The New Cue #528 September 17: Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield on 168 Songs Of Hatred And Failure

"He discovered more than I already knew that was there."

Good morning,

Welcome to a bonus Wednesday edition, for our legendary paying subscribers only. Today we’ve got a chat with Manic Street Preachers singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield about Keith Cameron’s excellent new book about the band, 168 Songs Of Hatred And Failure. An in-depth, definitive history telling their story through an epic song-by-song voyage, it saw Keith conduct hours and hours (and hours and hours) of new interviews with James and Nicky Wire and is chocka with reams of both new intel about classics and rich excavations of deeper cuts. It’s a must-have for any Manics fan and we have a copy to give away to one lucky TNC subscriber at the bottom of this interview.

If you’re not a paying subscriber and would like to remedy that, then you can do so by clicking here, we will welcome you with open arms:

Now, onto Niall’s chat with James about the book. We’ll see you on Friday for Recommender action.

Enjoy the edition,

Ted and Niall

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TNC Book Club: James Dean Bradfield on 168 Songs Of Hatred And Failure

Where was your head at back at the beginning of doing this book and the idea of tackling the history of the Manics via the story of 168 songs?
I’d just read the Chemical Brothers book [2023’s Paused In Cosmic Reflection, by TNC friend and hero Robin Turner] when we started this one and I just thought, ‘We’ve got to get a bit of colour into the book’. So I demanded there was some photographs of gear in there as well, because my immediate emotion was, ‘Wow, the band that have talked so much in press are finally going to go and talk more about things they’ve already talked about already in more depth’. I was like, ‘How is this going to pan out, is there going to be anything left there to dredge up?!’. And of course, there was. There was lots of stuff to talk about. I don’t want to sound like some tired old stage actor but there was lots to talk about the process which really surprised me.