In their early years, Manic Street Preachers were not afraid to put a few noses out of joint. Memorably, while making their debut performance at Glastonbury Festival in 1994, bassist Nicky Wire suggested that urban planners should "build some more fucking bypasses over this shithole." Guitarist Richey Edwards, meanwhile, suggested in 1991 that he hated shoegaze pioneers Slowdive "more than Hitler". The following year, onstage at the Kilburn National in London, Wire told the audience “I hope Michael Stipe goes the same way as Freddie Mercury”, a savage comment which the Welshman later deeply regretted, even if he did at times try to suggest he was making a point about how the lives (and deaths) of 'celebrities' should not be venerated above those of 'regular people.
"If we’d wished for the immediate death of Prince Edward, John Major or Margaret Thatcher, would you have been offended?" the bassist asked a journalist from the now defunct UK music weekly Melody Maker. "Or would you have laughed?"
The 'outrage' inspired by these incidents, in truth, remained largely confined to the pages of Britain's music papers, though when the band were given a platform to put their music before a mainstream audience with a 1994 appearance on Top Of The Pops, they learned that horrifying the nation wasn't exactly difficult.
