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July 30th, 2019, 7:30 PM
#1
Listening Group Week 5: The Holy Bible by the Manic Street Preachers
From the age of about 12, I became obsessed with music. Almost all of my money went on the weekly copies of NME & Melody Maker, Q Magazine, CDs and cassettes, ending up with hundreds of albums from several different eras. Whilst my mum raised me playing The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel on endless loop (both of whom still remain among my favourites btw!), my first “living love” was probably Oasis at the height of Britpop. They gave me a real feeling of belonging to something, and music became a real escape for me.
Then one band completely knocked me for six.
I first heard the Manic Street Preachers when A Design For Life burst on the radio on a school trip in 1996 – an anthem about class conflict, and working class identity in the UK. The band were (effectively) a three piece, all childhood friends who grew up together in a small town in Wales.
James Dean Bradfield (far left) is without question one of the most underrated lead guitarists/singers of his generation.
Nicky Wire (far right) is a fantastic wordsmith and a cool as fuck bassist.
Sean Moore (second from the left) is a bloody good drummer and not bad with a trumpet.
The fourth member (third from the left) was Richey Edwards. I’ll get to Richey later a bit more in depth, as he is extremely relevant in this discussion.
After I bought the album Everything Must Go off the back of hearing A Design For Life, and after practically burning the CD from listening to it constantly, one of my very best friends at the time insisted that I should get their previous album The Holy Bible, as he said it would “change my world”. Kids eh.
The Holy Bible was their third album released in 1994. Their first two albums (Generation Terrorists and Gold Against the Soul) both had some fantastic songs on there (eg Motorcycle Emptiness, Stay Beautiful, From Despair To Where), but in general were quite hit-and-miss as full pieces of work. Both of the lyrics from these albums were co-written by Nicky and Richey, whereas the words in The Holy Bible were almost entirely written by Richey.
The band were intellectual, yet glamorous. They never wrote a simple love song. They were nihilistic, political and unashamedly aggressive in showing their beliefs and challenging everyone who listened, whilst wearing mascara, leopardskin and balaclavas. I was enthralled. As you can see from the titles of the songs on the album cover above, this is not a pop album. It came out in the UK bang in the middle of Britpop in its glory, and it stands out as a giant contrast to what was “in fashion” at the time.
Given that the stunning, complex and often brutal lyrics on this album were mostly written by Richey - I need to tell you a little bit about him at this point, because it’s so important to know before you give it a listen.
Richey
Beautiful boy.
Richey could barely play the guitar (he often was muted onstage because he couldn’t stay in rhythm). However, he was a true master of words, brilliantly able to convey his unhappiness and relationship with the brutality of the outside world. He was a highly intelligent, well-read, self-harming, depressed, bulimic, anorexic, tortured soul. He fell into drugs, and wrote most of The Holy Bible in rehab.
When the band’s integrity and genuine was brought into question in a 1991 interview with Steve Lamacq, Richey famously pulled out a razorblade and carved “4 REAL” into his arm in front of the journalist. Everything he did via his words, in my eyes, was the only true way he could find to express himself, and so the Manic Street Preachers was his release.
Less than 6 months after the release of The Holy Bible, Richey Edwards went missing in early 1995. His car was abandoned near the Severn Bridge, a known suicide site. His body has never been found. He was declared “officially dead” 8 years after his disappearance.
Richey’s personal spiral goes hand in hand with The Holy Bible. It has almost become known as “the Richey album”, a eulogy about a man who we no longer have in our lives, and whose disappearance has only added to his mystique, putting this work at an even higher level of intrigue. The lyrics feel like mayhem, bashing through a wall of breathtaking music.
Richey said once in an interview that he’d love to run away and live with his dogs on the coast. There have been multiple “sightings” of him reported all over the world, but nothing conclusive. I choose to believe that he made peace with himself, and that “our poet” is now somewhere happy.
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The songs themselves take on all form of subject matter. There’s an anorexia diary (4st 7lbs) that screams with internal anguish, yet also showcases an unwanted feeling superiority over the “fat scum who pamper me so”. There’s a song about the death penalty and the glorification of serial killers that challenges your perception of those that kill (Archives of Pain). American consumerism and gun law (ifwhiteamericatolditstruthforonedayitsworldwouldfa llapart). Prostitution (Yes, opening the album with a chorus of “In these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything – for 200 anyone can conceive a God on video – he’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock, tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want”) . Tackling how the Holocaust happened, and how it could still in the modern world (The Intense Humming of Evil and Mausoleum “Prejudice burns brighter when it’s all we have to burn”).
Most of the songs also have intros of voiceovers (eg quotes from 1984, a snippet from an interview with a serial killer victim’s mother) that are relevant to the subject title which adds masterfully to the build up for each piece. The lyrics are so brutal and intentionally not simple, and I spent a lot of time looking up all these cultural references and learning more and more as I kept listening. No other album has made me do that ever before, nor since. If you choose to read through the lyrics, they're accessible here: https://genius.com/albums/Manic-stre...The-holy-bible
The Holy Bible was so out of place, so out of time, and still resonates to this day as more than just an album to me. I still listen to this quite regularly 20+ years on, and it’s still as haunting and challenging now as it was when I first put it on my CD player as a virginal teenager. With the way the world has now become, it seems, if anything, more relevant than ever, and I feel that the world sorely needs a band that can stick their necks out and make a true statement like they did in 1994.
It remains the Manic Street Preachers' most iconic piece of work. They carried on after Richey, and have just released their 13th album. They've done some great stuff since then, but nothing that touches the creative levels of this. They were young, fucked off with the world and had no boundaries. The Holy Bible remains the darkest and most truly intense album I own - one I never get tired of listening to, one I could talk about all day, and one I hope you find even a fraction as intriguing as I have done.
Last edited by The Rosk; July 30th, 2019 at 7:39 PM.
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July 30th, 2019, 7:32 PM
#2
Fuck, fucked the bloody week number up @Pablo Diablo, @Cewsh, @mth, @!Rhyno! could you please edit 4 to 5 for me? Thanks xx
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July 30th, 2019, 7:39 PM
#3
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July 30th, 2019, 8:03 PM
#4
A band I've heard mentioned numerous times, but had literally 0 knowledge about. Great write-up that has me excited for this one.
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July 30th, 2019, 8:06 PM
#5
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