staybeautiful

http://www.nme.com/photos/the-wisdom-of-manic-street-preachers/125930/1/1

On ambition: “We’ll release one double album that goes to Number One worldwide. One album, then we split. If it doesn't work, we split anyway. Either way, after one album, we're finished." (James Dean Bradfield, 1991)

 On education: “I thought university would be full of people who wanted to sit around and talk about books and it wasn't like that at all. For most people, it was about getting laid.” (Richey Edwards, 1993)

On suicide: “In terms of the S-word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has done, in terms of an attempt. Because I am stronger than that.” (Richey Edwards, 1995).

Richey with my razorblade neckless that I gave him while he was in Bangkok in 1994.He wore it on the Holy Bible cover photo shoot.

T T

from http://community.livejournal.com/sleepflowers/

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/

It's 14 years since Richey Edwards disappeared - and Manic Street Preachers have recorded his final lyrics. Alexis Petridis meets them

As Nicky Wire is keen to point out, the Manic Street Preachers' new album was James Dean Bradfield's idea. "Yeah," nods Bradfield. "I'm thinking, why are you so eager to say that? Is it because he knows this hasn't got such a commercial aspect to it? Is he waiting to go, 'Yeah, we did good with Send Away the Tigers and you had to go and fuck it up with this idea?'" He laughs, a kind of warm but vaguely exasperated, what-can-I-do? laugh that you suspect has seen a great deal of service over the 21 years he's spent in a band with Wire, a man he describes as "the best friend I've ever had", but who nevertheless has a habit of "dropping bombs everywhere" - of suddenly announcing the band was going to split up after one album or that he hoped other rock stars died, viciously attacking other artists in interviews, and apparently going out of his way to make people hate the Manic Street Preachers.

This time, however, it was Bradfield's turn to drop a bomb. "I was actually really shocked," says Wire, "because it's usually the kind of dumb-ass thing I say after we've had success. You know, after This Is Your Truth sold 4m copies: let's not get any bigger, let's go and do a gig for Fidel Castro, annoy everyone in the world. Let's spend 300 grand doing a gig for a communist system we don't really believe in."

The pair were sitting in the back of a car, discussing the difficulty of following up Send Away the Tigers, the album that went to No 2 and won awards and re-established the Manic Street Preachers after the commercial failure of 2004's Lifeblood left them, as Bradfield puts it, "on our arses".

"We were saying, 'Fucking hell, it's going to be hard following up a No 2 album, but we've got to start,'" Bradfield says. "A week before I'd been looking at Richey's lyrics anyway. Two or three times a year, I'd get them out and look at them, and every time it was always the same reaction: I'd always imagine putting music to them, then I'd get a bit scared and put them back in a drawer. But this time I'd looked at them and it was the first time I couldn't stop turning the pages and I was getting ideas and stuff. Quoting the film The Contender, it was an idea whose time had come. I said, 'By the way, I really want to try and do the Richey lyrics.'"

The lyrics were in a folder that Manics guitarist Richey Edwards had given to Wire in early 1995, with a picture of Bugs Bunny and the word "opulence" scrawled on the front and the words to 30 or so potential songs inside. The bassist didn't invest any great significance in the folder at the time - the band had tentatively started work on a new album and Edwards "was so prolific at the time, he couldn't switch off" - nor in the other gifts that Edwards had given his fellow band members. "They were nothing big, just little bundles. He gave me a Daily Telegraph and a Mars bar, two things I liked - the sports section of the Telegraph is still the best. I just saw it as an act of kindness for the fact that he'd been pretty difficult."

In any case, Edwards appeared to be on the mend, after a horrific 1994 during which his drinking and self-harming had spiralled out of control. There had been a disastrous tour of Thailand, where Edwards slashed his chest onstage with a knife given to him by a fan while a horrified NME journalist looked on. Back in Britain, he cut himself so badly he ended up first on an NHS psychiatric ward, then in a private clinic where he was treated for alcoholism. The band trudged grimly on without him, promoting their new album, The Holy Bible, packed with lyrics written by Edwards that cast at least some light on his increasingly desperate mental state: "Can't shout, can't scream, hurt myself to get pain out," ran one line in the single Yes. He rejoined in time for a Christmas gig at the Astoria in London, which concluded with the band smashing up not just their equipment, but the venue's lighting as well: they caused £26,000 of damage.

"From Thailand to the smashing up of the Astoria, it was hospitalisation, no money, drudgery, hateful, miserable, awful," says Wire. "It felt like Richey was drifting away. I'd just lost him. Couldn't talk about rugby or cricket or football. He'd call you up at strange times about some documentary he'd just seen or something he'd tracked down. It was hard work, it was baffling at times. He was finding it really hard to sleep. When people talk about the wounds or the blood, the only real tragedy is when you lose someone kinetically, someone you've known since he was five, you've done all those things with and you feel you can't communicate. It was terrible. But in the last three weeks, there was a serene calmness to Richey, he was laughing more, the pathos and the irony were back. Maybe that's because he had reached some conclusions and he just felt some inner peace. We did a recording session and came up with some great tracks. So the Daily Telegraph and the Mars bar, I just saw it as a little 'Things are going to be OK'. Which maybe, in his mind, that's what it was." He sighs. "But different meanings of OK, I guess."

On 1 February 1995, Edwards disappeared, checking out of his London hotel on the day he and Bradfield were due to fly to the US on a promotional tour. His car was discovered abandoned two weeks later at the Severn View Service Station. His body has never been found, but he was officially presumed dead at the end of last year. The band carried on to vast commercial success, using a handful of Edwards's lyrics on 1996's breakthrough album Everything Must Go. Wire remembers playing their Millenium Eve gig in Cardiff - the biggest indoor music event in the world that night, according to the BBC - and hearing 62,000 people singing Edwards's words on Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky: "It was just bouncing back off the stadium wall - 'harvest your ovaries, dead mothers crawl'. You can see me onstage, thinking, 'Fuck, that is subversion, he must be having a smile somewhere about that.'"

Nevertheless, the lyrics in the folder remained untouched. Bradfield had shied away from setting them to music, not least because the folder also contained Edwards's idea for how he wanted the Manics to progress musically - "Pantera meets Screamadelica and Lynton Kwesi Johnson" - and the band had conspicuously, if understandably, failed to transform themselves into a heavy metal/indie dance/dub poetry hybrid in the years since his disappearance.

Wire too had been "scared to look at them". "Not out of some doomsday scenario, it just felt ... I just needed ..." His voice trails off. "The one thing I think we've just managed to do for all our ups and downs since Richey disappeared is never appear to be trying to be like we were when he was in the band. We might have fucked up, but we never did that."

When he did take a look, he says he was simultaneously astonished and baffled. Despite being written in the pre-internet era, some of them appeared to be about very noughties topics: the numbing effect of information overload, the corrosiveness of celebrity culture. Others were screeds of impenetrable, densely packed imagery that, as Wire points out, don't much resemble anything else in rock. The visceral hatred and despair of The Holy Bible is noticeable by its absence, although it's difficult to overlook the similarity between the lyrics of William's Last Words, which Wire edited down from a long prose piece, and a suicide note: "Wish me some luck as you wave goodbye to me, you're the best friends I ever had." Wire insists he thinks the lyric isn't about Edwards, but nevertheless, the process of editing it down was "pretty choking".

Today, talking about the lyrics and the resulting Steve Albini-produced album, Journal for Plague Lovers, in the plush bar of a West End hotel, there's a minor but noticeable difference between Bradfield and Wire. Both are justifiably proud of the album, which bullishly invites comparison with The Holy Bible: same number of tracks, same typography, another painting by Jenny Saville on the sleeve. But Wire, while open and friendly and charming, seems slightly more uneasy about the album than his bandmate. As he talks, he keeps putting on and taking off a pair of sunglasses. Bradfield thinks he's worked out what at least some of Edwards's more obtuse lyrics are about, Wire has "tried not to interpret". He spent time after Edwards's disappearance "looking for clues" in the folder; Bradfield did not. "As soon as I realised everyone was trying to do a Columbo on Richey, I stopped looking in bags for notes, I stopped looking for messages in lyrics because I knew they weren't there. He wouldn't be that crass," Bradfield says. At one juncture, after listening to the finished album in the studio, Wire suggested they didn't release it at all. "I said, 'Let's just fucking dig a hole and bury it and make it even more of an art statement, say we've made this great album, but it's just too much to give away.' James was like: 'After I've done all that work? Fuck off!'"

There's a chance Wire's unease has something to do with the album's uncertain commercial prospects. Even by their standards, there's a certain wilful contrariness in working so hard to re-establish yourself in the musical mainstream as the Manics did with Send Away the Tigers, only to follow it up with an album that invites comparison to your most notoriously uncommercial work, filled with songs called Jackie Collins Existential Question Time and She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach, and lyrics not even the performers understand, that furthermore comes dressed in a sleeve featuring a painting of a child's blood-spattered face. "This album could seriously damage us in a commercial sense," he says with a nod. "Already, supermarkets won't accept the album cover, which I am really startled at. You can have the Pussycat Dolls poledancing, but you can't ... " His voice trails off again. "So already I'm thinking, 'Oh fucking hell, are we putting them off already?'"

Then again, as Bradfield points out, wilful contrariness has always rather been the Manic Street Preachers' thing. "We came from the Valleys, we were Valley Troglodytes and proud of it, but we were ferociously nerdy indie kids as well. But we were ferociously nerdy indie kids who loved sport, which other ferociously nerdy indie kids didn't. When we first came to London, we were always trying to work out a way of making people try and believe in us while making people hate us at the same time."

In any case, he says, this was an album they almost had to make, regardless of the reaction. "Deep down I was thinking, I couldn't have changed that much, I couldn't have forgotten that much about Richey that I can't do this. If we couldn't reconnect with what Richey wrote, even at the apex of what was happening with him ... fucking hell, if we couldn't do that then we would have lost a part of ourselves that we hadn't even realised we had lost."

• Journal for Plague Lovers is released on 18 May on Sony

 http://www.x-freaks.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=7e45ea0c73434d9cdef618593eb70529&topic=3358.msg58111#new

Yoshiki interview from Cure USA


The music of "X JAPAN" has surpassed national borders, race, and time

At a time when the term "visual-kei" didn't even exist, X appeared suddenly on the scene, upholding the catchphrase, "PSYCHEDELIC VIOLENCE CRIME OF VISUAL SHOCK". Along with their flashy makeup and costumes, their unique HR/HM sound surprised people throughout Japan, and later brought great reforms to Japan's music industry. Their groundbreaking existence has made them the original Jrock Band. YOSHIKI, who is already known worldwide as a musician, is in fact X JAPAN's leader and drummer.

In this memorable first issue of CureUSA we feature an interview with YOSHIKI who helped found visual-kei in Japan and currently knows every detail of the Jrock movement overseas. After about 10 years have gone by, he's carrying out new activities. What is the past, present, and future of X JAPAN, the band that from now on will spread its wings across the world?

-- YOSHIKI, I think the charm of the music that you create is that you adapt classical elements into rock music, along with the progression of melodies that could only come from Japan, but your music was a bit different from the mainstream HR/HM (hard rock/heavy metal) at the time.

"After all, I was a "maverick". Because my music didn't belong to any one genre, it didn't fit anywhere. We were in the situation where all we could do was establish our own genre of music. We also got criticized by critics In the midst of that, the only ones to stick by us were the fans, and we worked from the position of anti-industry/anti-critic. By the time we performed at Tokyo Dome an sold one million CDs, it was like Ihe critics had to acknowledge us."

-- It's amazing that you were able to do so much until it reached those circumstances. In those early days, it was rare for a rock band at the time to appear on television programs and received mass exposure in the media as you did, but by doing so you worked your way into the everyday lives of people who weren't rock fans, and I think X was the band that popularized the musical genre that today is called "visual kei".

"How did we do it? For example, when we appeared on ''Kouhaku uta gassen" (A national music television program broadcast in Japan on New Year Eve's, boasting a decades' long history) for better or for worse the response we got was huge. I think that was in keeping with our catch phrase "PSYCHEDELIC VIOLENCE CRIME OF VISUAL SHOCK", which we upheld since X first started. It's about giving a shock to one's sense of vision. We worked all along consciously wondering how those around us would evaluate what we did."

-- I see. Another thing that comes to mind with the mention of X is the huge achievement you left behind of creating a blueprint for going from an existence as an indies rock band in a scene that was still underground in Japan to stepping up to become major. I think things started for X when you made your way to the major scene, but after all, did you meet with harsh criticism ?

"Because it was a time when people said our music is not so-called "rock made for the major scene", we had all sorts of troubles. When we were asked to appear on television and thought we would do it we faced opposition, and when we made the appearance we got a lot of criticism. When we got criticized like that we ended up wanting to appear on television more. As we had absolute confidence in our music, no matter how we dressed or what we did, we put up a fight possessing a strong will that this is X's music."

-- Then, at the time when you began activities overseas, the band changed its name from "X" to "X JAPAN". These days lots of visual-kei bands are stepping foot overseas, bul X JAPAN set its sights overseas at a very early point in time. This is something astonishing.

"Be that as it may, in fact X JAPAN has never had a live outside of Japan."

-- What! That's surprising. But since that time you did recording overseas, and you gained quite a bit of recognition.

"That's certainly due to DIR EN GREY and other visual-kei bands coming to do many lives overseas, which I think lead people who were interested to investigate other things and find out about the existence of X JAPAN, That's why I must thank the people who are in visual-kei bands now. As for the time when X JAPAN changed its name, first of all we had a contract with the Atlantic label and planned to release CDs under them, but if we were going to pursue activities overseas I felt strongly that I wanted to do the songs in English, and because I started by studying English, it took a whole lot of time. But the people doing visual-kei today sing in Japanese, don't they?"

-- That's right, they keep the lyrics in Japanese.

"In that regard, as X used English lyrics since a long time ago, 1 think musically we're easy to accept. "ART OF LIFE" and other songs are completely in English. Maybe this is one of the reasons why X later became famous overseas."

-- Then, X JAPAN broke up in 1997. After that you moved to LA,, making it your base and persued activities as a musician and performer, but what are your reasons fqr putting a stop to working as part of a "band" for awhile?

"When X JAPAN ended, parting ways with my childhood friend TOSHI, and HIDE's death...many things piled up and it was painful somehow.. The pain was too much. That's why, at any rate I wanted to go someplace different. Now X JAPAN has re-formed and I'm able to think, "Bands are great," "Rock is great", and after this I've been thinking about also making Violet UK into a band."

-- Speaking of which, what led to X JAPAN getting back together?

"It all started when TOSHI began contacting me every now and again. Then we met in L.A. and started talkipg about it. However, I thought it over for more than a year. We're exciting band, but there have being many times when we did things too exciting (laughs). First of all,to be able to play the drums I had to restore my physical condition. I had various problems, but in the end what finally got me moving was what I heard from the people around me. What the fans said especially was most important to me, and after all hearing so many people say that they wanted us to get back together was the most important reason for us deciding to re-form."

-- I see. Earlier this came un a bit in conversation, but now a Jrock movement is currently making waves overseas. YOSHIKI,you've been in music activities on a worldwide scale for a long time, but do you fell that circumstances surrounding Jrock before and after it started to gain popularity are different?

"They're different I would say. Even if I've been involved in music activities overseas for quite awhile, it was to the extent of doing Violet UK and distributing music though the Web. Despite that, since a number of years ago, more and more people have been coming up to me in all kindsof places asking me questions like, "You're YOSHIKI, aren't you?" and "May I take your picture?". When I went to Thailand about 3000 people had gathered at the airport and were singing "Tears". Also in Korea and other places, mainly in Asia this kind of thing has begun to happen, and this time when I went to watch lives in America people approached me. As you might expect, that makes me happy. Until now I've always had the intention of writing music that people can enjoy regardless of nationality or race, so for it to have penetrated like this after so long makes me so happy I could cry"

-- That's really wonderful. Then, the year before last, you produced the big event "jrock Revolution" in order to help this movement go even further.

"Since quite awhile ago I've had a lot of people say to me. "Won't you do a big Jrock event for us?" Even when Japanese bands play overseas they don't perform on the same stage, and there was no one who was able to make that happen. That's why I would get asked, "YOSHIKI, can't you get many bands to perform together?". Beyond that, because Japanese visual-kei bands are practically divided into political factions, they said there is probably only one person who can overcome that (laughs). At that time I just asked the bands in a normal way and they were able to come together, but people said afterwards that it's unbelievable that this band and that band would perform together!"

-- Yes, it was really a dream line-up.

"Now that X JAPAN has started I can't work on it, but I think I definitely want to do it again. Last time it was in L.A., so next time I'd like to try doing it in New York or on the east coast."

-- I'm looking forward to it! Also, during the year before last I heard thai you participated in an anime convention as part of S.K.I.N., at which you of course performed live, but also held an autograph signing and other events. This is something unimaginable in Japan.

"Talking directly to the fans like thai it not something I find particularly unpleasant. I guess there's an image of me leading an existence something like that of an alien (laughs). But in fact that's not true. In the past, even in Japan I've done a hand shaking event, but tons of people came and my hand swelled up...so I can't really do it in Japan (laughs)."

-- Incidentally, are Japanese fans and American fans different?

"No, they're the same. I feel enthusiasm from them in the same way. I think it's great that I did it, and after this I want to continue to do this kind of thing."

-- Now let's move on to your plans after this. The other day you finished a countdown live at Akasaka BLITZ, and you've added six additional dome lives outside of Tokyo. Doing six large-scale performances in dome arenas is amazing!

"Last time at Toyko Dome we did three performances in three day, but even so it seems there where people who could'nt get tickets and weren't able to come, so I thought if we go to six places, won't everyone be able to see us? Also, since talk about this came from the concert promoter as well, I thought we should go for it."

-- This time holding lives in places outside of Tokyo should make it all easier for people to go wacth you.

"Honestly, I'd like to do a tour across Japan. Every time I go on stage with X, personally it's an act of suicide. I think whenever I die is fine, and because I play with enough energy that it wouldn't be strange if l die at any time, I can't do it that many times. When I perform one time, I can't move my body for two or three days. By the last day of Dome 3 DAYS we did earlier, the next day I couldn't get up from my bed. TOSHI also screams himself into a frenzy so his throat probably surpasses its limits...that's why this time for the six dome performances we planned the schedule leaving time in between."

-- I see...you are fierce, aren't you. Well then, what are your plans for activities overseas?

"Of course, I've been thinking to do it. As I never I knew that this many fans had a demand for us, this time I want to do it properly. I want people the world over to feel X JAPAN's concept and music through their bodies and understand us, so first of all I'm thinking we'll put out in album. I think it will be something like a best album, but of course I want to include new songs too. About 70% English, and 30% Japanese."

-- So can fans overseas expect it to come out this year?

"Yes. Also, there's a game called "Rock Band" that's popular in America now, and you'll be able to download X JAPAN songs as part of the game. I think that's something really lucky, and as I think it's a way of appealing to people beyond just Jrock fans, I'm very much looking forward to it."

--YOSHIKI,from now on how will your personal musical activities develop?

"I'm doing lots of music for movies, so I think I'll continue with those kinds of activities after this. I'll he happy if people who have taken an interest listen to this music."

-- Also,I think there must be a lot of fans who think, "I want to watch YOSHIKI's live" but is there any possibility of you doing live performances?

"I want to! I want to do lives that are not like the large-scale ones X JAPAN does as well. Before X JAPAN re-formed, for about 10 years I wrote songs for Violet UK then trashed them, wrote and trashed, over and over again, but out of all of that there are some songs that managed to take shape, so I feel that I want to perform those publicly. It's just that X JAPAN is a band that someone has to drag along,and because the person who been at the center making things move all along has been me, now that's what comes first for me. Violet UK comes second I would say. Because I think if I were to put Violet UK first X JAPAN would cease to be able to go on. There are probably people who have learned about YOSH1KI because they know X JAPAN, and now I think I want X JAPAN to form the main part of my activities."

-- And finally, please give a message to all of our CureUSA readers.

"X JAPAN has yet to have a live in America, and I'm sure there are people who don't know about us, but from now on we have various plans in store, so if you support us along with other visual-kei bands, I would be happy."