Manic Street Preachers |
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Wed. October 20.1999 3:01 AM EDT |
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Manic Street Preachers Hope To Conquer U.S. — Radiohead StyleLead singer/guitarist James Dean Bradfield says band has recovered from singer/guitarist Richey Edwards' disappearance. by Correspondent Clare Kleinedler |
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The Manic Street Preachers' latest album is #1 in the UK. ( ) |
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SAN FRANCISCO — Slumped in a wooden chair backstage at Bimbo's
365 Club, dark circles under his squinting, slightly foggy eyes, James
Dean Bradfield looked exhausted. But the slight smile lighting up the Manic Street Preachers
The Manics, as their fans call them, have won praise from fellow Brit-pop bands Blur, Radiohead and Elastica. And they have a U.S. deal with Virgin Records. Gone is the hard-rocking, punkish sound of the early-'90s Manics. These days, on some of the new album's songs, such as the ballad "You're Tender and You're Tired," they sound like Badfinger. "Tsunami" (RealAudio excerpt) has the happy sheen of a boy group. "We've naturally grown as musicians and songwriters," Bradfield, 30, said. But he also noted that the Manics have grown "because of everything we've been through," alluding to the still-unsolved February 1995 disappearance of singer/guitarist Richey Edwards two weeks before the band was to embark on a U.S. tour. "When something like that happens, it's so personal," Bradfield said, acknowledging how uncomfortable it was for the disappearance to have become public. "We had to work toward making it personal again," he said. "It is very hard to come to some sort of reconciliation with it. "There's a phrase in the UK: 'bottling' something," Bradfield said. "It's kind of like, 'Don't bottle it when the pressure is on; don't f--- it up.' After everything, we didn't want to bottle it — we didn't want to just fold and just give up." Clearly, they didn't. The band — which has not replaced Edwards — has recovered after what Bradfield described as a difficult period. "At first, we stayed away from everything, everyone," he recalled. "But then we got together in the studio and started writing songs — we forced ourselves to do it. And that's how we lifted ourselves out of the shock, depression. It was the only way we knew how." Two years after Edwards' disappearance, Bradfield, along with bandmates Nicky Wire (bass) and Sean Moore (drums), released Everything Must Go. The album, which included songs written by Edwards — as well as songs written by the other bandmembers after he vanished — became the Manics' biggest hit until the current album. One of those new songs, the Styx-like guitar rocker "A Design for Life" (RealAudio excerpt), penned collectively by the group after Edwards' disappearance, has become a working-class anthem. Growing up in the depressed mining town of Blackwood, Gwent, in south Wales, the bandmembers are known for incorporating the daily struggles of the community into their music, leading many UK critics to call them "the people's band." Virgin Records hopes the Manics attain a level of success in the U.S. similar to Radiohead's, according to Faith Henschel, the label's director of product development. "Radiohead is a good example of how we would like to see the Manics grow," Henschel said. "They are a smaller band here in the U.S., but every time they have come back to play here, they manage to do a little more. Of course we would love a radio hit or a platinum record for [Manic Street Preachers], but we have another plan. We're focusing on touring." The way the Manics throw everything they have into their live shows — unlike many Brit-pop bands, who mostly just stand there — should make their U.S. popularity grow the same way Radiohead's did, said Sarah Blair, a teenage fan who drove from Seattle to see the Manics play in San Francisco. "[Their] songs are deep, political and moving," she said. "It takes a little more time to digest a Manics song over ... an Oasis one. But that is what makes them special." |
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