The only perfect circle on the human body is the eye. When a baby is born it's so perfect, but when it opens it's eyes it's just blinded by corruption and everything else is a downward spiral. Richey We didn't learn anything from other Welsh bands, just never to be remotely like them. It's really patronising, the way they suddenly decided to learn to speak the Welsh language, when they'd written songs about the bright lights of Mersey and Liverpool about two years before. And the Welsh language was never important to us at all. I mean, what's the point in resurrecting something that's completely dead? Dead culture doesn't interest us. Richey (1993) Most bands look forward to their homecoming gig. I don't expect roses and petals at my feet but the amount of grief we get here is non-stop. Anything from Welsh bands complaining about us not singing in Welsh to gangs of blokes pouring lager over me and saying 'What are you gonna do about that?' Tom Jones doesn't get this. Richey The working class is patronised a lot these days. Working-class imagery is taken by middle-class people. Nicky (1996) I do want to get a place in Cardiff, but I feel I've got to live in London - for the band. It's the only way I can stay detached. If I went home I'd become obsessed with my own history. I remember so many things, good things that don't exist anymore. I get maudlin and lose all my energy. There's a transience in London that keeps me ticking over. James (1996) You get these fans called Jeremy. They think they're being rebellious because they wear smelly jeans and have matted hair. Then you get the Welsh ones who think you're trying to do something important for Wales. We've never said good things about where we come from. All we've said is 'We're from Wales, from a town where there's nothing to do.' We've never felt any sense of pride in where we came from. Of course, if we were Irish and saying this, we'd be crucified for it. James (1992) Right now it seems the hierarchy of British pop - Oasis, Damon - wants to be seen with Tony Blair. We're still the band who'd rather be seen with Arthur Scargill. It kind of makes me feel good that we're still out of step. It's a good manics trait. Nicky (1997) I've discovered my Welshness much more over the past few years. My greatest ambition is to do a film script on Owain Glyndwr, who was kind of Wales' William Wallace. He defeated the English and gave Wales self-rule. Anthony Hopkins could play him in old age, but I'm not sure who would do him when he was young. Nicky (1997) I'm proud that the Welsh were the last miners to go back to work. Quite cool. Nicky When you've got nothing, you've got something pure that no one can take away. As soon as you've got something, some cunt's gonna take it off you. James (1994) We realised the four of us were very different from the outside world. We're very proper. We did believe the Welsh thing; get an education. Nicky (1996) I think there's a lot of people who feel uncool, and they realise that getting into dance music is the one things that can make them cool. I think that's true for a lot of people, whether it's dodgy old punks from the 1970s who were in shit bands and now they make dance music, or they're young kids putting 'Technics' or 'Kenwood' on their bags. Nicky (1996) I don't blame Liam for walking out on Oasis' US tour. It isn't like Oasis cancelled their tour and ruined our schedule. I think it's brilliant that they did it. And the MTV thing was brilliant, I thought they out-fronted everyone. It did stir my emotions quite a bit, and it does make you feel a little too much of a Brit, but I can't help that. I always see music in terms of a sporting contest. Nicky (1996) I'm never going to lose touch with myself, or where I came from. The only destructive force in my life is alcohol, and even that never got me into trouble, it just made me put on weight. James (1996) Where I come from I've seen violence, I've been in stomach-churning fights, bones broken and everything, but even that doesn't churn my stomach as much as some of the things I see in London. The perpetuation of certain privileges, certain forms of so-called intelligence... that really horrific provincial violence seems more understandable. James (1996) One thing I'm proud of is that where I come from, throughout the whole mining area, every colliery in every town gave money to build an institute, with a library, with complete access for free, which was a way of keeping your class, but having access to education and learning - that's why I ended up at university. The fact is now, almost every one of those institutes has been destroyed. So now you've got this pit-bull terrier working class, completely without pride, and you'd be very naive to think the working class had done that to themselves. It's down to an actual plan by the Conservative government to destroy the working class. Nicky (1996) You go to see a film like Seven and you realise that most people can't become what they want these days, and the one thing you can become is a killer. It's the easiest thing in the fucking world. Nicky (1996) We're not the fucking Senseless Things. We don't want to return to some supposed golden day like they do. You hear bands like that and they talk as if now is useless and everything in 1977 was so great. We're now. All you can do with the past is never want to be like it. 'Cos the past has created what we're living in now, and we're not happy, so it must've failed. Richey (1991) 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 when you listen to 'Archives Of Pain' (The Holy Bible), a very right-wing song, 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. James (1994) Everyone likes the Happy Mondays 'cos when the working class dance, it means nothing except prole fashion. The Stone Roses seem to understand the working class, but only in interviews. No one is speaking for people like us. Richey (1991) People we met in London would never like the idea of meeting a girl in a pub and having a bag of chips and a fuck in the bus stop on the way home. That's something ordinary, working-class people do all the time. We'd do that; we wouldn't check into a hotel - it'd be, 'Stop here a minute, I want my dick sucked'. That's the scum factor. Richey (1990)

There's an awful lot of white British kids who have never really gone hungry, always had a roof to live under but at the same time are desperately unhappy. It's not total poverty, just a poverty of ideas. Richey All great art is massive and well-known. No great art is reclusive. That's why Van Gogh sells for £50 million. Nicky (1991) Computer games are much more exciting than bands. We had our Sega Megadrive when we were down the studio making our record (Generation Terrorists) and we were spending hours a day playing on it because it's so engrossing. You feel involved, which you can't feel with music anymore. It's much better than travelling in the rain to see a band. But it's so sad that the best human minds on the planet are just trying to invent characters like Sonic The Hedgehog. Richey (1992) A Gibson Les Paul was one of the only things I've ever longed for. I had it for two concerts and then I smashed it up. On impulse really. I did regret it after, I've got to admit. Then I got another Gibson and I smashed that up. I did feel quite ashamed because it was like my fathers accumulated wage for about four weeks. I was just showing off and I felt ashamed. James (1992) Where we come from, to see any band you like, you normally have to travel quite a way. Faced with a choice between doing that, or staying home and blowing up planet after planet, then I know what most people would do. But the idea that video games are killing rock 'n' roll is misleading. They're different mediums. Richey Perhaps I'm xenophobic in the sense that I find it very hard to fit in in other countries. Then again, I find it equally hard to fit in in Wales sometimes. Nicky (1994) We are a Welsh rock band and in the eyes of some people then that was the very worst thing in the whole world. We were totally a product of our own environment, but we had to prove we weren't the Alarm James (1996) I'm not into tribalism any more. I'm into oneness. We're too small in Wales to divide any more. There's three times as many people in London as the whole of Wales. Nicky (1997) At the start we never went around wearing Welsh credentials. Richey was really paranoid about ever coming across as Welsh. He always called it the Neil Kinnock factor. I've become more conscious of it lately. I've started to support the Welsh rugby side. interviewed Sharon Stone recently: they asked her to name he favourite Irish author and she said Dylan Thomas. Things like that wouldn't have annoyed me before, but they really do now. Nicky (1997) When we started the idea of Welsh music was like the Ivory Coast at the Olympics: one bloke carrying the flag and one bloke walking behind. Now there's more of us and we can carry our banner with pride. Sean (1997) For me the greatest figure in British history is still Nye Bevan. It just fucking sickens me that people have been conned into believing that you can't think in terms of class any more. As soon as working-class people lose their sense of belonging, they lose their humility, and you get a classless society in the worst possible sense. James (1994) In Wales the women are as bored as the men, but the men will go out to the pub and beat the shit out of everyone else. The women will stay at home and concentrate on surviving. Richey (1992) The media are so into this idea of 'Generation X' at the moment. This concept of teenage discontent. But they're just celebrating these kids saying, 'Ooh, we've always had money, but the second they took the spoon out of our mouths we decided maybe we never really liked our life after all and - hey, maybe we won't get a job'. They'd never publish anything by some scummy, junked-up bastard from Manchester, they're only concerned with willing under-achievers from the upper middle class. James (1994) Sexual politics have never been on my agenda. Richey might have been more interested in that. Basically, I think men are cunts and women are fine. Men are nastier. I do get on better with blokes, but I know deep down we're all pretty... dodgy. Nicky (1996) We've never been the Trade Unionists of rock. We know that we could never reach as many people as we wanted, unless it was on a major (label). We were willing prostitutes. James (1991) We came to feel we were part of a culture that didn't exist anymore. We wanted to believe in something and couldn't find anything to believe in. We wanted to attach some new-found intelligence or theory to the place and the class we came from. But we were always confused, always contradictory, always very suspicious. Suspicious of the smell of the burning martyr. James (1991) Language has always been our weapon. Our lyrics are getting stronger and if you hurt a couple of 'nice' people along the way, or offend them, then that's necessary. James (1991) I've never thought a band could ever do anything that's important. It can change individuals, it can create a common ground for important issues, but in terms of actually doing something, changing the economic infrastructure, it's not gonna do that. It never has done. Richey (1993) We are the scum that remind people of misery. When we jump on the stage it's not rock 'n' roll cliché but the geometry of contempt. We don't display our wounds, we shove them in peoples faces. We are the decaying flowers in the playground of the rich. We are young, beautiful scum, pissed off with the world. Richey (1989) Wipe out aristocracy now, kill, kill, kill. Queen and country dumb flag scum. We are drowning in a manufactured ego fucking. Boredom bred the thoughts of throwing bricks. Richey (1989) New Art Riot was one of the first slogans we used to spray everywhere. It was our most grey, political and dogmatic time. We read Marxism Today and carried the Communist Manifesto everywhere, and we went through a naive phase of putting Lenin and Che Guevara posters on our walls. But it was the height of Madchester - a barren time for lyrics - so we were determined to say something. Nicky (1993) I was listening to Gene on the radio talking about 'Sleep Well Tonight' and the singer was going, 'Oh, we've taken all this video footage of people spilling out of pubs and beating themselves up and it's so terrible', and I thought, 'What the fuck do you expect them to do when they've been working in a factory for 20 years? These people will start a revolution - not the Martin Rossiters of this world who just stay in reading Morrissey lyrics all their lives. It's really wrong to patronise these people. Nicky (1996)