell into the corporate trap. Encouraged to make a radio friendly album of modern rock, they and producer Dave Eringa polished the record to within an inch of its life. The end product was something which would very quickly sound dated. In spite of this, scrape away some of the sheen, and some classic Manic moments reveal themselves. Although their political edge had been blunted, there was a clear sign of evolution in their lyrical themes. The sloganeering polemic was making way for topics such as the neglect of war veterans, corrupt record company types and a macabre look at Tourette‘s-afflicted children. We also saw some of the first indications here that Richey‘s mental state was beginning to fray: “There’s nothing nice in my head / The adult world took it all away”.

To their immense credit, the Manics were intelligent enough to realise they were heading down the wrong path with their foray into radio rock. So, in an effort to recapture their discipline and focus, they covered themselves from head to toe into military paraphernalia and unleashed what will forever be their greatest achievement, The Holy Bible. It was a disturbing, abrasive record, summed up best by the JG Ballard quote at the start of ‘Faster’: “I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror’”. Richey’s increasingly unravelling mental health brought about his densest, most incredible poetry. James rose magnificently to the challenge of setting this to music, half-killing himself at times to fit in lines like “Holding you but I only miss these things when they leave” over his brutal riffage.

Six months after The Holy Bible was released, the world got too much for Richey and, as we all know, he chose to disappear without trace. Whether he jumped in the Severn, or decided to anonymously start his life again elsewhere, we don’t know. Nowadays, I genuinely don’t know what I believe. The idealistic sixteen year old I once was would tell you in no uncertain terms that he is alive, and hiding away from the world that crushed him.

But in spite of his vitriolic tendencies, by all accounts Richey is/was a loving man who cared more about his friends and family than anything else. Could he just disappear into thin air like that, cutting them off without any kind of goodbye? But then suicide is an even more selfish act, as the mental anguish is entirely with the surviving family, and not shared by the one who runs away, so what to think? The horrible fact is that we (and more to the point, his loved ones) won’t know the truth until Richey surfaces, one way or another.

With all this on their minds, it’s astonishing that the remaining three members were able to release their fourth album Everything Must Go just over a year after his last sighting. What is all the more incredible is that the record is not the depressing feast of wallowing the Manics were entitled to make. Instead, it was an uplifting, string-soaked work, replete with lyrical diversity and dignity. Five of the album’s twelve tracks were written in full or part by Richey, but it is Nicky’s efforts which were arguably the most memorable. Songs like ‘A Design For Life’ and the album’s title track showed Nicky stepping out of Richey’s shadow as a writer. He was in turn able to pay tender tributes to his friend and acerbically mock the world’s perception of the working class condition.

Everything Must Go had made the Manics ‘properly’ famous, but their fifth album This is My Truth Tell Me Yours finally garnered them their first ever number one single with ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will be Next’. This album was a far more downbeat effort than its predecessors. It was the sound of a band jaded by all they had experienced in the seven years since their first record.

Choosing to follow Everything Must Go with an album so steeped in inertia and a very adult sense of angst was also the clearest indication to date that the Manics were never going to sound like the same band they were with Richey. And rightly so. However maligned this record eventually became, it’s still a strong piece of work, infinitely preferable to a lot of what followed it. One thing Manic Street Preachers have always been is an honest band. True to this, This is My Truth is an album which sees them at their most world-weary.

But what the hell their mood was like when they recorded Know Your Enemy will always escape me. It was described by Nicky Wire at the time as ‘one of the best albums of all time’. It wasn’t. They may have tried their hand at everything including, but not limited, to disco, rock ‘n’ roll, jangly pop and raucous punk, but its eclecticism was to prove its downfall. There were some decent moments on the album, such as ‘Intravenous Agnostic’s arse-kicking guitar and the touching sentiment of ‘Ocean Spray’, but Know Your Enemy will go down in most people’s books as Manic Street Preachers worst album.

However, some people would award that dubious accolade to 2004’s Lifeblood. I would disagree. Like This is My Truth, Lifeblood suffered in the public’s eyes for being a subtler affair, more keyboards than power chords. It was a laid-back, melody-soaked effort, and to me showed that the Manics were freer than ever of the fear of what Richey would think of it. Perhaps it’s down to the fact that this was their seventh record, and meant they had made more albums without Richey than they had with him.

Not that they had forgotten him entirely, they weren’t that crass. Album opener ‘1985’ refers to Nicky’s musical awakening at the feet of Morrissey and Marr, a period in his life of which Richey was very much a part (as well as James and Sean). Final track ‘Cardiff Afterlife’ is another of Nicky’s poignant eulogies to Richey: “Your memory is still mine / No I will not share them”.

Perhaps bruised by the harshly indifferent reaction of the record-buying public to Lifeblood, the band decided to go back to a formula which had brought them previous sucess with their next album Send Away the Tigers. They appeared to take the blue print of Everything Must Go, and mixed stadium-rocking power melodies with meaty power chords and threw in some endless solos for good measure.

It was refreshing to hear the Manics in this kind of setting again, and ‘Indian Summer‘ and ‘The Second Great Depression‘ were up their with their best efforts. However, perhaps for the first time ever, the ugly spectre of self-parody reared its head, particularly on Underdogs with its “This one’s for the freaks” refrain. Far be it from me to accuse the Manics of cynicism, I’ve already said they’re too genuine for that. As James sang on ‘An English Gentleman’ on his solo album, “There are no lies / It’s just the way we feel today”. That said, the album as a whole didn’t quite sit right with me.

So, finding themselves at yet another crossroads, the Manics decided that the time was finally right to blow the dust off Richey’s lyrical legacy, recording Journal For Plague Lovers entirely with words left behind in his notebooks. Words intended to appear on the fourth Manic Street Preachers record finally see the light of day on their ninth, a full fourteen years after Richey’s disappearance. I won’t dwell too much on this record, because I’ve already documented my thoughts in detail here but I will say this: Journal For Plague Lovers is the best Manics album for years. Perhaps even since The Holy Bible. And, in my view it is a fitting place to end the career of one of the most sincere, intelligent, and human bands we’ll ever have.

Forever Replayed - A more fitting retelling of Manic Street Preachers history than Sony’s 2004 cash-in - Spotify Playlist

1 Everything Must Go - Everything Must Go
2 Archives of Pain - The Holy Bible
3 Sepia - Kevin Carter Single
4 Stay Beautiful - Generation Terrorists
5 Motown Junk - Motown Junk Single
6 This is Yesterday - The Holy Bible
7 From Despair to Where - Gold Against the Soul
8 Prologue to History - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next Single
9 1985 - Lifeblood
10 No Surface All Feeling - Everything Must Go
11 You Love Us - Generation Terrorists
12 Ready For Drowning - This is My Truth Tell Me Yours
13 Faster - The Holy Bible
14 Sleepflower - Gold Against the Soul
15 Indian Summer - Send Away the Tigers
16 Bored Out of My Mind - Motorcycle Emptiness Single
17 The Masses Against the Classes - The Masses Against the Classes Single
18 Yes - The Holy Bible
19 PCP - The Holy Bible
20 A Design For Life - Everything Must Go