| Manic Street Preachers Generation Terrorists
Q -In 1991, rudimentary bassist Nicky Wire put the Manic Street Preachers' as-yet-unrecorded debut into perspective: "Whether we sell millions of albums or we fail abjectly, we'll still have said everything we have to say in one double album." This sort of reckless claim (they also promised to split up afterwards) was emblematic of the band's introduction into rock'n'roll society from faraway South Wales. Seemingly too shy and bookish to shoulder the burden and self-sacrifice of world domination, they were nonetheless driven like no British rock four-piece since punk. Arriving at Paddington station ready-wrapped in self-stencilled Clash shirts and Boots warpaint, they peddled a theoretically pure version of punk that was utterly out of step with the ecstasy-lobotomised early-'90s. Kicking up a stink with scissor-kicking singles like Motown Junk and You Love Us was easy. For a band with only two musicians, an epoch-making double album was not. Exiled, like proper rock stars, to Black Barn Studios in Ripley, Surrey with Wham! and Cult producer Steve Brown, eight weeks turned to 24 and Sony's bill tipped half a million. For this once-in-a-lifetime band, nothing less would do. The 73-minute result, released in February 1992, went to Number 13 and bore three Top 20 hits. They didn't split up. But it did say everything they had to say. Brown's experience lends a widescreen confidence to otherwise minor conceits like Natwest-Barclays-Midland-Lloyds, but even then it was clear that James Dean Bradfield was playing out of his skin, carrying the project musically with riffs cast-iron (So Dead, Born To End) and moving (Motorcycle Emptiness).Co-lyricists Wire and the spooked Richey Edwards supplied the essential window-dressing, not least in the sleeve's meticulously-collated quotes (Camus, Ibsen, Confucius). Imagine Guns N'Roses with brains. Lest we forget, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours did not happen by accident. Generation Terrorists may be flawed (Little Baby Nothing's self-conscious duet with Traci Lords; a version of Repeat designed vainly to impress Public Enemy; a marked "dropping off" toward the album's end), but it remains a landmark, whose insane intellectual ambitions are frequently matched by visceral thrill and pop potency. Seven years on, they're still too clever for America. 4 out of 5 stars * |
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| NME - The first thing to acknowledge about ‘Generation
Terrorists’ is that the Manics have done it, they’ve pulled it off, they’ve
released the debut double album they’d set their black rock’n’roll hearts
on all along. A provocative presumptuous gesture at the best of times (a
debut double album, if you don’t mind!) but in today’s straightened climate
of compilations, reissues and record company play-safe policies, it’s nothing
short of a modern miracle. Mind you, for the racoon-eyed dreamers of the
Welsh Valleys, the real shit is only just approaching the fan. Not least
because every flag hoisted in their honour in the hearts of the faithful
there’s a barrage of hostility, scorn, ridicule - the heavy artillery of
the rods press-aimed straight at their puny, trembling frames. ‘Generation
Terrorists’ is destined to be panned severely, both for a variety of very
good reasons (we’ll come to those later) and a plethora of silly, sulky
ones. What people must decide at this point - the release of, if nothing
else, the most ambitious, scene-stealing debut album of the ‘90’s so far
- is where they stand regarding the Manics. Are they the rods heavyweights,
deluded Strummer bunnies or nothing more than a huge pair of frilly pop
bloomers snagged for all eternity on the Great Tree Of Hype? Do you view
their major creative thievery, their peacock pretensions and dizzying perv
need to be both loved and have their crotches boiled at the altar of the
Rode Greats with simmering disgust, condensing snorts or jealousy, agony
and admiration, tinged with re-touched nostalgia for your own one true
love, the only person that ever meant anything to you: yourself (leastways,
the person you were always meant to be)? Decide now, snivelling pop brethren,
or prepare to face a lifetime in a world that will never ask you an important
question again. One thing’s for sure: sitting on the fence won’t do (what
do you need with another splinter up the ass?) Love’em or Hate’em the Manics
are too crucial to languish in the limelight of your lethargy for long.
Having said that, it must be stressed that ‘Generation Terrorists’, a monster
18 tracker, incorporates all the Manicisms that ever irritated, amused
and mesmerised detractors and fans alike and then some. Firstly, as this
is the album the Manics always intended to make, it is not new-wave, home-grown,
‘quirky’ or UK-cuddly. It is a great woolly rock mammoth aimed at the US
market with the kind of precision and determination lone assassins reserve
for offing American presidents. This is both good-it’s production by Cult
twiddler Steve Brown gives ‘GT’ a strong, solid, epic feel - and bad -
its occasional appalling blandness is as genuinely horrific as any homophobic/racist
sexist bon most hardened rocker like Guns ‘N’ Roses (MSP faves, apparently)
might retch up and, at times, the band’s struggle to be perceived, aurally
at least, as shaggy haired blue-jeaned Americans reeks of a desperation
beyond the Chunderdome. On the other hand, and in some obscure way this
is supremely heartening, the Manics have not compromised their abrasive,
agit-pop, scratch-mix, slogan-choked lyrical style one iota despite having
realised (presumably) that the Yanks won’t understand one word of what
they’re saying. To be brutally frank nobody not even a coked-up Mastermind
contestant with ‘Mark E Smith B-sides: Analyse and Discuss’ as a specialist
subject, would understand most of them, simply because they’re gibberish:
punky, provocative, petty-sounding, mismatched, sloganeering buzz-phrases
cobbled together without a thought for grammatical coherence or even emotional
clarity. Almost every track has got some cringe-worthy, astonishingly crass
and clumsy line so I can’t/won’t list them here. Besides, who really gives
a Rhett Butler if, occasionally, Ritchey and Nicky’s (for they are the
lunatic-lyricists in the Manics’ squad) crazed, undisciplined, misanthropy-as-photomontage
cum Social Commentary-news style provokes the listener into believing they
are forever trapped in a cartoon world dreamed up by Jamie Reid, John Craven’s
Newsround and a team of bored lab-rats. Moving onto that most pickled of
chestnuts: Is it derivative? The answer has to be ‘Yes’. In this department
the Manics are to the creative life-force what Ronnie Biggs was to British
Rail, though where the bulk of ‘Generation Terrorists’ is concerned, their
main steals are from the archives of ancient and modern heavy rock and
not the arse-end of spiky sub-Clash culture as they are normally charged.
Thus they get to sound like the Stones, the Pistols Public Enemy, Joe’s
lot, Billy Idol, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Elvis Costello, REM, the Velvets, Led
Zeppelin, the Dead Kennedy’s, Queen, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, The Ruts, Poison,
Europe, Meatloaf and Cher (courtesy of the much trumpeted duet with porn
icon Traci Lords) and anyone else with half a grain of pop or Nick grit
you may like to mention. The real question is ‘Who Cares?’ Expecting a
rock band of the ‘90s not to sound like their forefathers and immediate
contemporaries is like expecting human beings to give birth to different
shaped babies every time. The essential appeal of rock’n’roll is its myriad
of different interpretations of the same unoriginal idea: namely that loud,
noisy music makes people feel alive. Deal with it, or die. What’s more
important is that the Manic Street Preachers have transcended their sleepy
provincial roots and produced something for the Global Everybody. Their
enemies expected ‘London’ Calling: The Remix’ and they’ve come up with
‘Use Your Illusions’ ‘I’ and ‘11’ the Gunners only ever had illusions about.
When the kids of the future sit in the Manics’ lap and ask what they did
in the Music Wan of the Early ‘90s, at least the Manics can truthfully
say that they did their bit and weren’t foot-soldiers of the Great Army
Of The Mediocre. Similarly, who cares if ‘Generation Terrorists’
turns out to be this years turkey, the Ishtar/Heavens Gate of vinyl People
who steer too close to the sun often get their wings melted. The great
thing is - the Manics dare to fly. So stuff the marking system.
ten out of ten |