Except, for
the Manic Street Preachers, it did. This summer, guitarist Richey
James was hospitalised with nervous exhaustion and, despite his
non-playing role, the close-kit agit-Situationists looked naked
without him. "Most groups would have got in another
guitarist," they tell Stuart Maconie. "That would have
been a betrayal"
The Intense Humming of Evil, Mausoleum, Archives of Pain, Die in
the Summertime. Even a cursory glance at the titles will confirm
that this is not the new Gloria Estephan album. The cover too, a
huge triptych depicting a woman of vast, fleshy dimension staring,
absorbed yet detached, at her own reflection, is hardly the sort
of thing Maria Carey goes in for. It is, in fact, The Holy Bible,
third album by the Manic Street Preachers, arguably their best,
certainly the bleakest and most powerful thing they have done in
their luridly high-profile four years in the music-business.
Whilst their 1992 debut, Generation Terrorists, was full of
chutzpah and provincial spleen, and 1993's Gold Against the Soul
was a more accomplished and crafted set of rock numbers, The Holy
Bible is an hour-long voyage into the places most rock songs don't
want to go. Painful subjects are tackled unflinchingly; the
Holocaust, the penal system, anorexia nervosa, prostitution, the
noose of political correctness, tyranny ... Even under normal
circumstances, The Holy Bible would have been difficult to take
anything but seriously. It is strong stuff, completely without
the leavening lightness of previous Manics hits Motorcycle
Emptiness, Roses in the Hospital or Life Becoming A Landslide,
the kind of tersely anthemic fare at which they excel. But the
band's travail of the last few months have ensured the record an
even finer-toothed combing.
The essentially shy quartet of childhood friends from Blackwood
in South Wales have always prided themselves in their self-imposed
exile from the shallow mateyness of the indie rock scene,
preferring to go home at weekends and opt out of the gossip
column-lubricating lig circuit. But this summer, they upped the
ante another rather alarming notch.
In July it was announced that the Manics' second guitarist and
lyricist Richey James had been admitted to hospital suffering
from nervous exhaustion, which the medical encyclopaedia
describes as "a number of physical and metal symptoms
including loss of energy, insomnia, aches and pains, depression
etc." in Richey's case, it would appear that full-scale
nervous collapse was neared the mark, brought on, it's thought,
by a fairly punishing schedule of heavy and prolonged drinking,
inadequate diet and a generally self-abusive routine, involving a
good deal of self-mutilation, a tendency first glimpsed when he
famously carved "4 Real" into his left arm with a razor
blade to make a point to writer and DJ Steve Lamacq. "I didn't
know what I could possibly say to him to make him understand",
he has said since. "Other bands hit journalists and it's
very macho ... I would never want to do that."
After a ferocious appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in June
this year, James spent an apparently harrowing eight days in a
Cardiff hospital (during which he actually contemplated leaving
the band in a performing capacity), and then the band's manager
check him into a clinic in London where, eventually, he regained
his health.
He is more gaunt than most remember him, still prone to "days
of wobbliness", and this left arm is a battlefield of fading
welts and scars (self-inflicted), but he is, at least, back on
stage and playing again. Certainly the vigour with which he takes
a Telecaster to the amps at tonight's show in Leicester doesn't
suggest a defeated man. But no-one is pretending that things
should now go on blithely as before.
"We have to watch how we govern ourselves now," says
singer James Dean Bradfield. "Without being corny, Richey
and I were, if not quite birding and boozing buddies, something
like that. We'd go out or stay up after the gigs. We can't do
that now. I wouldn't want it for him. As far as his agenda is
concerned, it's just not on the agenda. We don't want to be
unfeeling dickheads."
The Manics have always enjoyed an exploited their love-hate
relationship with the iconography of rock, exploding on to the
scene in 1990 with Clash-indebted stencilling on their shirts,
then craftily upgrading the punk imagery to something more
effeminate, then macho, and, in the case of their recent
paramilitary look, scary. They were not afraid to rock, although
they claimed no interest in drugs, but Bradfield is quick to
dismiss the notion that Richey's breakdown was a logical outcome
of the mythic rock'n'roll lifestyle. "I don't think of it as
a natural extension of being in a rock group. It might have
accelerated it but that's all. In some ways Richey's a very
Richard Briers person, very cardigan, pipe and slippers. But I
think if he'd gone on to become a lecturer - which he might well
have done - the same thing could have very easily happened,
perhaps in a more private way.
"Richey's always been very aware of the myths surrounding
groups. And the bad thing is, you don't only feed your own self-image,
you want to feed the images other people have of you." As to
the suggestion that the others might have seen it coming, it's
pointed out that "Richey would often take time off and go to
a health farm when people around him felt he was looking ill. But,
in the end, he is one of these people who will always do the
opposite of what you tell him."
In the immediate wake of Richey's hospitalisation, the Manics
fulfilled their live commitments as a three-piece, including a
well-received show at the Reading festival. "I think a lot
of groups would have got in another guitarist for those five
dates but wouldn't have been right for us," says Bradfield.
"To be honest, we were all quite numb to any sort of
discussion about the group's future because we were too concerned
about Richey. We've all grown up together. He's a friend first
and foremost. So we never entertained any discussion about the
group until he brought it up himself. It wouldn't have been
thinkable in that first week. We couldn't walk out of the
hospital and say, OK, what about this concert on Tuesday night
then? It would have been a betrayal."
The solidly familial nature of the Manics' set up has meant that
"there's nothing tenuous about relationships within the
group. Nothing more than the fact that Richey is slightly more
tenuous with himself right now, which is understandable." br>
The Holy Bible is the most issue-based album the band have so far
recorded and was created through what Bradfield calls "an
almost academic discipline. We sat down and gave ourselves
headings and structures, so each song's like an essay."
James and bassist Nicky Wire supply the lyrics, and, through a
strict demarcation process others find baffling, these are given
musical shape by Bradfield and his cousin, drummer Sean Moore,
before eventually being sung by James. "I'm in a privileged
position of interpretation," reasons Bradfield. "Sean
and I never use bits of music we have lying around. We start
afresh when we hear the lyrics. And I have rules. I don't have to
accept, only understand." And never disagree?
"Well, on this album, for instance, I didn't think the first
draft of Intense Humming of Evil was judgmental enough. It's a
song about the Holocaust and you can't be ambivalent about a
subject like that. Not even we are stupid enough to be
contentious about that. We're not left-wing but we do have roots
in Situationism and stuff, and when we formed the band, the
Miners' strike was going on on our doorsteps. So I think when you
listen to Archives of Pain (contentious pro-capital punishment
track), a very right-wing song, one of the most important things
we've done, it shows how fucked up and confused our times are.
And it shows that we're still arrogant and unafraid enough to
make judgements, even miscalculated ones." The Manics could
release a greatest hits album tomorrow - She is Suffering is
their 14th Top 40 single - but the band are derisive about this
kind of thinking. "We don't want that Wonder Stuff
perspective. We're known in Britain, Japan, Thailand, we've had
hits in Holland. But this is our third album and we're only
played six fucking gigs in America. That's got to stop. We're
still in love with the idea of The Beatles kissing the tarmac at
JFK. We're still in love with the word 'million'."
They have never sounded better live, ferociously powerful and
aggressive without a hint of the corny posturing that dogs most
bands of their ilk. "Any other group in the world would get
the audience to do this (he claps his hands above his head)
during the quiet bit in Roses in the Hospital but we physically
can't do it! We can't bond with the audience."
There is still a sense of purpose about the Manic Street
Preachers that's been undimmed by recent events. As James puts it,
"The birds are singing for me today. Some things will have
to change but that's OK. I'll have to find a new drinking buddy.
"I was worried that, because Richey's undergoing treatment,
he'd turn into Peter Gabriel, lyrically. He's living on a
different proverb a day at the moment and I didn't want our songs
to turn into psychobabble. But he's kept his own voice, which is
admirable. It hasn't weakened us. But I'm not prepared to say,
hey, it's made us stronger."
A grin crosses his face. "We're a very moral band ... but we're
not the Waltons."