Generation Terrorists

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Generation Terrorists
Studio album by Manic Street Preachers
Released	10 February 1992
Recorded	Blackbarn Studios, August-December 1991
Genre	Alternative rock, hard rock, glam punk
Length	73:11
Label	Columbia, 4710602 (CD)
Producer	Steve Brown
Professional reviews
Allmusic link Q [citation needed] Tiny Mix Tapes link Insidersguides.net (8/10) link
Manic Street Preachers chronology
Generation Terrorists (1992) Gold Against the Soul (1993)

Generation Terrorists is the debut album by Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers, released on 10 February 1992, and produced by Steve Brown.

It was recorded by tracking (the band recorded each instrument separately rather than playing it as a live band and then adding the overdubs later) over a period of 23 weeks at Blackbarn Studios, near Guildford, England. Despite the whole band being credited in the album notes, vocalist James Dean Bradfield played all guitars and bass on the album.

To avoid controversy in the U.S., the track list was changed and some of the more "difficult" tracks were dropped. The album was released in its full, uncensored form everywhere else.

All lyrics were written by Nicky Wire (real name Nicholas Jones) and Richey James Edwards. All music was written by James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore (except "Damn Dog", which is a cover version of a song by the Sleez Sisters from the 1980 movie Times Square).

The album's lyrics are politicised like that of The Clash and Public Enemy.^{[citation needed]} Wire and Edwards' love of poetry is also evident in their lyrics. The track "Repeat (Stars And Stripes)" is a remix of the band's own anti-monarchy tirade by Public Enemy production team The Bomb Squad of whom Bradfield and Edwards were big fans.

The cover was originally intended to be Andres Serrano's Pisschrist, a Jesus figure inside a tank of blood and urine, but Sony wanted to avoid any religious controversy; also, the royalty demanded for the piece was deemed excessive. Other ideas were the Bert Stern Marilyn Monroe photographs, a sandpaper sleeve that would scratch the album itself as well as anything else that it was shelved by (an old Situationist prank, this idea was used by Guy Debord for his first book Memoires and by The Durutti Column for their first album The Return of the Durutti Column), as well as several other famous religious paintings.

The final front cover of the album was a picture of Edwards' left arm and chest. The arm had a tattoo of a rose with the words "USELESS GENERATION" underneath, which was changed to "GENERATION TERRORISTS". This was not without problems, as the original pressing had made Edwards' flesh to be bright pink as opposed to the intended mustard. The back featured a design similar to their earlier New Art Riot EP cover, an EC Flag, though this time it was crumpled and in flames.

Quotations

The album sleeve featured quotations from various literary figures that were considered relevant to particular songs:

• "Slash 'N' Burn" - "Progress is a comfortable disease." ~ E.E. Cummings

• "Born to End" - "O witches, O misery, O hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted! I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the strength of a wild beast. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand, misfortune was my God." ~ Arthur Rimbaud

• "Motorcycle Emptiness" - "I Talk to God but the Sky is Empty." ~ Sylvia Plath

• "You Love Us" - "Regard all art critics as useless and dangerous." ~ Manifesto of the Futurists

• "Love's Sweet Exile" - "Modern capitalism, organising the reduction of all social life to a spectacle, cannot offer any spectacle other than that of our own alienation." ~ Attila Kotanyi and Raoul Vaneigem

• "Little Baby Nothing" - "The male chromosome is an incomplete female chromosome. In other words the male is a walking abortion; aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples." ~ Valerie Solanas

• "Repeat (Stars and Stripes)" - "Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me. Most of my heroes ain't appeared on no stamp." ~ Chuck D

• "Tennessee" - "You said you wanted to put us upon a reservation, to build us houses and make us medicine lodges. I was born where there were no enclosures and everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls." ~ Chief Ten Bears of the Comanche at the Council of Medicine Lodge Creek

• "Another Invented Disease" - "In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land." ~ Albert Camus

• "Stay Beautiful" - "I saw some piglets sucking their dead mother. After a short while they shuddered and went away. They had sensed that she could no longer see them and that she wasn't like them any more. What they loved in their mother wasn't her body, but whatever it was that made her body live." ~ Confucius

• "So Dead" - "Deprive man of his life lie and you rob him of his happiness." ~ Henrik Ibsen

• "Repeat (UK)" - "The party is not concerned with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, providing that the hierarchical structure remains always the same." ~ George Orwell

• "Spectators Of Suicide" - "The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition." ~ Henry Miller

• "Damn Dog" - "This one's for Brian Jones and all the other dinosaurs that got kicked out tha' band. 1-2-3-4." ~ Sleez Sisters

• "Crucifix Kiss" – It was Christianity which first painted the devil on the world's wall; It was Christianity which first brought sin into the world. Belief in the cure which it offered has now been shaken to it's [sic] deepest roots; but belief in the sickness which it taught and propogated [sic] continues to exist." – Friedrich Nietzsche

• "Methadone Pretty" – "Junk is the ideal product. The ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He degrades and simplifies the client." – William Burroughs

• "Condemned to Rock 'N' Roll" – "To all who pass that they may see, Rock 'N' Roll was a part of me." – Nik Cohn

UK track listing

1. "Slash 'N' Burn" – 3:59
2. "Nat West–Barclays–Midlands–Lloyds" – 4:32
3. "Born to End" – 3:55
4. "Motorcycle Emptiness" – 6:08
5. "You Love Us" – 4:18
6. "Love's Sweet Exile" - 3:29
7. "Little Baby Nothing" – 4:59
8. "Repeat (Stars and Stripes)" – 4:09
9. "Tennessee" – 3:06
10. "Another Invented Disease" – 3:24
11. "Stay Beautiful" – 3:10
12. "So Dead" – 4:28
13. "Repeat (UK)" – 3:09
14. "Spectators Of Suicide" – 4:40
15. "Damn Dog" (music by Jacob Brackman/Billy Mernit) – 1:52
16. "Crucifix Kiss" – 3:39
17. "Methadone Pretty" – 3:57
18. "Condemned to Rock 'N' Roll" – 6:06

NOTE: The song "A Vision Of Dead Desire" is track 19 on the Japanese version of the album.

US track listing

1. "Slash 'N' Burn"
2. "Natwest – Barclays – Midlands – Lloyds"
3. "Love's Sweet Exile"
4. "Little Baby Nothing"
5. "Another Invented Disease"
6. "Stay Beautiful"
7. "Repeat (UK)"
8. "You Love Us"
9. "Democracy Coma"
10. "Crucifix Kiss"
11. "Motorcycle Emptiness"
12. "Tennessee"
13. "Repeat (Stars and Stripes)"
14. "Condemned to Rock 'N' Roll"

Personnel

• James Dean Bradfield – vocals, guitars
• Sean Moore – drums, percussion, backing vocals
• Richey James – guitar
• Nicky Wire – bass

Additional

• Dave Eringa – piano, organ (tracks 2, 5, 14, 16)
• Traci Lords – vocals (track 7)
• Richard Cottle – keyboards (track 4)
• Spike Edney – keyboards (track 7)
• May McKenna, Jackie Challenor, Lorenza Johnson – backing vocals (track 10)

Trivia

The working title of this album was Culture, Alienation, Boredom & Despair (a lyric from the song "Little Baby Nothing").

External links

• Album review, at TinyMixTapes