Manics and Tsunami

Great news that the Manic Street Preachers are now to play the Millennium Stadium Tsunami Relief gig. And highly appropriate too, given that they are the only band I've ever heard who have recorded a track called Tsunami. It's on the This is my truth tell me yours album. The album title is a quote from Nye Bevan, and also features the song If you tolerate this, then your children will be next, which was of course an anti-fascist slogan from the Spanish Civil War. That song features a line from a miner who fought in Spain which is recorded in Hywel Francis M.P.'s book Miners Against Fascism: 'if I can shoot rabbits, then I can shoot fascists'. In Wales, some people seem only to cheer the Manics on because they are Welsh -people should remember notonly are they Welsh but they are also one of the most intelligent and culturally rich bands around.

I've been fortunate enough to see the Manics play the Millennium Stadium before - on Millennium night of course. Their latest album, Lifeblood, has been played to death on my car CD-player. It has one of the most extraordinary rock-songs ever written, The Love of Richard Nixon. Something of a contrast to Let Paul Robeson Sing from their Know Your Enemy album! Nicky Wire explains it:

"To release that as a single obviously gives us a bit of glee," says bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire. "I'm attracted by egotistical, megalomaniac, paranoid people. There's a sample on the record where Nixon says, 'I have never been a quitter.' I feel a bit of empathy with that. It's the idea of the ugly duckling. Radiohead are Kennedy, Manic Street Preachers are Nixon."

Well, I'm fascinated by Watergate. It is the greatest political conspiracy and gave rise to the greatest political thriller, All the President's Men. And Nixon is a weirdly fascinating character himself: when I think of him I see a grisly grin. But you can't forget: he was a crook. And he and Kissinger were actively involved in undermining Allende in Chile, in escalating the Vietnam war etc, etc, etc. Then there was his active engagement in McCarthyism and red-baiting.

But it is an extraordinary song. Nicky Wire has captured the contradictions of Nixon in 3 minutes. As the song says, it's "Richard III in the White House". The parallels of Tricky Dicky and Shakespeare's Richard come to us because of Nixon's overt plotting and public ambition, captured in the notorious Watergate tapes and the diaries of his Chief of Staff Haldeman. He is the misfit who becomes President. It is like witnessing a Richard III soliliquoy. Shakespeare's 'dissembler' sets out his ambition from the famous opening 'Now is the winter of our discontent' speech. A misfit who is 'so lamely and unfashionable/That dogs bark at me as I halt by them', someone whose 'tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word', and who is 'determined to prove a villain'.