The Manic Street Preachers are undoubtedly a phenomenon. Their success has shown that music and leftwing politics can be mixed, and appeal to a broad youth audience. The band saw in the new year with a sell-out concert in Cardiff's new Millennium Stadium, at which they performed their latest single 'Masses Against The Classes' flanked by two enormous Cuban flags.
Their work has inspired both plays and exhibitions, in which the marketed commodity is not simply image but also a political message. 'Anti-marketing' marketing, in fact.
ZOE THOMAS looks at the background and politics of this unique band. "We just want to mix politacs and sex and look bril Taffs', 'Meck Leek liant onstage." Clad in Icopard skin, eyeliner, white Back wa drainpipes and women's blouses, in 1991 the Manics burst onto a bemused British music scene. They were set apart instantly. Alice all, this was the cra of Baggy and the laddish party Nicky Wire, Richey scene. The difference wasn't just in the dress code how ever; the Manics arrived spitting bile in the tradition of their punk heroes, 'A true The Clash, and spread trademark slogans of political rebellion, boredom, alienation great feelings and despair. of Lové'....
And the Manics when the terms 'Welsh' and 'cool' were regarded as mutually exclusive and the notion of a Weish rock and roll band was regarded as frankly laughable. In carly gigs they were beckled with baa' noises and in the culturally isolated in music press they were bombarded with slogans ridiculfour working class Manifesto', "The boyos are boys turned This is inwards and Spinal Taff". The NME even educated reported that a record shop themselves on art, literature in Edinburgh refused to and politics. They have described how books were "they're crap, they're Weish just as interesting to them as and they wear eyeliner." music and they becarne avid James Dean Bradfield, Marx, Lenin, Camus, Sartre, Edwards and Sean Moore Burroughs, Kesey and met in Primary school and Kerouac. These books and many others were to find grew up rogether in the small South Wales mining their way into the Manics work via quotations which town o blackwood They were accompany all their singles and albums. affected by Initially the band gained a the defeat of small but dedicated cult folthe miners in lowing, ser against a backthe 1984-5 ground of much more strike and the widespread contempt. subsequent clo- single "You Love Us' was an sure of the ironic comment on the villmines, In the fication they received in the Blackwood area alone twelve pits Stitches were shut down, In the now infamous 4 making this a minReal' incident Richey ing town without any mines slashed his arm with a razor Feeling themselves to be blade in response to a journalist who questioned the Blackwood and alienated band's integrity: The wound from the macho environrequired seventeen stitches ment of small town life, the expression as he holds his Diccaung art our tor taspee tion has become an iconographic image of 20th century rock and roll. A recent NME poll placed it at no 1 of the 100 greatest events of rock. It soon became apparent however that Richey Edwards, the leader and lyricist of the band, was suffering mental bealth problems - including depression, an cating disorder, bouts of binge drinking and furtber self harm. abound as to his whereabouts, some speculating that he leapt to his death from the Severn Bridge, others that he elaborately engineered his own disappearance and is now living abroad. There have been sightings as far apart as Goi and lucreventura. What is certain is that Kichey dia not stay in tae band long enough to share of the Manics.
For several months after Richey's disappearance the grave doubt. Eventually the Their remaining members decided to carry on as a threesome with the single 'A Design For Life' - an anthem about working class pride and the demise of the welfare state.
Awards
The album 'Everything Must Go', from which it was 1996. It was the first time the Manics had cerns the Hillsborough The band gained their first number one with 'ff You Tolerate This Your Children the Spanish Civil War which has its title taken from a poster used by the Republicans.
Towards the close of 1999 'Unconvention', an art exhibition inspired by the political and cultural interests of the Manics, was beld in Cardiff.
Cultural event
The exhibition was signifi. cant not just because it brought together the disparate concerns of the band, but because in so coins 1 created a cultural and politibeyond the boundaries of an ordinary art exhibition There was involvement by community and political activists, the display of artelacis relatco to past political struggles as well as Revolutionary On the opening is motivated by weekend, stalls
ing them for being Weish - spoilt their popers. headlines like 'Meet the naff
taken, swept the board at monics throughout A true