The summer festival season is very much about the adventure of youth, as teenagers escape from parents and home comforts for a few days to develop a little independence. For those of us in our 30s, however, it comes as something of a shock to realize that one of this year's Fuji Rock Festival headliners, the Manic Street Preachers, have now been doing the rounds for more than a decade. Was it really that long ago that four belligerent, sloganeering, raw young Welshmen blazed a trail of teenage rebellion through the London music/media circus, with their debut album, the punk-fueled "Generation Terrorists," in tow?
Since then, of course, plenty has happened: five more albums, the mysterious and tragic disappearance of the band's angst-ridden figurehead, Richey Edwards, which, oddly enough, seemed to act as a catalyst for the band's commercial success, culminating in their triumphant homecoming gig in front of 80,000 fans at Cardiff's Millennium stadium, on the eve of the millennium. And then the wheels came loose . . .
I hooked up with Manics' frontman/guitarist, James Dean Bradfield, in Cologne en route to an appearance at the Pink Pop Festival in Holland. Soft-spoken and unassuming, Bradfield explains the burnout on the back of success.