Look here for a post introducing Heidi Peeters
Today we study an article from Media magazine about The Manic Street Preachers.
Music 4 real –
studying the Manic Street Preachers
Biographer and journalist Paula Shutkever argues that
the Manics’ music, personal history, influences and image make them an
ideal band to study.
Six years ago, as a music journalist, I wrote the first biography of the Manic
Street Preachers. Of all the artists I’ve written about professionally,
the Manics are the ones who never cease to intrigue, fascinate, challenge and
inspire me. They are as much a Media Studies student’s delight as a music
lover’s companion and guide.
We spend around 25% of our time consuming music (consciously or sub-consciously),
making it the biggest of all cultural or media forms. And yet it’s only
been in the last fifteen years – almost as long as the Manic Street Preachers
have been around – that the discipline of Media Studies at school, college
and university has taken the study of music seriously. So, as the band put out
their ‘Best of’ album, it seems an appropriate point to consider what
they can offer us as an object of study.
One of the first people to write theoretically about popular music – in
the 1930s – was a man called Theodor Adorno, who claimed that popular music
produced industrially could never effectively challenge dominant meanings and
values (ideologies). He may never have lived to watch Pop Stars or
Fame Academy but he hated the ‘standardization’ of popular music
which went ‘through the mill’ of an industry production process. Ironically,
even Robbie Williams, who himself came to fame with the help of a manufactured
boy-band (Take That), complains that pop music is too manufactured nowadays
…
Fifty years after Adorno first wrote about popular music, four working-class
boys from Blackwood, Wales, were growing up against a backdrop of political
unease during the early 1980s. They began to discuss why the world was seemingly
going crazy – from the IRA Hunger Strikers to the Miner’s Strike.
As their ‘Best of’ album was released, the firefighters began their
strikes and the world seemed to have come full circle. The Manics try to ‘break
free’ through education, music and politics.
What’s in a name?
The Manic Street Preachers’ name itself suggests that the group wants to
tell us something. The Manics were very influenced by a group of French intellectuals
called the Situationists. The Situationists were members of an international
movement founded in 1957; they wanted to break down the barriers between art
and everyday life, between actors and spectators, between producers and consumers.
They wanted people to live not as objects but as subjects (and makers) of history.
The Situationists aimed to reinvent everyday life by constructing disruptive
situations, which would literally jolt people out of their boredom. They wanted
to be the catalyst for a revolution and then disappear. Following much the same
spirit, early in their career the Manics announced that they were going to make
one album, become world-famous – and then split up. Later, when signing
to the major label Sony, the band tackled upfront any potential accusations
of selling-out. They had something to say, and they wanted to say it to as many
people as possible and no independent label could support them to do that:
'We’ve never been the Trade Unionists of Rock, we know that we could
never reach as many people as we wanted, unless it was on a major [label].
We were willing prostitutes'.
James Dean Bradfield (
Raw, 1992)
Speaking out, not selling out
The Manic Street Preachers have covered the following controversial topics
in their songs:
• the validity of American culture (‘Blackpool Pier’)
• the madness of caged animals (‘Small Black Flowers That Grow In
The Sky’)
• the frightening mental illness of Tourette’s Syndrome (‘Symphony
of Tourette’)
• great writers such as Sylvia Plath (‘The Girl Who Wanted To Be God’)
• forgotten heroes of war photography like Kevin Carter
• controversial pornography workers in ‘Little Baby Nothing’
• anorexia (‘4st 7lbs’).
In spite of their obvious successes, they continue to tackle difficult issues
in their songs and in their public demonstrations. The Manics were the first
Western group to play in Havana, Cuba, and have recently contributed to the
NME’s ‘1 Love’ album to raise money for the War Child
charity. From within the music industry confines, they have made music that
makes a difference.
The Situationists were a strong influence on punk music, and are cited by the
Manics. Like Punk, the Manic Street Preachers merged a massive mixture of styles
and influences – the band are big readers and culture-vultures, and this
shows in their songs and videos.
The Manic Street Preachers have placed Wales firmly on the musical map. By proudly
displaying their identity with huge Welsh flag backdrops, and culminating most
of their tours at home, the band have forced a London-focused music industry
actually to seek out bands like The Stereophonics, Catatonia and Super Furry
Animals whose music is full of their Welsh roots. Could an album sung in Welsh
have hit the charts before the Manics appeared?
Analysing the Manics’ music
The Manic Street Preachers can be analysed on a number of levels. Their lyrics
are textually rich (Richey Edwards’ early lyrics are a painfully personal
self-examination of human fragility). Their songs are musically diverse (from
accessibly pop – ‘Everything Must Go’ – to the uncomfortable
‘Holy Bible’) and they are politically hard to pin down – whose
side are they on?
The Manics are often associated with the emotional pain of youth. In February
1995, Richey Edwards, guitarist and songwriter, walked out of a hotel the band
were staying in, never to be heard of again. Despite numerous ‘sightings’,
earlier this year Richey was legally declared dead. Richey was plagued with
eating disorders, cut himself with knives, and drank too much. But he left the
band – and us – with a platform on which to discuss the previously
hidden issues he suffered from. With songs like ‘4st 7lbs’ (about
anorexia) and the self-explanatory ‘Die in the Summertime’, which
uncomfortably questions our role as consumers, we have no choice but to take
their music seriously.
When Richey Edwards cut ‘4 Real’ into his arm live on air as a reaction
to DJ Steve Lamacq’s questioning of their authenticity and truthfulness,
he did more than simply harm himself. He made all of us, as music journalists
at the time, question our own validity over the artists we were interviewing.
For my own small part, I gave all the money I earned from writing their biography
to a self-harm charity.
A well known cultural critic, Walter Pater, once said that ‘all art aspires
towards the condition of music’ – he was so right. As I listen to
over a decade of the Manic Street Preachers’ music on
Forever Delayed,
their greatest hits album, I can see more slogans illustrating the sleeve and
more about the band’s roots. There are quotations from the architect Gaudi,
Dennis Hopper the filmmaker and actor, George Orwell the writer, and even from
Van Gogh’s suicide note – all reminding us of human suffering –
and breaking down barriers between star and audience.
At first I thought the most poignant of all the quotations was from Pablo Picasso,
the artist: ‘Art is the life that helps us understand the truth’.
Then I turned it over to find the group telling us, ‘We invite everyone
to question the entire culture we take for granted.’
When I hear such passionate beliefs wrapped up in equally ardent sounds and
delivered through a mass medium like the music industry, I’m reminded of
all of the reasons why music is such an important form to study. We can use
music to make meaningful sense of the world, and bands like the Manic Street
Preachers, help us to do so un-blinkered.
MM
Paula Shutkever
This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 3, February 2003
Popular
culture was identified as the reason for people's passive satisfaction and lack
of interest in overthrowing the capitalist system. 
