Tag: manic street preachers the holy bible

Overweight and Out of Date? 30 Years Ago, The Manic Street Preachers Escaped From Their History With Everything Must Go

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Two months ago I was out having a drink in London. And someone says to me, ‘How can you be out having a drink?’ I say, ‘What the fuck are you on about?’ He says, ‘If I was you I’d be in my room chopping myself up by proxy for Richey.’ People think they know how they’d react if they were his friend. But I don’t feel that I’d been Richey’s friend at that point, because you didn’t have a clue what had happened at all. There were no equation.

JDB to the NME 1996/05/11

THE PURE MOTIVE

It’s an origin story that now seems as notorious and as recognisable as Bruce Wayne’s parents being gunned down in Crime Alley. Yaddayaddayadda, eve of American tour, yaddayaddayadda, Vauxhall Cavalier found parked on Severn Bridge, yaddayaddayadda, not seen since February 1st 1995. And if I were to map out the disappearance of Richey Edwards (the band’s co-lyricist, Minister of Propaganda, and “guitarist”) here again in detail you’d probably let out a groan at the waste of time similar to that you’d release were the next Batman film to feature of yet another scene explaining what happened to Thomas and Martha. Also, I don’t want to victim blame, Mr and Mrs Wayne, but ‘Crime Alley’? What did you think was going to happen?

The band would be forced to deal with the emotional devastation of the never solved disappearance of its central member and the members’ childhood friend for the rest of their career. Though, even by the point of that missed flight to the US, Richey Edwards had long been taken from them. ‘The Cult of Richey’ may not have been named as such yet (and, as far as I can tell, may well have first been coined by Manics bassist Nicky Wire to refer to the hysteria around Richey’s disappearance in 1996), but it really began to form following Richey’s hospitalisation just before the release of ‘The Holy Bible‘. And then that album was released – with its largely Richey-penned lyrics that perfectly chronicled the overwhelming power of everything on our fragile and sensitive souls – and it was like, no, he’s ours now, you can’t have him. Even before Richey’s disappearance, fans would write into NME and Melody Maker expressing how deeply they understood his condition. Even suggesting that, maybe, only they know how to save him? And what was all Richey’s self-harm and self-destruction if not our saviour offering up his own sacrifices to atone for our sins??

The problem with being as talented as any artist in history at giving voice to the inner torments of humanity, is that people are going to start believing in real parasocial connections. How could they describe my feelings so well if we weren’t already so close??

But the problem with artists is that they have an infinitely frustrating tendency to move on and evolve far quicker than their audience.

ALL YOU SEE IS MORE AND MORE JUNK

Make Us Your Glasnost: Manic Street Preacher’s ‘Lifeblood 20’ Review

~ Lex Leeson ~ 10 Comments

When the Politburo unanimously elected Mikhail Gorbachev as the eighth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR wasn’t in a great place. The cowboy bravado of Ronald Reagan had lead to military spending to ride to 27% of its GDP; production of civilian goods was frozen at 1980 levels; US financing of Mujahideen warlords to overthrow socialist leaders in Democratic Republic of Afghanistan ensured the war in that country was an absolute disaster (and would later be referred to as “The Soviet Union’s Vietnam“); and general faith in the leading party was at a historic low. It was clear that some changes would be needed. And ol’ Mikky G believed he had just the plan.

Firstly, Gorbachev wound down the USSR’s power around the world. He retreated from Afghanistan, likely assuming the $20 billion that the CIA had donated to train and arm the jihad resistance groups was unlikely to ever have any longterm effects. He went all smiles and waves to the hawkiest of hawks (and now 43 year champion of the “Reason For Everything Wrong In the World” award) Ronald “Rawdog” Reagan, making the landmark agreements that they would scale back the arms race with the small concession that America still carry on doing the exact same shit. His “Sinatra Doctrine” threw the USSR’s hands up in regard to the Soviet Union’s satellite states, allowing them to do it their way and conceding power to the nationalists and the fascists. Secondly, there would be the concept of ‘perestroika’ (перестройка/restructuring), which were economic reforms that essentially dismantled the planned economy without any suggested alternative mechanism. It also introduced market factors, being the softlaunch of capitalism and conceding power to the new bourgeois. It also meant McDonalds and future Pizza Hut adverts. Yay.

this is fine

And then there was glasnost (гласность/transparency), the ultimate liberalisation of the Soviet Union. Gorby essentially opened up the USSR’s ‘Marketplace of Ideas’. The previous Marxist perspective on ‘free speech’ was probably best explained in Mao’s ‘Oppose Book Worship’ (反对本本主义): “no investigation, no right to speak”. Not everyone is assumed to know enough to speak on anything. Now, the USSR would work from Western, liberal rules. Anything goes. All bullshit is as valid as the next. And “free speech” meant what “free speech” means to this day: reactionary right wing potato heads using racism and sexism to further their own desires for profit and accumulation.

i’ll mention the album soon i promise