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Manic Street Preachers
Initially starting as a foursome in their teens, Manic Street Preachers (vocalist/guitarist James Dean Bradfield, drummer Sean Moore, lyricist/bassist Nicky Wire, and rhythm guitarist Richey James Edwards) have been functioning as a trio since the unexplained disappearance of Edwards in 1995. Romantic, idealistic, self-destructive, and iconic, Manic Street Preachers have become increasingly more successful—at least in their U.K. homeland—with the release of each album. Now numbering at eight albums (plus a greatest hits collection), the Welsh band’s latest, Send Away the Tigers, sees the group returning back to what inspired them musically when they first got together. Writing from his kitchen in Wales, the always articulate Nicky Wire responds to our questions clearly and concisely.
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Lucy: Your band have been quite quiet for the last few months. Are you looking forward to playing gigs again?
Katie Jane Garside: I think I give very obtuse ans
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Under the Radar: More so than any of your albums in the last 10 years, Send Away the Tigers has very obvious references to other bands, in a very unapologetic way. Nicky Wire: Send Away the Tigers wears its influences on its sleeve. We wanted to sound like an anthemic rock band again. All the influences that made the band became obvious and apparent, from The Clash to Guns ‘n’ Roses. We have not sounded like ourselves for 10 years. We felt good about doing it now. UTR: There are a lot of references to America on Send Away the Tigers: musically, lyrically, politically, and perhaps even inspirationally. What is the impetus behind this? Wire: The presence of America in the present culture is unavoidable. America has been a negative and positive influence throughout our career. It is both an inspiration and an object of despair.
UTR: Considering you’ve been in a band for about 20 years, do you think over time, you lose a certain amount of excitement about it? What do you think are some things that can bring back that beginning feeling of excitement? Wire: After 20 years you unavoidably become cynical and less idealistic. For Send Away the Tigers we deliberately recreated a sense of naïve anger and youthful optimism. This was fulfilled by the three of us, alone, making music in a small room in Cardiff [Wales] with no distractions. UTR: What are some things you used to think and believe in at the early part of your music career that you now realize were naïve or unrealistically optimistic? Wire: Initially we had genuinely insane thoughts of destroying the British Royal family and making every other band redundant, but I am glad we had such unrealistic ideals. It made us the band we are today. UTR: What are some things you believe now that you know are practical and have a distinct possibility of actually happening in the future of the group? Wire: I have a deep routed belief that the lyrics and music created by Manic Street Preachers makes a lasting impression for the good, for some people. In practical terms I think that is all we can hope for. UTR: You have been saying you’ve been through a process of destroying what you are as a band. What do you mean by that? Why and how would you do that? Wire: As I said before, for the last 10 or so years we haven’t sounded like the quintessential version of the band we are. We confused ourselves and our fan base. Lifeblood in particular bared little relation musically to the band that created “A Design for Life.” The huge success of This is My Truth Tell Me Yours made us question the whole reason behind Manic Street Preachers. But now we have found ourselves again.
UTR: How is your solo album [I Killed the Zeitgeist] and James Dean Bradfield’s solo album [The Great Western] approach and sound different from what you do with the group? How did it have an effect on what you’ve done with the group since their releases? Wire: My solo album was utterly different from Manic Street Preachers. It was cheap, amateurish, drenched in feedback with a Lou Reed vocal style. Both our solo albums helped us focus on what we love most. They were an exercise in de-cluttering and musical vanity. UTR: How would you describe the other two members of the band? Wire: James is tenacious, hardworking, hilarious, generally late, and a guitar genius. Sean is a complete mystery—like all drummers you have no real idea of what he is thinking.
Interview from http://www.undertheradarmag.com/ Pix by Steve Bateman, lots more here
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script, maybe we are looking forward to it. (Laughs). It's difficult to say because the last few months have felt strange, it's felt like going down a plughole. I've got a real sense of vertigo at the moment. So I can't tell you that I'm looking forward to it. I will get through it and find where I land after that. That's what will happen.
Lucy: 'Taxidermy' and 'Drink Me' are quite drastically different in their
m
usical
styles, so what kind of sound can we expect from the 3rd album?
KJG: We don't know yet. We're playing a lot of new material tonight so you'll
be able to judge that for yourself. When I'm this close up to it, it's really
difficult to tell. I'm on a bit of a negative slant today, but usually with
our music I can only hear the bits that have gone wrong rather
than anything that went right. When you reflect back on something it's very
difficult to give an objective opinion, and I don't believe in objectivity
anyway, I think everything's subjective. I just throw a deck of cards and
wherever they land, that's where she finds herself. I'm not really the one
to explain my part in it, you must do that as the observer really, and of
course that will reflect your part in the grand scheme of things.
Lucy: Do you enjoy playing live more than the creative process in the studio?
KJG: (Laughs) I don't enjoy any of it. It comes and it goes, ok? There's nothing
like when you're writing and you manage to catch something by its
tail; when you're looking for those things underground that are skittering
out of sight just when you're about to catch them. And when you catch them
it is worth it, but it's a momentary pleasure. I've got so much noise upstairs,
and I can hear things in my head that to me are absolutely devastatingly beautiful.
I'm always trying to download them and get them
here, but they never get here in the right state, they're always very disabled
and they don't even begin to imitate what I can hear in my head.
It's a frustrating process in the main.
Lucy: Your lyrics are simultaneously emotionally expressive and cryptic. Are
you looking to be understood by your audience?
KJG: I'm always trying to understand myself, but it's like there's a point
in the centre of the room, and there's a hundred windows to look at the same
point from. All I can do is give you different angles on the same thing. God,
you know, if I could find one conclusive thing in anything I would probably
have something to put an anchor down on. But I cant, and I haven't met anyone
that can. You can pick out anything you like in my lyrics, I don't seek to
be cryptic. I love words for the sake of words, for me they're kind of free
standing, and they don't really need to be explained. I think every word has
its own character and colour and picture and the result you get with lyrics
just depends how you put them together. You could just do it in a William
Burroughs esque way, or throw the deck of cards, and you'd probably still
find something that our tiny little minds would latch on to in order to gain
some kind of emotional understanding. I don't think there's a constant, the
only constant that there is for me is that there is no constant. I use myself
as my canvas, I gut myself and fillet myself the whole fucking time, I'm always
hooking myself out of the water, I'm always cutting my own head off and disembowelling
myself, and as you can probably tell I'm quite angry about it at the moment.
I'm very tired of it all, of my
process and how I find life, because it always seems to be about living and
dying all in one breath. I'm getting pretty fucking tired of that.
Lucy: Do you think drugs stimulate or hinder creativity?
KJG: Well that depends on the drug, because I think most things arrive in
the form of a drug really. I know in myself that if anything I am, much to
my greater expense, an adrenalin junkie. My synapses don't work well enough
to put pills in my mouth, I can't do that, despite popular opinion. I don't
need any help breaking down, put it that way. There's not much holding it
together. If there was a drug that could put aline between two polar opposites
and make them in to one thing I'm sure I would have it
intravenous, but I haven't found it. I think drugscan be a bit of a lazy way
for creativity anyway, you're better off in the cold light of day in the mirror.
Lucy: As a band, you are distinguished by the extreme physicality of your
live performances. Do you consciously make an effort to put on a show or do
your performances just naturally come to you, and whatever happens, happens?
KJG: It's a bit of both, because you see, I think taking the stage is one
of the most unnatural things anyone can do. In a way, just walking on stage
actually creates an altered state - its not right, no one's meant to do that,
unless you're a priest or a magician, or something like that. To put somebody
who's very incapable in many ways in to that position creates a combustion
reaction inside me. I know that, and I take the stage knowing that. Obviously
there's all the usual things that affect my performance; if I'm on my 45th
day of a tour I'm probably gonna be pretty fucking tired, so I'll be dictated
by that. If I'm doing new material like tonight I don't
know what's going to happen, because we haven't built the train tracks yet.
The beauty of playing live is when my drummer goes in to 5th gear or in to
10th gear, and for some reason there's something that hits me in the base
of the spine and I'm gone, and that's Halleluiah for me. During the last few
months a lot of strange things have been happening onstage, I think the process
is changing. I don't know what's going to happen tonight, I've been having
quite a tough time on stage, I feel like something's pulling me under, as
if something's got me.
Lucy: So does the crowd influence your performances on stage?
KJG: Yes they do. I'm unkind enough to be pretty impersonal about how I do
it, so I use them for me to kick against in effect, or to surf on, (I don't
mean physically surf). If you're in an empty roomand there's a couple of people
at the back, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll have a bad show -
they might get the show of their lives. And then again when something's really
heaving and going off, I get quite a distorted view of it, because I
can feel quite overwhelmed lose my sense of place in the situation. I lose
control of myself. I don't know, I probably wasn't meant to do this, I
wasn't built for this. It wasn't a career option, I didn't start there and
go there, I didn't pick up the things on the way. I've sort of gone round
and round.
Lucy: As the lead singer of the band, most media interest is focused on you.
Do you feel pressurised by your position or do you enjoy being the centre
of attention?
KJG: I've been here on this wheel long enough,(and I say this with a little
bit of trepidation because I think you have to be really careful with this
kind of thing, because the motivation to do it in itself I think is usually
pretty corrupt) I'm not doing it for anyone else, I need a cheque through
the door like anybody else does, you have to keep eating, you have to keep
living. I'm looking for some sense of going home on my own terms, and people's
critique of me is not relevant, whether it's positive of negative.
I do need a cheque through the door though, otherwise I'll have to go and
be a butcher or something.
Lucy: What is the religious meaning behind the song "For I am the way"?
KJG: If you use the word religion in its truest sense, all it means is communion,
it hasn't got any of the attachments to any written word. My
understanding of the word communion is loss of the sense. Another way of looking
at it is you've got to get in to get out, and the only thing that I
know to be true is me, is this tiny little dot in the centre of the universe.
It's the only thing that I know feels pain; I can see other people's pain
and I can feel it in an emotional way, but not in a physical way. I find myself
in the unfortunate position of feeling like I am the
centre of the universe and that everything is a projection, made by me - i.e.
you two don't exist, you're something that I created. I don't wish that
sense upon anybody because it's not a good one. Through 'For I am the way'
I'm saying that you've got to get in, because the only thing one knows to
be true is oneself. And on a good day, if you stand on top of a mountain or
go to the desert or stand in the ocean, and become completely inconsequential,
linear time stops and you become everything and nothing. That for me is
communion, that's how I define religion. I thinkthere's a line in there which
goes "Today the only bridge I have I burn" which sums it up really,
because it is about cutting all lines of communication in order to really
truly commune.
Lucy: Do you think that in the future your creativity will move from the sphere
of music in to literature for example?
KJG: It's real hard to say. In a way, that sounds like a much easier life.
But for all I know I'm deluding myself. I'm looking for someone to help me
frame something at the moment, and someone is actually, someone's being really
good to me. I would love to write, but I don't know if I'm good
enough to do it.