Music: Manic Street Preachers

Back in 1988, Manic Street Preachers released their first single (300 in total, self-pressed), ‘Suicide Alley’, a tasty slab of punk for the late ‘80s, and which eventually became NME Single of the Week, a full year after its initial release…

Formed in 1986 in Blackwood, South Wales, by James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore (who all remain with the band). Richie Edwards joined the band properly soon after the first single (although he photographed the band and designed the cover for ‘Suicide Alley’…).

The next song to see the light of day was ‘UK Channel Boredom’, released in early 1990 as a 7” flexi disc given away with two fanzines, Hopelessly Devoted and Goldmining. Edwards was also responsible for the band’s first ever press release that lent the song its name… “We are the only young kids in ‘UK Channel Boredom’ to realise the future is in tight trousers, dyed hair and not the baggy loose attitude of scum f*** retard zerodom of Madchester.”

They then released the New Day Riot Ep via Damaged Goods, the band’s musical template becoming set in stone by this stage, their love of The Clash obvious. Moreover, their skill at self-publicity and stoking controversy, notably via the next single ‘Motown Junk’, released via Heavenly Records where Bradfield intones (via an Edwards lyric): “I laughed when Lennon got shot’. After the release of ‘You Love Us’, in a now legendary interview with then NME journalist Steve Lamacq, Edwards carved the phrase ‘4REAL’ into his arm with a razor blade to prove their/his sincerity.

He was taken to hospital and received a total of 17 stitches.

Not long after Columbia came along and signed the band… Debut album Generation Terrorists was released in 1992, The record contained six singles and sold 250,000 copies. This summer they will be releasing a new album, their twelfth in total. The rest, as they say, is history…
Brighton Centre, Wednesday 9 April, 6pm, £29.50

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