(no subject)
The Music
Singles
'Motown Junk' (1991, on Generation Terrorists)
It's a hate song. It's just a blur of hatred, a constant tirade. Everything in our lives had been one long let-down.
Nicky (1991)
It was the starting point for us really. That was the first time we ever really felt like a band, the first time we created a record we could live with. We had people around us who understood exactly what we were trying to say and how we wanted to say it. Then we signed to Sony.
James (1994)
'Motorcycle Emptiness' (1992, on Generation Terrorists)
The record company never even released it in America - they didn't want it on the album 'cos they said it was too AOR. So our dreams were shattered straight away that was our universal song. If anything could do it, that could.
Nicky (1996)
'Theme From M*A*S*H'
We chose it because it reminded us of a very gloomy time in our lives. It was number 1 when there was a Musicians' union strike and no Top Of The Pops, which essentially meant there was no music on TV at all.
Richey (1992)
We just went into a little demo studio in Cardiff and did it in a day. We just kept playing it over and over until we got it right. It cost us 80 quid to do the whole thing.
Richey(1992)
I couldn't really care less about being a Top 10 chart star, the important thing was do a good job and make some money for the Spastics Society. I was pleased it didn't drop down the charts after the first week. The fact that it went up in the second week was a bigger thrill than going straight in at Number 9.
Richey (1992)
'Roses In The Hospital' (1993, on Gold Against The Soul)
It's just about the idea of something beautiful in a decaying place. It's about people who hurt themselves in order to concentrate, or just to feel something.
Richey
'Little Baby Nothing' (1994, on Generation Terrorists)
When we met Traci Lords and she came over, we just talked to her about the lyrics. At the time we were getting misrepresented 'cos of Richey's arm and everything, and she was just saying, 'you know, I keep coming round and people will say I'm a porn star. Whereas, if I was a man, people would think I'm great, I'm a celebrity, I get to be me'. I think she completely understood the song at the end.
Nicky (1993)
'Faster' (1994, on The Holy Bible)
I had more to do lyrically with 'Faster'. It's not a post-modern nightmare, it's more a voyeuristic insight into how our generation has become obliterated with sensations. We could deal with things but we prefer to blank them out so that virtually every atrocity doesn't have that much impact any more.
Nicky (1994)
Frankly, a lot of it is Richey again, and I was always completely confused by it. But when he wrote it he told me it was about self-abuse. The opening line is 'I am an architect/they call me a butcher' -and of course, he's been carving into his arm and all that... I think it's the most confusing song on the album. I added some stuff about the regurgitation of 20th century culture. It's probably the first time we've written a song and not completely understood what we've written.
Nicky (1994)
'Revol' (1994, on The Holy Bible)
This song is not about revolution and it's not about fucking S*M*A*S*H and it's got fuck all to do with the Family Cat.
Nicky(1994)
All those lines like 'Brezhnev married into group sex' are just analogies really. It's trying to say that relationships in politics, and relationships in general, are failures. It's very much a Richey lyric, and some of it's beyond my head. He's saying that all of these revolutionary leaders were failures in relationships - probably because all his relationships have failed.
Nicky (1994)
'She Is Suffering' (1994, on The Holy Bible)
It's quite a simple song, both musically and lyrically. It's kind of like the Buddhist thing where you can only reach eternal peace by shedding every desire in your body. I think that the last line, 'Nature's lukewarm pleasure' is Richey's views on sex. I can't really explain it, but that's the way he sees it.
Nicky (1994)
'A Design For Life' (1996, on Everything Must Go)
'A Design For Life' reminds me of 'Motown Junk', one of our first singles. But that was the most claustrophobic, angry record, a once in a lifetime for us. The difference is we got more ambitious and we changed. There are only certain moments when you can look into the abyss and dive in. Now we kind of look and step away.
Nicky (1996)
For 'A Design For Life' to sell 300,000 copies and start with the line 'Libraries gave us power' - I'm really proud. Because even Blur and Oasis... Well, 'Country House' is just Madness yob pop, and Oasis's lyrics are hardly the deepest. I do think that's something we can be really proud of.
Nicky (1997)
I feel slightly bitter-sweet. It taints it. Lyrically, there doesn't seem to be much to that song, but the lines are so concise. As soon as I got those words I thought, 'I've got to write the best tune ever'. This was one of the first times in a while when I read a lyric and it sent a tingle up my spine. To transfer that to a Number 2 position - that gives me a sense of fulfillment.
James (1996)
Along with 'Motorcycle Emptiness', it's become our universal song now. Wherever you go, people know it. The lyrical content is something that we're pretty proud of. Simple as that.
Nicky(1997)
I've done a bit of damage to the band -me being in London, a bit of a boy around town and stuff. And when I got those lyrics, I actually felt part of where I came from, for once. I actually felt the disillusionment which I'd deferred by getting pissed. That track actually put me back on track a tiny bit.
James (1996)
Albums
Generation Terrorists (1992)
With the confidence we have in this album we wouldn't be happy unless it sold 16 million.
Nicky
This album is everything we wanted it to be. Every lyric is totally uncensored. Every bit of music we ever wanted, we have.
Richey (1991)
It is a fucked-up album because we tried so hard to make some songs rock FM. No band in our position has ever tried to do that: write a six-minute epic depressive song ('Motorcycle Emptiness'). It'd be easier and more credible to make ten versions of 'Motown Junk'.
Nicky (1992)
The thing about Generation Terrorists was that the title was misunderstood. At the age of 10 or 12 everybody is full of some kind of optimism, yet by the time that they leave school they've given up on everything. In those five or six years your life has been dramatically changed and pretty much destroyed. That's what the title meant. The whole point was to be hypocritical, to be false. All we wanted to do was to write better songs and find a better economy with words. We are improving all the time. Everybody knows the first album would've been better if we'd left out all the crap - but we wanted it to be a double, so nothing was left out.
Richey
It would be wrong to say we regretted it. We could have sold a lot more records if we'd done a debut album that was ten songs just like 'Motown Junk' and played the game a bit more carefully, but I prefer bands when they're messy and sprawling and epic, and they make mistakes. We've made indie bands realise - even on the smallest level - that you can be stars again... that's all down to us. Musically and lyrically they're not gonna take anything from us. I know that -they're too scared.
Nicky
Gold Against The Soul (1993)
There's too much bluster. There's some great singles, but it's definitely not a masterpiece.
Nicky (1996)
The first album was more a statement of intent. This one is far more musical, more current. We were a little too scared to make a hash of things last time. But we don't like slagging off past records. It's like we're despising our fans for buying them.
James (1993)
The Holy Bible (1994)
It's not a party record. It's not 'Abba Gold', but there are a few basic home truths on it.
James (1994)
I really enjoyed how it confronts the audience, but it confronts us too. You play it on stage and you can feel Damien round the corner. It feels like handling a cursed chalice; you can feel the lesions breaking out all over your body.
James (1996)
We just wanted to make a statement that was anti-everything. But in the end it was too grim. It's one of those albums you won't play very often, but it's comforting that it's there nestling in your record collection somewhere.
Nicky (1996)
It 5 gothic with a small 'g'. It's not Cranes, but it is quite a morbid album. We've rejected our past in a lot of ways with this album. There's a bit of early Joy Division on it, and a few PIL basslines.
Nicky (1994)
You might think 'Yes' reads about prostitution, but it's the prostitution of what we've felt over the last three years. There's a line in there 'There's no part of my body that has not been used', and I think that might start with me and Richey having love bites on the first NME cover, then escalates to Richey or whoever sleeping with groupies to cutting yourself. It's like what Red Indians believe, that your soul is taken away when you're photographed constantly. It does get to a point where it feels like that.
Nicky (1994)
'Yes' is the song I find hardest to sing. It doesn't put a lump in my throat or anything, it just makes me feel that I can't do it justice. It makes me feel a bit futile, a bit cabaret.
James (1994)
'Die In The Summertime' has got one of the most frightening lines ever, where it goes 'A tiny animal curled into a quarter circle'. That really scares me. It's hard to explain some of these things without Richey being here.
Nicky (1994)
Everything Must Go (1996)
We're all glad the album's coming out when it is. I think it has a real summer side to it. We're very proud of it and I'm sure if Richey ever gets the chance to hear it, he'll feel the same.
Nicky (1996)
With the first album, we definitely did think we would sell a lot, and we always fell well below the expectations of what we thought an important band should sell. With Everything Must Go, in the way we talked about it, we were the most timid we'd ever been, because we were very nervous. It was strange, because it was the most un-Manic we've been about an album, and then it was the most successful.
James (1997)
'Interiors' (Everything Must Go) is a tribute to the painter Willem de Kooning, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Apparently he's a hypochondriac - and, being one too, I can sympathise with him.
Nicky (1996)
Everything Must Go isn't exactly a feel-good album, but I think it's an album that soothes. With 'Enola/Alone' and 'Australia', people can grab hold of them because they're melancholic but also uplifting - everybody gets that kind of sad uplifting moment. It's raining, or you're pissed, but you're still kind of okay. I think that's what those two songs translate to. I knew 'Enola/Alone' had to be la-la-la, it had to be a Noel Gallagher structure and still have Manics traits in it.
Nicky (1997)
Every song is a good song. It's more Spectoresque, rather than rock, a lot of the time. It was my Brian Jones contribution to say 'get a harp'. My one musical idea in five years. And we've always been trying to get Sean to play the trumpet.
Nicky (1996)
Everything Must Go stands for getting rid of some of the baggage and learning that we have to break our own rules sometimes. This time we realised we couldn't make every album like an encyclopedia. Once upon a time we could never have done a song like 'Further Away', which is almost a love song. It's healthy do be able to do whatever we like without always having to think, 'Wait a minute, we're the Manic Street Preachers'.
James (1996)
'Elvis Impersonator' is all about Britain accepting crap American culture and putting it on a pedestal.
Nicky (1996)
I have to quote one of Richey's lyrics here and say that ours was a Pyrrhic victory. It felt like a relief more than anything else. We had success without compromising or riding on the back of any moments like Britpop, grunge or baggy. We were always outsiders, always deeply unfashionable. That hasn't really changed.
James (1996)
Friends And Relations
Since (manager) Philip (Hall) died we've taken each day as it comes. Philip's death was so arbitrary. At least Richey exercised some kind of control. But they were both slow declines. 'Enola/Alone' on the album (Everything Must Go) stems from that, from me looking at my wedding photos and seeing two people standing right by me who aren't around anymore.
Nicky (1996)
No one in my immediate family's ever died, so it was the first funeral I'd been too. Philip wasn't just a manager, unfortunately. We lived with him for virtually a year, he lent us about £45,000 before we got a deal, virtually financed us.
Nicky (1994)
Philip had a big impact on our lives. He was the first person that ever believed in our music; the first to respond to all the stupidly long letters we would send out to anyone we could think of. He said 'I'll come and see you do a gig in London'. We said we couldn't get a gig in London. So he drove down to see us in a crappy schoolroom.
Richey (1994)
We really had no notion of what Philip did, or how helpful he could be to us. We just thought he sounded like a person who could help us out. Within three months he'd become our manager, we escaped from Wales and the four of us slept on his floor in London for six months. He put up with a lot; by the time we'd signed to Sony he'd re-mortgaged his house for us. Even when we smashed our equipment up he never got pissed off - in fact he used to encourage it. He used to have a glint in his eye. He loved a good wind-up and at least before he died we'd repaid the faith he'd put in us by starting to become a successful band.
Nicky (1994)
Traci Lords is female power. We wanted her or Kylie on 'Little Baby Nothing' because at the time they were both women who were perceived as puppets. No one could imagine that they might have their own vision on how they wanted to be sold.
Richey (1992)
Traci Lords was the nicest American I've ever met, up until now.
Nicky (1993)
You know, I miss my dog Snoopy. He died two weeks ago. That's why I shaved my head... he was 17 years old. I've had him since I was little.
Richey (1995)
Over To You - The Manics From The Outside
(Richey) must have read books from day one while the rest of us were watching telly. He's very intelligent! think he finds it difficult talking to people who aren't similarly educated. He'd sit there quoting things and I'd be nodding thinking, 'I don't know what you are talking about.'
Ian Ballard, Damaged Goods Records (who put out the 'New Art Riot' EP in 1990)
I signed the Manics, I suppose, because I went to see a gig in Guildford and I thought they were the most exciting thing I'd seen since the Clash in 1977... who I also signed. I just thought they were amazing, it's refreshing all the way through, even for old fart like me. They're no more anarchistic than anyone of their age, or my age come to that. They have something to say, they're pissed off about where they live, they're pissed off about unemployment but they're not so pissed off that they can't enjoy themselves and express themselves. And that's what young people are meant to do.
Tim Bowen, Sony/Columbia Managing Director
When I first got into the Manics I had the same feeling I had with Public Enemy. They were just one of those bands that, if you were gonna get into them, you had to decide, you had to let them take you over. I don't think anybody else will ever make an album remotely like The Holy Bible ever again. It's so fucking awesome, it's the kind of album any lesser band would spend the their career trying to live up to, or live down.
Martin Carr, the Boo Radleys
The culture of despair has given way to the culture of sympathy. The same shallow scum who once threw stones are now falling over themselves to salute the band's valiant Carrying On In The Face Of Loss.
Dickon Edwards, Orlando
Aren't Terrorvision the band who ran over one of their own fans? Good fucking idea. I can think of a few bands who should do that. The Manics, for instance.
Richard Parfitt, 60ft Dolls
Thing about the Manics is that they've become total pros. There's no ego to deal with, no bullshit and none of the mayhem that normally goes with life on the road.
Deptford Andy (long-standing roadie)
They look like someone doing the Clash in a school play.
Steve Hanley, the Fall
When I first met them, they were very Clash-based, and I helped them get that stereo guitar sound. They weren't particularly opinionated, they just bashed it down. They demoed about half the songs that later turned up on Generation Terrorists. Nick and Richey didn't play on anything, James did all their parts. They never professed to being musicians. In fact, they never turned up for the 'Bored Out Of My Mind' session. They were a good bunch of boys, really, even though they used to look really aggressive. If they owed me £20 for a session, the next time they came in they'd put it down on the table before anything else. You could trust them.
Glen Powell, Sound Bank Studios
I asked them whether I could put out a single, and after a couple of phone calls, they came round my house in Walthamstow to suss me out. Basically, I was being auditioned to see if I could do their single! We sat around playing video games, as you do. James and Richey did most of the talking - they were very straightforward and down to earth. They recorded the tracks at the Workshop in Redditch over two days. It was the only studio I knew about.
Ian Ballard
The Future
Live, we know we haven't reached the heights of excitement we had with Richey. the sound and the playing are good, but in terms of us looking at one another and knowing we could take on the world, change people's lives... we haven't regained that and without Richey, without the aura, perhaps we never will.
Nicky (1996)
One way or another, things will never be the same. It's looking over and not seeing Richey knocking back his ten vodkas. We'll never fill that gap. We'll never get another guitarist. James will never go over to that side of the stage.
Nicky (1996)
I couldn't be friends with him again. Just for the sake of us three. If it went oft again, just imagine how much it would fuck you up. It's my biggest nightmare-what would I do if Richey turned up and wanted to know me again? It's really scary.
James (1996)
We're not going to use any more of Richey's lyrics. We only used them on this album (Everything Must Go) because he actually heard the songs. They were works-in-progress before he left. We wouldn't want to write a song without him hearing it in any shape or form. Maybe it'd be better to publish them in a little book. They're not like lyrics anyway, they're more like poems.
Nicky (1997)
I haven't got any ambition left at all any more. All that young man's ambition has been sucked out of me. I don't want to tour the world and change people's lives any more. I don't want to convert people to my way of thinking. All that's gone. It feels like we've given so much, and I just look back and think that maybe if we'd gone about things a different way we could all be sitting here now, healthy, happy, stable, successful people.
Nicky (1996)
I do feel pressure. More to become a replacement for Richey than anything, and I'm certainly not going to do that. We're not ever going to get another guitar player in, even though we could do with one. Mind you, they wouldn't exactly be queuing up for that one, would they? 'Guitar player required. Must mutilate himself on stage and carry impossible demands on shoulders for ever...
Nicky (1996)
We've set up a trust fund so that all Richey's royalties go into this account under his name. If he ever turns up, he's got his share. That was really depressing going through all that legal shit. You've got to wait seven years until he's declared dead. We were signing all these forms, we wanted everything to be so proper, so if he ever turns up it's all there for him. But doing that, it just makes him seem like a number. It's really sad.
Nicky (1995)
Maybe one day we could use the lyrics Richey left behind, but we need to come to terms with what's in there. There's some good stuff in there... know you can't get much bleaker than The Holy Bible... but after that we didn't think people were ready for songs about cutting the feet off ballerinas.
Nicky (1995)
Singles
'Motown Junk' (1991, on Generation Terrorists)
It's a hate song. It's just a blur of hatred, a constant tirade. Everything in our lives had been one long let-down.
Nicky (1991)
It was the starting point for us really. That was the first time we ever really felt like a band, the first time we created a record we could live with. We had people around us who understood exactly what we were trying to say and how we wanted to say it. Then we signed to Sony.
James (1994)
'Motorcycle Emptiness' (1992, on Generation Terrorists)
The record company never even released it in America - they didn't want it on the album 'cos they said it was too AOR. So our dreams were shattered straight away that was our universal song. If anything could do it, that could.
Nicky (1996)
'Theme From M*A*S*H'
We chose it because it reminded us of a very gloomy time in our lives. It was number 1 when there was a Musicians' union strike and no Top Of The Pops, which essentially meant there was no music on TV at all.
Richey (1992)
We just went into a little demo studio in Cardiff and did it in a day. We just kept playing it over and over until we got it right. It cost us 80 quid to do the whole thing.
Richey(1992)
I couldn't really care less about being a Top 10 chart star, the important thing was do a good job and make some money for the Spastics Society. I was pleased it didn't drop down the charts after the first week. The fact that it went up in the second week was a bigger thrill than going straight in at Number 9.
Richey (1992)
'Roses In The Hospital' (1993, on Gold Against The Soul)
It's just about the idea of something beautiful in a decaying place. It's about people who hurt themselves in order to concentrate, or just to feel something.
Richey
'Little Baby Nothing' (1994, on Generation Terrorists)
When we met Traci Lords and she came over, we just talked to her about the lyrics. At the time we were getting misrepresented 'cos of Richey's arm and everything, and she was just saying, 'you know, I keep coming round and people will say I'm a porn star. Whereas, if I was a man, people would think I'm great, I'm a celebrity, I get to be me'. I think she completely understood the song at the end.
Nicky (1993)
'Faster' (1994, on The Holy Bible)
I had more to do lyrically with 'Faster'. It's not a post-modern nightmare, it's more a voyeuristic insight into how our generation has become obliterated with sensations. We could deal with things but we prefer to blank them out so that virtually every atrocity doesn't have that much impact any more.
Nicky (1994)
Frankly, a lot of it is Richey again, and I was always completely confused by it. But when he wrote it he told me it was about self-abuse. The opening line is 'I am an architect/they call me a butcher' -and of course, he's been carving into his arm and all that... I think it's the most confusing song on the album. I added some stuff about the regurgitation of 20th century culture. It's probably the first time we've written a song and not completely understood what we've written.
Nicky (1994)
'Revol' (1994, on The Holy Bible)
This song is not about revolution and it's not about fucking S*M*A*S*H and it's got fuck all to do with the Family Cat.
Nicky(1994)
All those lines like 'Brezhnev married into group sex' are just analogies really. It's trying to say that relationships in politics, and relationships in general, are failures. It's very much a Richey lyric, and some of it's beyond my head. He's saying that all of these revolutionary leaders were failures in relationships - probably because all his relationships have failed.
Nicky (1994)
'She Is Suffering' (1994, on The Holy Bible)
It's quite a simple song, both musically and lyrically. It's kind of like the Buddhist thing where you can only reach eternal peace by shedding every desire in your body. I think that the last line, 'Nature's lukewarm pleasure' is Richey's views on sex. I can't really explain it, but that's the way he sees it.
Nicky (1994)
'A Design For Life' (1996, on Everything Must Go)
'A Design For Life' reminds me of 'Motown Junk', one of our first singles. But that was the most claustrophobic, angry record, a once in a lifetime for us. The difference is we got more ambitious and we changed. There are only certain moments when you can look into the abyss and dive in. Now we kind of look and step away.
Nicky (1996)
For 'A Design For Life' to sell 300,000 copies and start with the line 'Libraries gave us power' - I'm really proud. Because even Blur and Oasis... Well, 'Country House' is just Madness yob pop, and Oasis's lyrics are hardly the deepest. I do think that's something we can be really proud of.
Nicky (1997)
I feel slightly bitter-sweet. It taints it. Lyrically, there doesn't seem to be much to that song, but the lines are so concise. As soon as I got those words I thought, 'I've got to write the best tune ever'. This was one of the first times in a while when I read a lyric and it sent a tingle up my spine. To transfer that to a Number 2 position - that gives me a sense of fulfillment.
James (1996)
Along with 'Motorcycle Emptiness', it's become our universal song now. Wherever you go, people know it. The lyrical content is something that we're pretty proud of. Simple as that.
Nicky(1997)
I've done a bit of damage to the band -me being in London, a bit of a boy around town and stuff. And when I got those lyrics, I actually felt part of where I came from, for once. I actually felt the disillusionment which I'd deferred by getting pissed. That track actually put me back on track a tiny bit.
James (1996)
Albums
Generation Terrorists (1992)
With the confidence we have in this album we wouldn't be happy unless it sold 16 million.
Nicky
This album is everything we wanted it to be. Every lyric is totally uncensored. Every bit of music we ever wanted, we have.
Richey (1991)
It is a fucked-up album because we tried so hard to make some songs rock FM. No band in our position has ever tried to do that: write a six-minute epic depressive song ('Motorcycle Emptiness'). It'd be easier and more credible to make ten versions of 'Motown Junk'.
Nicky (1992)
The thing about Generation Terrorists was that the title was misunderstood. At the age of 10 or 12 everybody is full of some kind of optimism, yet by the time that they leave school they've given up on everything. In those five or six years your life has been dramatically changed and pretty much destroyed. That's what the title meant. The whole point was to be hypocritical, to be false. All we wanted to do was to write better songs and find a better economy with words. We are improving all the time. Everybody knows the first album would've been better if we'd left out all the crap - but we wanted it to be a double, so nothing was left out.
Richey
It would be wrong to say we regretted it. We could have sold a lot more records if we'd done a debut album that was ten songs just like 'Motown Junk' and played the game a bit more carefully, but I prefer bands when they're messy and sprawling and epic, and they make mistakes. We've made indie bands realise - even on the smallest level - that you can be stars again... that's all down to us. Musically and lyrically they're not gonna take anything from us. I know that -they're too scared.
Nicky
Gold Against The Soul (1993)
There's too much bluster. There's some great singles, but it's definitely not a masterpiece.
Nicky (1996)
The first album was more a statement of intent. This one is far more musical, more current. We were a little too scared to make a hash of things last time. But we don't like slagging off past records. It's like we're despising our fans for buying them.
James (1993)
The Holy Bible (1994)
It's not a party record. It's not 'Abba Gold', but there are a few basic home truths on it.
James (1994)
I really enjoyed how it confronts the audience, but it confronts us too. You play it on stage and you can feel Damien round the corner. It feels like handling a cursed chalice; you can feel the lesions breaking out all over your body.
James (1996)
We just wanted to make a statement that was anti-everything. But in the end it was too grim. It's one of those albums you won't play very often, but it's comforting that it's there nestling in your record collection somewhere.
Nicky (1996)
It 5 gothic with a small 'g'. It's not Cranes, but it is quite a morbid album. We've rejected our past in a lot of ways with this album. There's a bit of early Joy Division on it, and a few PIL basslines.
Nicky (1994)
You might think 'Yes' reads about prostitution, but it's the prostitution of what we've felt over the last three years. There's a line in there 'There's no part of my body that has not been used', and I think that might start with me and Richey having love bites on the first NME cover, then escalates to Richey or whoever sleeping with groupies to cutting yourself. It's like what Red Indians believe, that your soul is taken away when you're photographed constantly. It does get to a point where it feels like that.
Nicky (1994)
'Yes' is the song I find hardest to sing. It doesn't put a lump in my throat or anything, it just makes me feel that I can't do it justice. It makes me feel a bit futile, a bit cabaret.
James (1994)
'Die In The Summertime' has got one of the most frightening lines ever, where it goes 'A tiny animal curled into a quarter circle'. That really scares me. It's hard to explain some of these things without Richey being here.
Nicky (1994)
Everything Must Go (1996)
We're all glad the album's coming out when it is. I think it has a real summer side to it. We're very proud of it and I'm sure if Richey ever gets the chance to hear it, he'll feel the same.
Nicky (1996)
With the first album, we definitely did think we would sell a lot, and we always fell well below the expectations of what we thought an important band should sell. With Everything Must Go, in the way we talked about it, we were the most timid we'd ever been, because we were very nervous. It was strange, because it was the most un-Manic we've been about an album, and then it was the most successful.
James (1997)
'Interiors' (Everything Must Go) is a tribute to the painter Willem de Kooning, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Apparently he's a hypochondriac - and, being one too, I can sympathise with him.
Nicky (1996)
Everything Must Go isn't exactly a feel-good album, but I think it's an album that soothes. With 'Enola/Alone' and 'Australia', people can grab hold of them because they're melancholic but also uplifting - everybody gets that kind of sad uplifting moment. It's raining, or you're pissed, but you're still kind of okay. I think that's what those two songs translate to. I knew 'Enola/Alone' had to be la-la-la, it had to be a Noel Gallagher structure and still have Manics traits in it.
Nicky (1997)
Every song is a good song. It's more Spectoresque, rather than rock, a lot of the time. It was my Brian Jones contribution to say 'get a harp'. My one musical idea in five years. And we've always been trying to get Sean to play the trumpet.
Nicky (1996)
Everything Must Go stands for getting rid of some of the baggage and learning that we have to break our own rules sometimes. This time we realised we couldn't make every album like an encyclopedia. Once upon a time we could never have done a song like 'Further Away', which is almost a love song. It's healthy do be able to do whatever we like without always having to think, 'Wait a minute, we're the Manic Street Preachers'.
James (1996)
'Elvis Impersonator' is all about Britain accepting crap American culture and putting it on a pedestal.
Nicky (1996)
I have to quote one of Richey's lyrics here and say that ours was a Pyrrhic victory. It felt like a relief more than anything else. We had success without compromising or riding on the back of any moments like Britpop, grunge or baggy. We were always outsiders, always deeply unfashionable. That hasn't really changed.
James (1996)
Friends And Relations
Since (manager) Philip (Hall) died we've taken each day as it comes. Philip's death was so arbitrary. At least Richey exercised some kind of control. But they were both slow declines. 'Enola/Alone' on the album (Everything Must Go) stems from that, from me looking at my wedding photos and seeing two people standing right by me who aren't around anymore.
Nicky (1996)
No one in my immediate family's ever died, so it was the first funeral I'd been too. Philip wasn't just a manager, unfortunately. We lived with him for virtually a year, he lent us about £45,000 before we got a deal, virtually financed us.
Nicky (1994)
Philip had a big impact on our lives. He was the first person that ever believed in our music; the first to respond to all the stupidly long letters we would send out to anyone we could think of. He said 'I'll come and see you do a gig in London'. We said we couldn't get a gig in London. So he drove down to see us in a crappy schoolroom.
Richey (1994)
We really had no notion of what Philip did, or how helpful he could be to us. We just thought he sounded like a person who could help us out. Within three months he'd become our manager, we escaped from Wales and the four of us slept on his floor in London for six months. He put up with a lot; by the time we'd signed to Sony he'd re-mortgaged his house for us. Even when we smashed our equipment up he never got pissed off - in fact he used to encourage it. He used to have a glint in his eye. He loved a good wind-up and at least before he died we'd repaid the faith he'd put in us by starting to become a successful band.
Nicky (1994)
Traci Lords is female power. We wanted her or Kylie on 'Little Baby Nothing' because at the time they were both women who were perceived as puppets. No one could imagine that they might have their own vision on how they wanted to be sold.
Richey (1992)
Traci Lords was the nicest American I've ever met, up until now.
Nicky (1993)
You know, I miss my dog Snoopy. He died two weeks ago. That's why I shaved my head... he was 17 years old. I've had him since I was little.
Richey (1995)
Over To You - The Manics From The Outside
(Richey) must have read books from day one while the rest of us were watching telly. He's very intelligent! think he finds it difficult talking to people who aren't similarly educated. He'd sit there quoting things and I'd be nodding thinking, 'I don't know what you are talking about.'
Ian Ballard, Damaged Goods Records (who put out the 'New Art Riot' EP in 1990)
I signed the Manics, I suppose, because I went to see a gig in Guildford and I thought they were the most exciting thing I'd seen since the Clash in 1977... who I also signed. I just thought they were amazing, it's refreshing all the way through, even for old fart like me. They're no more anarchistic than anyone of their age, or my age come to that. They have something to say, they're pissed off about where they live, they're pissed off about unemployment but they're not so pissed off that they can't enjoy themselves and express themselves. And that's what young people are meant to do.
Tim Bowen, Sony/Columbia Managing Director
When I first got into the Manics I had the same feeling I had with Public Enemy. They were just one of those bands that, if you were gonna get into them, you had to decide, you had to let them take you over. I don't think anybody else will ever make an album remotely like The Holy Bible ever again. It's so fucking awesome, it's the kind of album any lesser band would spend the their career trying to live up to, or live down.
Martin Carr, the Boo Radleys
The culture of despair has given way to the culture of sympathy. The same shallow scum who once threw stones are now falling over themselves to salute the band's valiant Carrying On In The Face Of Loss.
Dickon Edwards, Orlando
Aren't Terrorvision the band who ran over one of their own fans? Good fucking idea. I can think of a few bands who should do that. The Manics, for instance.
Richard Parfitt, 60ft Dolls
Thing about the Manics is that they've become total pros. There's no ego to deal with, no bullshit and none of the mayhem that normally goes with life on the road.
Deptford Andy (long-standing roadie)
They look like someone doing the Clash in a school play.
Steve Hanley, the Fall
When I first met them, they were very Clash-based, and I helped them get that stereo guitar sound. They weren't particularly opinionated, they just bashed it down. They demoed about half the songs that later turned up on Generation Terrorists. Nick and Richey didn't play on anything, James did all their parts. They never professed to being musicians. In fact, they never turned up for the 'Bored Out Of My Mind' session. They were a good bunch of boys, really, even though they used to look really aggressive. If they owed me £20 for a session, the next time they came in they'd put it down on the table before anything else. You could trust them.
Glen Powell, Sound Bank Studios
I asked them whether I could put out a single, and after a couple of phone calls, they came round my house in Walthamstow to suss me out. Basically, I was being auditioned to see if I could do their single! We sat around playing video games, as you do. James and Richey did most of the talking - they were very straightforward and down to earth. They recorded the tracks at the Workshop in Redditch over two days. It was the only studio I knew about.
Ian Ballard
The Future
Live, we know we haven't reached the heights of excitement we had with Richey. the sound and the playing are good, but in terms of us looking at one another and knowing we could take on the world, change people's lives... we haven't regained that and without Richey, without the aura, perhaps we never will.
Nicky (1996)
One way or another, things will never be the same. It's looking over and not seeing Richey knocking back his ten vodkas. We'll never fill that gap. We'll never get another guitarist. James will never go over to that side of the stage.
Nicky (1996)
I couldn't be friends with him again. Just for the sake of us three. If it went oft again, just imagine how much it would fuck you up. It's my biggest nightmare-what would I do if Richey turned up and wanted to know me again? It's really scary.
James (1996)
We're not going to use any more of Richey's lyrics. We only used them on this album (Everything Must Go) because he actually heard the songs. They were works-in-progress before he left. We wouldn't want to write a song without him hearing it in any shape or form. Maybe it'd be better to publish them in a little book. They're not like lyrics anyway, they're more like poems.
Nicky (1997)
I haven't got any ambition left at all any more. All that young man's ambition has been sucked out of me. I don't want to tour the world and change people's lives any more. I don't want to convert people to my way of thinking. All that's gone. It feels like we've given so much, and I just look back and think that maybe if we'd gone about things a different way we could all be sitting here now, healthy, happy, stable, successful people.
Nicky (1996)
I do feel pressure. More to become a replacement for Richey than anything, and I'm certainly not going to do that. We're not ever going to get another guitar player in, even though we could do with one. Mind you, they wouldn't exactly be queuing up for that one, would they? 'Guitar player required. Must mutilate himself on stage and carry impossible demands on shoulders for ever...
Nicky (1996)
We've set up a trust fund so that all Richey's royalties go into this account under his name. If he ever turns up, he's got his share. That was really depressing going through all that legal shit. You've got to wait seven years until he's declared dead. We were signing all these forms, we wanted everything to be so proper, so if he ever turns up it's all there for him. But doing that, it just makes him seem like a number. It's really sad.
Nicky (1995)
Maybe one day we could use the lyrics Richey left behind, but we need to come to terms with what's in there. There's some good stuff in there... know you can't get much bleaker than The Holy Bible... but after that we didn't think people were ready for songs about cutting the feet off ballerinas.
Nicky (1995)