A Look Back: Manic Street Preachers — The Holy Bible (1994)
The significance of this album continues to grow.
The significance of this album continues to grow.
Without question, this one of the most important and yes, brilliant, rock albums. Period. That said, I’ll spare you the trouble of reading any further, I love this album.
There you go, that’s my review.
Now, if you want to know why Manic Street Preachers The Holy Bible is so damn good, let’s carry on.
However, there are some things to put into perspective first:
The Holy Bible was released in August of 1994.
Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, et al, aka the “Grunge” sound was peaking.
Kurt Cobain had died earlier that year.
The less angry and thoughtful Brit Pop of Blur and Suede in addition to the Manchester sound of bands like Oasis was ascending in response to the American musical colonialism of the previous decade.
While Manic Street Preachers are from Wales they couldn’t be lumped in as part of the Brit Pop movement. While a rock band, they didn’t really qualify as “grunge”.
The Holy Bible doesn’t really belong in either…although its music and blistering lyrical and musical anger is closer to grunge.
Manic Street Preachers are:
James Dean Bradford — Guitar & Vocals
Richey Edwards — Rhythm Guitar
Nicky Wire — Bass
Sean Moore — Drums
All of the band’s songwriting is attributed to the four band members (lyrics — Edwards and Wire; music — Bradfield and Moore) but the lyrics of The Holy Bible are largely attributed to rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards (credited as Richey James). And these lyrics are the words of someone in terrible pain.
At 27, Edwards lyrics are the words of someone shedding the naivete of youth and coming to grips with the complexity of adulthood — in addition to battling very personal demons.
This transition is one that everyone encounters at one point, some earlier, some later and the narrators in each of Edwards songs ring true of someone struggling with this transition.
In April of 1994 Kurt Cobain, also 27, showed music fans that not everyone makes it through that transitional tunnel into realizing that life, despite the success, isn’t rainbows, puppies and ice cream for everyone. Apparently Edwards felt the same because on almost every song on The Holy Bible, the listener encounters a narrator who is struggling with life.
Allegedly spurred by the bands trip to Thailand earlier in 1994 the chorus to the album’s opener “Yes” takes audio from the 1993 documentary Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns and the very first words heard are:
You can buy her, you can buy her
This one’s here, this one’s here
This one’s here, and this one’s here
Everything’s for sale
The chorus speaks to that and paints an appropriately bleak picture of the sex trade:
And in these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything
For $200 anyone can conceive a God on video
He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock
Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want
Borrowing from the 1994 documentary about Caraline Neville-Lister’s anorexia called Caraline’s Story, the audio sample to the song “4st 7lbs” is raw:
I eat too much to die
And not enough to stay alive
The song’s title “4st 7lbs” (+/- 63 lbs) refers to the weight by which death is reputed to become medically unavoidable for anorexics. The narrator of the song peels back the curtain to their thinking on the eating disorder:
I want to be so skinny that I rot from view
I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity
The Holy Bible’s first single, “Faster”, borrows audio from the 1984 film of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four before diving headfirst into self-hatred and depression:
Sleep can’t hide the thoughts splitting through my mind
Shadows aren’t clean, false mirrors too many people awake
If you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down
I’ve been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else
It’s safe to say that Richey Edwards lyrics indicate he’s battling some demons.
The Holy Bible
Naming your album after one of the most sacred texts in Western Culture requires a healthy dose of testicular fortitude (or hubris). Manic Street Preachers were never really in short supply of either, despite the tone of the lyrics.
It’s that fortitude and rawness of the lyrics that can be perceived as either a “bridge or barricade” to their music. Given its initial success, it’s probably the latter. Given its continuing impact, it’s probably the former.
What makes the The Holy Bible continue to grow in stature and influence was summed up succinctly by Edwards at the time:
“The album doesn’t pretend things don’t exist.”
And those topics on The Holy Bible continue to exist.
Certainly, the lyrics are dour and the music that is married to it is a claustrophobic freneticism. Aside from the slower, “She is Suffering” James Dean Bradfield’s blistering music matches the lyrics in that rarest of rare rock and roll endeavors, perfection.
But that perfection comes at a very high price.
The previous year and during the recording of The Holy Bible saw Edwards battle depression, self-harm, alcohol abuse, and anorexia before being institutionalized.
The album was released in August 1994. The night before a promotional tour of the United States by Bradfield and Edwards, February 1 of 1995, Richey Edwards disappeared.
On February 14, his car received a ticket at a service station close to the Severn Bridge in Wales, a known suicide location. Throughout the years, there have been reported sightings of Edwards at a market in India, and on the islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. However, none of these sightings have been corroborated by investigators.
Richey Edwards was declared “presumed dead” on November 23, 2008.
The Holy Bible received good reviews upon its release. While it peaked at #6 in the U.K. it failed to chart elsewhere in Europe. And in keeping with what would become a sad tradition with their music, the album was DOA in America. But over the years the international stature of this album has grown. On the ten-year anniversary release, Dan Martin of NME described The Holy Bible re-release as “a work of genuine genius.”
For better or for worse, the songs of The Holy Bible, the psychological state and disappearance of Richey Edwards will forever be inextricably linked. Maybe it’s Joe Tangari of Pitchfork who said it best: “The Holy Bible, in retrospect has become a sort of horror-show eulogy for a man who couldn’t live with the world around him.”
What makes this album so good and timeless is both good and bad.
The good?
Rock and roll, at least good rock and roll, is timeless.
The bad?
The same can be said for mental illness.
Even after 25 years and the accumulating respect and accolades that the album continues to gather, this album isn’t for everyone.
At the end of the day, don’t be dissuaded. All of this sadness, dark material, and the intellectual and literary references don’t prevent The Holy Bible from being a perfect (and listenable) rock and roll album…they embolden it.
With the consent of the Edwards family, Manic Street Preachers continued on as a three-piece band and on their next release, Everything Must Go, achieved massive success.
The band continues to perform with an empty space on the stage where Richey Edwards would be standing.