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Post by Fuggle on Nov 2, 2004 7:37:08 GMT -5
Manic Street PreachersSid Billington
Lifeblood Released: 01/11/2004Many will herald the Manics return to form on their seventh studio album, while others will wonder why they're even bothering. On Lifeblood, the Welsh boys concentrate on gelling together, and they do, but only to end up sounding like Coldplay - and we only need one of those. Their raw, likeable guitar licks have been replaced by plinky, plonky piano anthems, such as I Live To Fall Asleep and 1985. The main problem is that the Manics are shouting to the 'youth of today', but they're not very likely to listen when they're banging on about The Love of Richard Nixon. Still, perhaps their grown-up fanbase will still be curious?
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Post by Fuggle on Nov 7, 2004 7:59:54 GMT -5
LISTEN TO THE NEW MANIC STREET PREACHERS ALBUM HERE!MSP - Check out their new album nowThe Manic Street Preachers release new album 'Lifeblood' this week, their fourth without Richey Edwards and arguably the best Manics album since 'Everything Must Go'. NME said ''Lifeblood' is the sound of a band entering middle-age with dignity and without embarrassment.' Draw your own conclusions though by clicking on the link below to listen to the album: www.manics.co.uk/listen/nme/
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Post by Fuggle on Nov 22, 2004 9:10:10 GMT -5
RADIO PREACHERS!MSP - They've got faces for radio etc...MANIC STREET PREACHERS are the latest act to take over digital radio channel BBC 6 MUSIC. The band are to take up the challenge of ‘The 6 Music Selector’. From December 6-12 they will be let loose around the BBC archives to choose their own rare recordings, documentaries and concert sessions, which they will play along with comments and endorsements throughout the seven days. As well as recording a live session for broadcast throughout the week, Nicky Wire will join breakfast host Phill Jupitus on Monday 6 December from 7am, while James Dean Bradfield joins Andrew Collins for the 4pm drivetime show on Thursday 9. The band's five ‘albums of the day’ include ‘The Joshua Tree’ by U2, ‘Who’s Next’ by The Who and The Band’s ‘The Band’. Meanwhile, their documentary choices include ‘All Or Nothing – The Small Faces Story’, ‘The Leonard Cohen Story’ and ‘Guitar Greats – Jimmy Page’. They have also chosen live session tracks from Public Enemy, Dexys Midnight Runners, The Cure, The Cult and Mogwai. Manic Street Preachers’ new album ‘Lifeblood’ is out now. The band go on a UK and Irish tour next month, with Razorlight in support. Hope Of The States will also appear, but in Brighton only. The dates are: Brighton Centre (December 4) Belfast Waterfront (6) Dublin Olympia (7) London Wembley Arena (9) Plymouth Pavilions (10) Nottingham Arena (11) Cardiff International Arena (13) Glasgow SECC (14) Birmingham NEC (16) Manchester MEN Arena (17)
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Post by Fuggle on Nov 22, 2004 9:13:06 GMT -5
Manics in charge of BBC 6 MusicThe Manics latest album Lifeblood was released in early NovemberThe Manic Street Preachers are to take over the helm of BBC digital radio station 6 Music for a week in December. The Welsh band, whose hits include Design For Life and If You Tolerate This, have already chosen which records to play between 6 and 12 December. Their albums of the day include Who's Next by The Who and U2's Joshua Tree. The group will also perform their own live session. They follow in the footsteps of Radiohead, who took over the station for a week last year. Diverse choice Bass player Nicky Wire will join Phil Jupitus on his morning show on Monday 6 December, while vocalist and guitarist James Dean Bradfield will appear on Andrew Collins' afternoon show on Thursday 9. The group have also chosen documentaries to air, such as The Leonard Cohen Story and Guitar Greats - Jimmy Page. The live concert session tracks they have picked include The Specials' Rat Race recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in London and Public Enemy's Fight The Power and Rebel Without A Pause. The band will also answer questions e-mailed in by 6 Music listeners.
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Post by Fuggle on Nov 23, 2004 8:03:28 GMT -5
The commitments
In 1994, the Manic Street Preachers released The Holy Bible, an album shot through with passion, visceral imagery and political conviction which went against the grain of Britpop. But why didn't it inspire a new wave of intelligent bands?John Harris Sunday November 21, 2004 The ObserverTen years ago, UK rock music was in the middle of the cultural moment that excited onlookers were already starting to term Britpop. Blur's Parklife had revived a very English mode of arch social comment; the Gallagher brothers were proselytising about the life-affirming properties of old-school rock'n'roll and proving no less influential. By the following year, both strands had been tied into a picture of hedonistic national renewal: a Britain clad in sportswear, drunk on premium lager, sloughing off the hegemony of America by gleefully singing along to the latest Britpop hits. There was, however, one unwelcome guest at the party: an album released in the autumn of 1994, in the same week as Oasis put out their debut album Definitely Maybe. Manic Street Preachers's The Holy Bible was, as its authors still proudly claim, the antidote to Britpop. Whereas the prevailing pop-cultural mood was giddily celebratory, this album escorted its listeners through such themes as genocide, communism and fascism, capital punishment, the hypocrisy underlying the American dream, anorexia, self-harm and suicide. The album will be rereleased early next month, packaged in a luxurious 10th anniversary edition and newly tagged as 'a triumph of art over logic'. Rock music may have caught up of late with some of the angular influences that form its musical bedrock - Joy Division, Magazine, Public Image Ltd - but The Holy Bible 's lyrical aspect is still glorious and remarkable. Around 70 per cent of its words are the work of Richey Edwards, the member of the group whose unexplained disappearance in February 1995 left them as a reluctant trio. A political history graduate and voracious reader, he was outwardly in thrall to the standard rock archetypes - androgyny, excess, a solipsistic kind of angst - but his sense of what the group's music could convey (shared, it has to be said, by his co-lyricist Nicky Wire) was pretty much unprecedented. The Holy Bible 's cast speaks volumes: within its songs lurk references to Lenin, Pol Pot, Myra Hindley, Winston Churchill, Shakespeare, Slobodan Milosevic and Michel Foucault. Via such songs as 'Die in the Summertime' and '4st 7lbs', Edwards also sought to suffuse the album with a clear sense of his trials. That said, though his dysfunction is streaked through whole swaths of The Holy Bible , so, too, is a palpable sense of pride in his leading of the group into such singular territory. 'I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer,' goes the album's most successful single, 'Faster'. 'I spat out Plath and Pinter.' Among its other qualities, The Holy Bible was a brave work, unafraid to break with one longstanding rule in the rock manual. In the past, music had tended to deal with humanity's woes via what Bob Dylan called 'finger-pointing songs', angrily taking issue with the adult world and/or the establishment. This album, by contrast, bluntly contended that the Manics and their audience were complicit in just about all the horrors it described. At the end of a song titled 'Of Walking Abortion', singer James Dean Bradfield repeatedly delivered one of the album's key lines, finally rising to an outraged shriek: 'Who's responsible? You fucking are.' The Holy Bible took root in the wake of an uncertain phase of the group's progress. Having initially claimed that they would sell 16 million copies of their 1992 debut album, Generation Terrorists , they fell way short of their rhetoric, then went back into the studio to make Gold Against the Soul . Still founded on a worldview that was theirs alone, it was chiefly compromised by its bombastic aesthetics, suggesting that the group's fondness for hard rock had rather got the better of them. 'I actually quite like that record for its sense of... bewildering emptiness,' says Nicky Wire (aka Nick Jones), perched on a sofa in the group's Cardiff rehearsal studio. 'But after it, there was this realisation that we were completely lost. And I thought the way to regain our soul was to give ourselves the freedom to fail. Our whole ethos, of trying to be the biggest band in the world, had to take a sidestep. We had to make an artistic statement.' The band's lyrics, written by Wire and Edwards, were always the starting point for their songs and at that juncture, the latter was evidently on a roll. His first contribution was the lyric for a song entitled 'Yes', a raw mea culpa in which the Manics's surrenders to music business protocol were equated with the more stomach-churning aspects of prostitution. Soon after, he came up with 'Archives of Pain', a treatise on the innate human need for revenge, built around such lines as 'Prisons must bring their pain' and 'The centre of humanity is cruelty'. 'He told me, "This a pro-capital punishment song - I think you'll love it,"' says Wire. 'He smiled as he said it.' As taboo-breaking were 'Mausoleum' and 'The Intense Humming of Evil', both inspired by one of the group's chosen forms of on-the-road recreation. 'On our days off on a European tour in 1993,' says Wire, allowing himself a smile at the incongruity of it all, 'we went to Dachau and Belsen. Most bands would get a load of skunk weed and lie around; we visited death camps.' 'I did feel, "Should we actually be writing these songs?"' admits James Dean Bradfield. 'It's a hard thing to justify; to try and sing a song and convey those feelings when we're so removed from them in terms of culture and history. Without wanting to sound flippant, it was, "Can we get away with this? Is it expression or the grossest sensationalist voyeurism?"'
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Post by Fuggle on Nov 23, 2004 8:03:40 GMT -5
The band, cooped up in a tiny Cardiff studio, working seven days a week, rejoiced in the quality of what they were putting on tape. The words were combined with fierce, angular music; the result, they concluded, was a near-perfect synthesis of medium and message.
'It's not an album with a Hollywood ending,' says Bradfield. 'But the liberation of playing the songs and realising that we'd found a new voice, a collectiveness of thought, was an achievement. It felt valiant . And when I went on stage every night and sang those songs, it was like being in a fight every night. I enjoyed it. It was a good feeling.'
The Holy Bible 's artwork centred around Jenny Saville's Strategy (South Face / Front Face / North Face), a confrontational image of obesity, chosen by Wire and Edwards because of its portrayal of 'beauty in perceived ugliness'. Two months before the album's release, the Manics served notice of the album's second visual aspect: a new band uniform of mix-and-match military apparel, decisively introduced when they played 'Faster' on Top of the Pops .
Perhaps most remarkable of all was the contrast between the album and its context. Somewhat inevitably, its commercial fate paled in comparison to the kingpins of Britpop: while Blur and Oasis racked up sales that ran into the millions, the Manics managed a modest 35,000. In the wake of the career-defining success of their 1996 album Everything Must Go, however, it found an audience: every year, according to Wire, it unfailingly sells around 15,000 copies.
Wire remembers when he first appreciated The Holy Bible in its entirety. He and the other Manics were travelling home from an appearance at the Radio One roadshow, and they listened to a cassette of the new record. 'That was when the realisation came,' he says. 'It was, "It doesn't seem like this is going to give us anything but trouble."'
If such songs as '4st 7lb' and 'Die in the Summertime' had eloquently portrayed a hellish kind of personal breakdown, the ensuing months rapidly blurred the distinction between the band's art and their collective life. 'Richey started drinking things like Tennent's Super, which seemed to say, "I've lost the enjoyment of drink; I just need it,"' says Wire. 'By that time, he seemed weak, light, as if he was going to a different place.'
'"Die in the Summertime" is the most frightening song there, lyrically and musically, in that it does merge into prophecy,' says Wire. 'Obviously, it took six months longer than that - if he did die, or disappear, or whatever. But when I listen to it and when we play it live... lines like, "A tiny animal curled into a quarter circle" - they're amazing lyrics, but there's that idea that nothing gives you any pleasure any more; that, post-childhood, life has been utterly empty. I still find it chilling.'
A distance of 10 years also allows them to think about the record in slightly more dispassionate terms, particularly when it comes to the songs that address grand themes. 'For me, it just feels like something that could only ever have been done in Europe,' says Bradfield. 'There's a morass of remains . We went through two world wars, and it's man's greatest achievement that we now live in Europe in peace. But the record says that there are ghosts there: it's built on blood, bones and rubble and we still live with those things.'
As proved by their recent album, Lifeblood , a collection of 'elegiac pop' that Wire claims amounts to ' The Holy Bible for 35-year-olds... a concept album about death', the Manics remain proud advocates of lyrics that both engage with the world and are couched in a poetic vocabulary - and it's this subject to which Wire returns time and again. The Holy Bible , he says, set an intellectual standard that has subsequently been ignored.
'You're not allowed to use words,' he says. 'You know, the White Stripes are seen as being important, but I can't recite you a single one of their lines. Even the Strokes, who are a perfect conglomeration of people, a truly stunning-looking band - none of their lyrics stick in my head. The destruction of language seems unstoppable. When a reviewer says, "Sounds like he's swallowed a thesaurus" - that old line - you just think, Oh, fucking hell_ there's just no way somebody can be intelligent in pop any more. It's dead, truly dead,' he says. 'How can it ever come back?'
· The Holy Bible is released by Epic, 6 December
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Post by Fuggle on Nov 29, 2004 9:10:40 GMT -5
Lifeblood Manic Street Preachers
THE NEW album by Manic Street Preachers is musically their most mellow to date.
It makes much more use of instruments like the piano and harmonica. Tracks such as “1985” and “Empty Souls” rank alongside some of the band’s best songs.
Lyrically the themes, while beautifully poetic, are disappointingly conservative. Although the bitter experience of the miners’ strike features on “1985”, mostly the emphasis is on dealing with personal demons and trying to find inner peace.
The band use a quote from the philosopher Descartes: “Conquer yourself rather than the world”. There is also a bizarrely perverse paean to Richard Nixon.
However, “Cardiff Afterlife”, a love letter to the band’s missing guitarist Richey Edwards, provides a touching moment.
The Manics have always been a great voice of articulate rage against the system. Let’s hope the inner fire isn’t burning out.
Jon Maunder
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Post by Fuggle on Dec 8, 2004 7:47:53 GMT -5
Passion of the jukebox radicals (Filed: 07/12/2004)Thomas H Green reviews the Manic Street Preachers at the Brighton CentrePresident Richard Nixon was a paradox, a man who wanted desperately to be remembered by posterity for his political achievements but whose name became forever synonymous with sinister corruption. Manic Street Preachers: 'have never popped the bubble of their earnest mystique'Oliver Stone's 1995 film Nixon spent more than three hours attempting to reveal the heart and hurt of Nixon's emotional contradictions. It is a measure of the Manic Street Preachers' skill as songwriters that their recent single, the startlingly affecting and melancholy The Love of Richard Nixon, does the same in just over three minutes. On the opening night of the tour promoting the new Lifeblood album, the Brighton crowd swayed along to the live rendition by Wales's bestselling rock act of the 1990s, James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore. The first song in the set, however, was the urgent new number 1985, accompanied by images of Margaret Thatcher and Torvill & Dean on three huge screens behind the group. The Manics are a contradictory band. Their sloganeering and constant references to historical radicalism, which take in anything from the Spanish Civil War to the fate of the welfare state, should sit uneasily in a chart rock format, yet Bradfield fires out every lyric with the passion of a young Paul Weller in his Jam days. Their plaintive angst may seem more suited to a troubled teenager than three settled men in their thirties but, unlike the post-Achtung Baby U2, the band have never embraced post-modernism, they've never popped the bubble of their earnest mystique. All dressed in black with white instruments, and featuring an additional guitarist and keyboard player, the Manics revelled in a back catalogue that has more jukebox potential than one might imagine. Chart-toppers such as the epic If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next and A Design for Life sat beside darker material from the gruelling Holy Bible album, recently given a 10th anniversary re-release. Furious punk numbers such as You Love Us, from the group's earliest incarnation, were welcomed with uproar from the crowd. Halfway through the set, as Manics tradition dictates, bassist Wire changed into a skirt emblazoned with the Welsh flag. There was no encore, but then there didn't seem to be any need for one. The Manic Street Preachers may have finally reached rock-band middle age, but they have not relaxed their dynamic agenda one iota.
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Post by Fuggle on Dec 16, 2004 8:18:29 GMT -5
Manic Street Preachers' Nicky Wire on 5Live LONDON, UK (Sony Music UK) - Nicky Wire will be Simon Mayo's special guest on his BBC 5Live show this Thursday. Listeners are encouraged to phone/text/e-mail their questions into the show for Nicky to answer live on air. So get your thinking hats on and submit those questions! E-mail address is mayo@bbc.co.uk. Listen in from 1pm or check the BBC website for phone / text numbers. Listeners should tune in from 2pm to hear Nicky's interview. Also, to celebrate the release of the 10th anniversary edition of 'The Holy Bile' a special microsite has been launched to accompany album. Go to www.manics.co.uk/holybible. Featuring a digitally re-mastered version of the original album and the previously unheard US mix of the whole record, it also includes many unreleased live tracks/demos etc. The DVD features TV and live performances of all the tracks including a brand new film made by Patrick Jones (playwright and brother of Nicky Wire) to accompany the song 'Yes' and a 30 minute interview with the band.
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Post by Fuggle on Dec 16, 2004 8:21:05 GMT -5
New Guy joins Manics for UK tour
Dec 8 2004 Hannah Jones, Western Mail
NEARLY a decade after the disappearance of Richey Edwards, Manic Street Preachers have found a new guitarist.
And one of Wales' other big bands has seen a new member joining the fold after a shake-up.
Guy Massey, a music engineer who has worked with the Manics on a number of their records, has been brought in to play second guitar with the band on their current UK tour.
And those other Welsh giants of rock, Stereophonics, have at last found a replacement for sacked drummer Stuart Cable.
It is the first time another guitarist has joined Manics singer-guitarist James Dean Bradfield, bassist Nicky Wire and drummer Sean Moore on stage since the disappearance of Richey Edwards almost a decade ago.
Edwards vanished after leaving his Vauxhall Cavalier car parked at Aust services, near a well-known suicide spot by the first Severn Bridge near Chepstow, Monmouthshire in 1995.
But the band say their decision to bring in an extra musician is not intended to replace Edwards.
They say it is "just a musical thing".
Opening their UK tour at Brighton Centre on Saturday before playing Cardiff International Arena next Monday, the band were joined by Guy, who stood at the back right-hand side of the stage next to another unofficial Manic, keyboard player Nick Maysmith.
Nicky Wire explained the decision to bolster the group, which comes from Blackwood, to the New Musical Express magazine.
"It was a difficult decision to come to, but we just needed (another guitarist) desperately.
"James has played three guitarist parts at times and done backing vocals at the same time.
"Guy is an Abbey Road engineer who has engineered a lot of our records.
"We've known him since 1996. We always knew he was a good guitarist and it's not like a big obtrusive thing, it's not like he's replacing Richey. Good God, no.
"Like I said (on Saturday) when we played This Is Yesterday, I sat at my desk and wrote the lyrics to This Is Yesterday with Richey and nothing is ever going to replace that.
"It's just a musical thing."
Dan Martin, a writer for music bible NME, said it "would be wrong" to assume the Manics had added a new member to their unit.
"The Manics were friends before they were musicians," he said.
"They needed a guitarist as some of the guitar parts are simply too much for James to do on his own.
"But I suppose the time hasn't felt right for them to get one until now.
"Fans shouldn't think they have a new member though.
"Guy is a musician and plays the guitar with them, but he's not in the band as he doesn't write, isn't in the photographs and things like that.
"He just stands on the side of the stage and adds to the sound. They've needed someone like him for years."
Meanwhile, Stereophonics, who are from Cwmaman, also have a new look line-up with Argentinian drummer Javier Weyler joining them.
The group met the drummer when they were recording demos, and again last year during a trip to his home-land.
Singer Kelly Jones said, "We were at this club, it was rocking, everyone having a good time, and then the owner invited us to this private house party where lots of musicians go to play - three floors, each floor getting darker and a little seedier the higher up they got.
"That's where we met Javier."
The band are currently working on their new album, Language. Sex. Violence. Other? which is due for release next year.
Cable was sacked from the band last year leaving him "stunned" after the other two members said "commitmentwise there have been issues" since the group were working on their 2003 album You Gotta Go There To Come Back.
New faces in old bands
BACK in 1969, when Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones was booted from his band, he was replaced by 21-year-old Mick Taylor. Taylor played on such famous Stones songs as It's Only Rock 'N' Roll, Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, Heartbreaker and more.
He left in December 1974 to be replaced by his friend, Ronnie Wood.
Warren Cuccurullo joined Duran Duran in 1986 following the departure of guitarist Andy Taylor.
His previous bands included Missing Persons and a stint with guitar guru Frank Zappa.
A classic era in British neo-Prog Rock ended in 1988 when Fish left the band Marillion.
The replacement for the burly singer, whose voice can be heard on the hits Kayleigh and Lavender, was Steve Hogarth.
John Lennon's first group was called the Quarrymen, a band Paul McCartney later joined.
He started playing bass with Lennon in 1957 and George Harrison came on board in 1958 as they became The Beatles. They played with bass guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe, and Pete Best, a drummer. Sutcliffe left in 1961 and Ringo Starr joined the band. Pete was asked to leave the band on April 16, 1962.
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Post by Fuggle on Dec 23, 2004 14:47:48 GMT -5
Manic Street Preachers Postpone Two Tour Dates
by Scott Colothan on 12/14/2004
Manic Street Preachers have been forced to cancel two dates on their current UK tour after singer James Dean Bradfield was struck with a severe bout of flu.
The Welsh rockers postponed the show at Cardifff’s International Arena last night (December 13) and have also pulled out of tonight’s gig at Glasgow SECC.
It is thought that Bradfield will have made a full recovery by the time the tour moves onto Birmingham NEC on Thursday (December 16)
The two cancelled dates have been rescheduled for January 11 (Cardiff) and January 12 (Glasgow). All original tickets remain valid.
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Post by Fuggle on Jan 8, 2007 10:36:17 GMT -5
Going for a song Nicky Wire on God Save the Queen by the Sex PistolsThe Sunday Times January 07, 2007 Up until I heard God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols, my musical life felt like a gigantic preamble. I saw the video on Old Grey Whistle Test in about 1984. It was the perfect distillation of all my wants and needs. It was glamorous, dangerous, political, angry and brutal. Musically, I had gone from Black Sabbath to the Smiths in three years, but this record and the accompanying film burnt a hole through my brain. The intellect of Johnny Rotten, the violence of Steve Jones’s guitar, Paul Cook’s perfect rock drumming and Sid Vicious’s stroppy, insolent coo l... The music was vivid, realised and concise. It was proper rock’n’roll. The indie kids seemed redundant. Rock’n’roll could be life-saving. The lyrics are simply unique: “When there’s no future/How can there be sin?/We’re the flowers in the dustbin/We’re the poison in your human machine/We’re the future, your future.” As I missed out on punk first time around, God Save the Queen felt like an important historical document: Magna Carta of rock’n’roll, it challenged all my preconceptions and stopped me listening to other records for months. Its glorious fade-out (“No future, no future”) became a soundtrack, a mantra and a philosophy for my life. When you are in a band, few things are perfect — the music, the words, the image, the artwork, the production — but this was. Nobody ever sounds like the Sex Pistols; they rock like no other punk band. Johnny’s lacerating vocals will never be repeated. A mixture of Albert Steptoe, Shakespeare’s Richard III and Iggy Pop, Johnny made the Sex Pistols truly original. Their venom and power remain undiminished. Nicky Wire is the bassist with the Manic Street Preachers
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Post by Fuggle on May 24, 2007 17:03:58 GMT -5
Manic Street Preachers - Send Away The TigersWe've written about 30 songs for this album...and these are the best ten songs. It's short...38 minutes. We began writing for the album in late 2005, and began recording in earnest in March 2006 with Dave Eringa. The album was recorded at Stir Studios in Cardiff and Grouse Lodge in County Westmeath in Ireland, finished in November 2006 and then mixed in California by Chris Lord-Alge (Green Day, My Chemical Romance). The Clash and the Sex Pistols are our biggest inspirations. We've denied it for a long time. But they are. And on this album, we've gone back to source. We never contemplated splitting. We didn't have a friction-based disaster because we're not those kind of people. Send Away The Tigers is a phrase the comedian Tony Hancock used whenever he started drinking. I saw a parallel between that line and the animals being released from the zoo in Baghdad when the Allies invaded.
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