FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Manic Street Preacher - The Holy Bible
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I have featured the Manic Street Preachers on…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Manic Street Preachers in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: NME
Vinyl Corner before – I included This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours – and, whilst I was hoping to spotlight Everything Must Go, I cannot easily find that album on vinyl. I have found The Holy Bible on vinyl and, if anything, it is a more interesting and influential album. There are a couple of reasons for including this album. For one, 1st February marked twenty-five years since the band’s lyricist (with Nicky Wire) and rhythm guitarist went missing. Also, James Dean Bradfield (the band’s lead) celebrated his birthday on Friday (21st). The Manic Street Preachers released Gold Against the Soul in 1993 and, whilst it does contain some great songs, the album is patchy in places. The Holy Bible was a follow-up that exceeded expectations and wowed critics – 1996’s Everything Must Go continued to impress, despite the fact it was the first album recorded without Richey Edwards. The Holy Bible was the band’s third album, and the writing and recording saw Edwards living with severe depression. One can look at the lyrics and hear the songs to get a feel of where Edwards’ mind was and how, perhaps, what would follow. Despite the fact Edwards was self-harming and abusing alcohol, he helped craft an album which is among the best and most important of the 1990s. The Holy Bible – among other things – concentrates on human suffering, and politics, and it is an album that stays in your head the minute you hear it.
Before the Manic Street Preachers recorded The Holy Bible, it was felt – especially by their drummer Sean Moore – that they had gone astray; maybe Gold Against the Soul was a departure and the next album needed to be a grassroots response. Maybe the Welsh Rock band had become a little American and were taking in influences from U.S. Rock bands. The Holy Bible is the band stripping things back and producing something rawer and more honest then they ever had. Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards split lyrics fairly evenly prior to The Holy Bible but, this time around, Edwards took on the majority of the lyrics – after Edwards disappeared, Wire became the band’s lyricist. There is debate as to how much Wire did contribute and, through the years, Wire discovered he penned more than he thought – chunks of Of Walking Abortion and Mausoleum are his. It was initially felt that Edwards wrote 75% or so of the lyrics, but I think that figure has come down considerably. Regardless, The Holy Bible is considered Edwards’ album; a representation of his mindset and look into his world – Wire, it seems, was able to connect with Edwards regarding the lyrical tone and subject matter. In 1994, bands like Blur and Oasis were rereleasing big, unifying albums full of anthems. The Holy Bible’s acknowledgment of The Holocaust, starvation, and British imperialism was completely out of step with those bands; the Manic Street Preachers never did fit into the Britpop movement – the outsiders who, perhaps, were saying something more important than many of their peers.
If Everything Must Go (The Holy Bible’s follow-up) is the Manic Street Preachers moving on after personal loss and doing things differently, The Holy Bible is a dark and uncomfortable album that I recommend people listen to. I am not usually drawn to albums as bleak (in places; not everywhere), but The Holy Bible is such a powerful and important album, that proved to be a watershed moment for the Manic Street Preachers. The Holy Bible is an album that mixes the personal with voyeuristic – which James Dean Bradfield struggled with some songs, in terms of how to write music for them -, and a lot of the tracks sound radio-friendly, but they are defined by quite explicit and radio-unfriendly lyrics! In spite of the fact that The Holy Bible is not as commercial as a lot of albums that were out in 1994, press reaction was extremely positive – I have barely seen a negative review of the album. There has also been a lot of retrospective acclaim for The Holy Bible. Here is what AllMusic wrote in their review:
“Only in that brief moment in the '90s, when the record industry was grappling with the impact of alternative rock going mainstream and just as Brit-pop was hitting its stride, could the Manics release such a dark, difficult album on a major label, get it played on such pop-oriented programs as Top of the Pops and MTV’s Most Wanted, and make appearances at the Glastonbury and Reading festivals. And then, in a flash, it was over. Richey James went missing on February 1, 1995, and after that The Holy Bible was frozen in amber, forever seen as his last will and testament, just like how In Utero seemed like a suicide note in the wake of Kurt Cobain's suicide in April 1994.
After James' disappearance, plans for an American release of the LP were shelved, but in retrospect, it's likely that The Holy Bible -- like some latter-day Manics albums -- would never have had an American release at all. To those who know the album -- and it's a small, dedicated group of partisans who do, since not only didn't it see American shores for a decade, but it didn't sell as well as previous or subsequent Manics albums in the U.K. -- it can comfortably be compared to the Clash's London Calling, but that's not quite accurate, no matter how much inspiration the Manics drew from the Clash. London Calling is a sprawling, exuberant celebration, so generous and big-hearted it can't be contained by a single album, whereas The Holy Bible is a bleak, introspective, insular album that's bracing in its darkness. It's not that The Holy Bible deliberately alienates listeners, but that it wears its pain too openly and presents it too vividly to be an easy listen. It can be a cathartic experience, but it's the kind of experience that doesn't lend itself to everyday listening: not only was it too dark, it was too English for a mass American audience, but years later, those things don't seem to matter as much, and in its tenth anniversary edition it can finally be seen -- and easily heard by American audiences -- as a singular, bracing rock album, quite unlike any LP before or since”.
The Manic Street Preachers recorded their thirteenth album, Resistance Is Futile, in 2018, but I think The Holy Bible remains their most important work. I personally prefer Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours (it always annoyed me there isn’t a comma between ‘Truth’ and ‘Tell’), but I have to show respect to an immense and vital record!
Before closing, I want to bring in an article that looked back at The Holy Bible, twenty-five years after its release:
“Since its release twenty-five years ago, the record has been autopsied countless times. In articles, essays, interviews, documentary films, and PHD dissertation after PHD dissertation. Biographies of the band, such as Simon Price’s exquisite Everything, dwell on the era that surrounds the record, hovering over the details that led to the writing and creation of the music, the Beatlemania type frenzy of the band’s tour in Thailand, the European gigs with Suede, the British festival appearances, the mismatched military uniforms, the infamous Top of the Pops performance of the record’s first single “Faster” that generated over 25,000 complaints from viewers, the final gig at London’s Astoria where the band smashed up every instrument, amplifier and light fitting causing thousands of pounds worth of damage.
Despite its dour worldview, antagonistic posture, and, at the time, quite poor sales, The Holy Bible has been recast as a triumph of extreme art, a perception that the fans and the band themselves have been happy to help promote. The record has also been honored with two in-depth retrospective reissues—one on its tenth anniversary and another on its twentieth—followed by a tour and a cumulative performance at Cardiff Castle in which the band dolled themselves up in military regalia and spun the record out in its entirety followed by another set of crowd-pleasing hit singles.
To think of The Holy Bible as an anomaly, a blade that punctures the narrative of the band, is a mistake. It has to be heard as a perfectly executed part of the evolution in sound. The real spanner in the works came with the disappearance of Richey Edwards that changed the direction and tone of the remaining members. The confrontation heard on Generation Terrorists and The Holy Bible was scaled back and could never really be repeated, though they certainly tried on 2001’s Know Your Enemy.
No more youthful proclamations of “I laughed when Lennon got shot” as they had delivered on “Motown Junk” or “I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer” as they had boasted on “Faster.” Now the band’s approach was “analysis through paralysis” (from the EMG era B-side “Dead Trees and Traffic Islands”), or in other words, treading on the shadow of Edwards whilst still, in essence, remaining the same band to themselves and their fans, new and old.
So, yes a lot has been written and said about The Holy Bible. And what I've written here is not original nor has it added anything new to the discussion about this record. I've lightly trod on the same ground everyone else has. Everyone is guilty”.
The Holy Bible, even to this day, knocks you back and unfurls new layers. It is an extraordinary album that was the last to feature Richey Edwards. 1994 was a magical and packed time for genius and these stunning albums. The Holy Bible, by some, gets overlooked when we assess the best from 1994, but it is a masterful album that stands out…
FROM a phenomenal year for music.