The Manic Street Preachers are the closest thing my generation has to the Sex Pistols. Their seminal 1994 masterpiece, The Holy Bible was the band’s finest hour.
I remember first coming across this record during CMJ in 1994. At that time I was working as a college rep for Universal Music and it was my first time in New York City. I went straight to what was the Wizard of Oz of record stores at that time, the massive Virgin Megastore in Times Square. They had a few copies of The Holy Bible for sale as an import, and I enthusiastically grabbed a copy and continued to peruse the levels and levels (I think there were 4?) of epic entertainment at the store.
It was tough to get import records at this time. Either you had to special order them and wait for weeks on end to receive it, or find a very cool record store that stocked them automatically. Imports at this time were non-returnable for stores so it was a gamble each time a shop placed an order. Anyway, I listened to The Holy Bible on repeat for pretty much the next ten years. It’s considered one of the greatest albums ever recorded and last week I got to see the mythical Manic Street Preachers played this masterpiece live in its entirety.
One reason that this is such a cool and rare event is that The Manics are bona-fide superstars in Europe where they play to huge crowds in massive stadiums. To see these guys in a club that holds less than one thousand is a real moment in music history.
They guy next to me at the show flew all the way over from London just to witness this moment. His last words to me before the band took the stage, “The Manics never disappoint, you are in for one hell of a show.”
While there could be many reasons why this monumental album never got the recognition it deserved here in the states, the main one is a tragedy that struck the band on the eve of its US tour to promote The Holy Bible. Guitarist and chief lyricist Richie Edwards disappeared the day before the band’s US tour was slated to begin.
One of the highlights of the tour now was that throughout the evening bass player told stories of the troubled musician as if it were a eulogy of sorts. Highlighting memories of their fallen comrade and bringing the sold out crowd into their personal world for a few minutes between songs.
The entire show was one for the ages and The Holy Bible holds up beautifully, just as any classic should. The Manics didn’t leave the stage without treating the crowd to some other classics as an encore. While I would have loved to hear them with Richie’s rhythm guitars fattening up the band’s sound, it turns out to be much more of a nice thing to have rather than a necessity.
The Manics sounded spectacular and I, like many of the fans at the jam-packed club that night, were just in complete awe of how lucky us Stateside fans were to bask in the glory of a record that changed the course of music and truly launched what would become an amazingly fruitful career for a trio that had been through hell and back.
Cheers to the Manics—let’s hope they don’t stay strangers to the US for so long next time around.
Check out hi res photos from the show here in the gallery.
