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Artist News Gigs & Festivals
Manic Street Preachers to re-open The Holy Bible via anniversary shows
By Aly Barchi | Published on Wednesday 24 September 2014
The Manic Street Preachers will re-present their 1994 LP ‘The Holy Bible’ – which basic maths dictates is 20 years old this year – by playing it live and (for the first time) from start to finish over seven quite historical shows in December.
The idea for the live dates came when the band began rehearsing select ‘Holy Bible’ tracks for an episode of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Mastertapes’ series, airing in November. Only they won’t be able to swear in that, because it’s Radio 4.
Interviewed by The Quietus this week, Manics man James Dean Bradfield said: “With the Radio 4 ‘Mastertapes’ sessions, we’ve had a problem trying to come up with the list of stuff we’re going to play, because we started rehearsing ‘Yes’, and then, y’know, of course [we thought], ‘Oh, here we go, I can’t sing that lyric. You’ve got ‘cock’ all the way through the lyric… ‘You want a girl so tear off his cock””.
And it almost goes without saying that that kind of thing isn’t particularly Radio 4-suitable. Still, at least with the December dates, he can get as explicit as he likes.
Thinking back to the Manics as they were at the time they made the LP, JDB adds: “I suppose it was a take-no-prisoners kind of vibe, we didn’t care that everything was at stake, even our record contract… we just didn’t care about anything. We just felt that it was really important just to be very myopic and single-minded about everything”.
And contrasting that with today’s ‘vibe’, he says: “I would say that I’m still essentially the same person, but it’s hard to have that sense of myopia and indestructibility when you’re 45. I’ve got to know that I can be as bloody-minded as I was. I know it sounds woefully pretentious… like some bullshit actor fishing for compliments from his agent – ‘I’m not sure if I can play Lear!’ It does spook me out a bit, but I just really want to know that I can do it justice”.
So I guess we’ll all have to wait until December to see if he can. Here are the listings:
8 Dec: Glasgow, Barrowlands
10/11 Dec: Manchester, Albert Hall
13 Dec: Dublin, Olympia Theatre
15/16/17 Dec: London, Roundhouse
