Manic Street Preachers

Described as'Rock Book of the decade' by the Guardian in London, this is the fascinating story of this number one- selling, award-winning UK band. Beginning with their childhoods in South Wales, Simon Price traces the lives of the band through their early days, the mysterious disappearance of their songwriter, Richey Edwards, and concluding with the release of their multi-platinum albumThis is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Classic photos, unseen rarities -- including exclusive pictures from the band's official photographer -- and the most comprehensiveManic Street Preachersdiscography ever published, make this book unmissable. Has sold over 20,000 copies since its original publication in 1999 Written with the full co-operation of the band, their families, their friends and colleagues in the music industry.

In a career that's spanned thirty-five years and generated fourteen albums, fifty-three singles (two of them UK number ones), four Brit Awards, two Ivor Novellas and inspired literally hundreds of university dissertations, quite a few PhD's and the odd specialist subject on Mastermind, Manic Street Preachers have become, in the words of their 2011 singles collection, national treasures. The Welsh trio (who, to many, will always be a quartet) have a uniquely intense impact on their fans; educating them as much as they entertain and inspire. This book collects fourteen brand new essays, one for each Manics album, from fourteen different writers from diverse backgrounds, tracing the band's impact on fans and culture and setting each of their works, from 1992's Generation Terrorists to 2018's Resistance Is Futile and beyond, into context. The essays are linked by a detailed month-by-month biography by music critic and Manics fan Marc Burrows (The Guardian, The Quietus, Drowned In Sound), who compiled and edited the book, tracing the band's development from glamorpuss upstart intellectuals to the elder statesmen of British indie rock, via an era-defining run of hits, a historic trip to Cuba, and one vanished genius. Manic Street Preachers: Album by Album includes a complete discography and is sourced from in-depth archival research, making it one of the most comprehensive and detailed works devoted to the band yet compiled.

This book explores the ways in which popular music can criticise political, social and economic structures, through the lens of alternate rock band Manic Street Preachers. Unlike most recent work on popular music, Peters concentrates largely on lyrical content to defend the provocative claim that the Welsh band pushes the critical message shaped in their lyrics to the forefront. Their music, this suggests, along with sleeve art, body-art, video-clips, clothes, interviews and performances, serves to emphasise this critical message and the primary role played by the band’s lyrics. Blending the disciplines of popular music studies, culture studies and philosophy, Peters confronts the ideas of German philosopher and social critic Theodor W. Adorno with the entire catalogue of Manic Street Preachers, from their 1988 single ‘Suicide Alley’ to their 2018 album Resistance is Futile. Although Adorno argues that popular music is unable to resist the standardising machinery of consumption culture, Peters paradoxically uses his ideas to show that Manic Street Preachers releases shape ‘critical models’ with which to formulate social and political critique. This notion of the ‘critical model’ enables Peters to argue that the catalogue of Manic Street Preachers critically addresses a wide range of themes, from totalitarianism to Holocaust representation, postmodern temporality to Europeanism, and from Nietzsche’s ideas about self-overcoming to reflections on digimodernism and post-truth politics. The book therefore persuasively shows that Manic Street Preacher lyrics constitute an intertextual network of links between diverse cultural and political phenomena, encouraging listeners to critically reflect on the structures that shape our lives.

An iconic selection of photographs of the most iconoclastic British band of the late twentieth century, Manic Street Preachers. In the early nineties, a group of disaffected and fiercely political young men from the Welsh valleys exploded onto a British music scene still in thrall to rave and acid house. With their early singles Motown Junk, You Love Us and Stay Beautiful the Manics reminded us at a moment of great hedonistic indulgence that pop is an instrument to provoke and destabilise. It was the legendary photographer Kevin Cummins who captured James, Sean, Richie and Nicky in their most uncompromising, glam-fixated early years. (Title) is a unique record of a band on a mission to reclaim rock n roll through literature, image and thrilling guitar pop. Working at the NME and already famous for his association with the classic images of Joy Division, The Smiths and Stone Roses, Cummins was the ideal photographer to capture the essence of a band who understood and manipulated androgynous and decadent imagery. These photographs document the period just before the release of Generation Terrorists (1992) up to Holy Bible (1995) and the subsequent disappearance of guitarist and lyricist, Richie Edwards. A revealing mix of studio shots and never-seen-before behind the scenes photographs of a band at arguably their creative zenith, (title) is the ultimate portrait of one of the last great British rock n roll bands.

Manic Street Preachers have established themselves as one the UK's most enduring, intelligent and credible rocks groups, but that quest for greatness has been a difficult, sometimes torturous path; a path which one of their number – the gifted and troubled Richley Edwards – abandoned for destinations still unknown. Nailed To History traces the slow yet inexorable climb of the South Wales band from their 1980s glam-punk origins, critically derided as 'Generation Terrorists', to their current position as respected art-rock intellectuals - a fact underlined by 2009's award-winning ‘A Journal For Plague Lovers’. This Omnibus Enhanced edition now includes a multimedia discography, charting every album and single release the band has made through a timeline of music videos and album art. Author Martin Power also examines the life and complex personality of Edwards, whose highly politicised, morally disquieting wordplay defined much of the Manics' early appeal - his personal demons writ large across 1994's dark masterwork ‘The Holy Bible’. Edwards' evermore extreme behaviour culminated in his sad, strange disappearance in February, 1995. A story of honour and enduring friendship, of 'culture, alienation, boredom' and despair, Nailed To History examines the Manic Street Preachers’ musical output and the personalities that make them an enduring artistic and political force.

New discoveries and a fresh perspective, with unprecedented access to Richey's personal archive On 1 February 1995, Richey Edwards, guitarist of the Manic Street Preachers, went missing at the age of 27. On the eve of a promotional trip to America, he vanished from his London hotel room, his car later discovered near the Severn Bridge, a notorious suicide spot. Over two decades later, Richey’s disappearance remains one of the most moving, mysterious and unresolved episodes in recent pop culture history. For those with a basic grasp of the facts, Richey's suicide seems obvious and undeniable. However, a closer investigation of his actions in the weeks and months before his disappearance just don’t add up, and until now few have dared to ask the important questions. Withdrawn Traces is the first book written with the co-operation of the Edwards family, testimony from Richey’s closest friends and unprecedented and exclusive access to Richey’s personal archive. In a compelling real-time narrative, the authors examine fresh evidence, uncover overlooked details, profile Richey's state of mind, and brings us closer than ever before to the truth.

Follows the "tumultuous rise in full, from their formative years" of this English rock band who burst on to the music scene in 1990. "Sweet venom is an incisive portrait of a complex, multi-layers and frequently self-contradictory band, whose compelling music makes them one of modern rock's most remarkable talents"--Back cover.

Despite high and low brow pop culture references in their lyrics, sleeve art, and in interviews, no concise in-depth study exists of the Manic Street Preachers. This book is in some ways a response to that fact, a study of the band through one particular record. "This book brims with passion and insight and care... every five pages or so Naish had me scrambling to hear various Manics songs from across the years." — Paolo Hewitt "The Manic Street Preachers have long been a blind spot for me. In Riffs and Meaning, Stephen Lee Naish does a great service by creating a solid context for the band — how it developed and how it intersected with its rivals and critics (both in the press and on the stage). Centering his attention on one of their thorniest, most sprawling albums, Know Your Enemy, about which even the band has seemed ambivalent, Naish explores how the 'untameable child of Manic Street Preachers’ records' was a fundamental work, finally letting them escape the shadow of their lost guitarist/songwriter Richey Edwards and 'to forge a different version of the Manic Street Preachers that was almost completely set apart from their previous incarnations.'" — Chris O’Leary, Rebel Rebel: The Songs of David Bowie, 1964-1976 and Ashes to Ashes Like many bands worth obsessing over, the Manic Street Preachers are virtually unknown here in the States. [But this is a] passionate discourse about a divisive album that you should absolutely listen to again immediately. — John Sellers, author of Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life