Interview with James Bradfield

It is a strange feeling interviewing a friend and 5 minutes into the conversation we both burst out laughing at the awkward tone of my questions and the over sincere message of James' answers.  Soon forgotten though as James announces

"Right, I'm talking to the journalist now not you"

and with that I know my place!

As with politicians i must declare a vested interest - as i have known James Dean Bradfield for nearly 20 years, first met him in a local barbers where there was only one haircut on offer, listened to him play guitar up a mountain, in a burnt out shed and pestered him to teach me the chords to "Freebird" by Lynnrd Skynnrd.  So i have watched him and the band grow from scowling glam hate rockers to considered poets of the human condition.  It is a good time to catch up and chat with this 30 something soft spoken Ryan Giggs lookalike who i would choose as one of my guitar heroes alongside Alex Lifeson and Randy Rhoades - which is where we begin - where many adolescent ungirlfriended young men begin - guitars and heroes.

"I suppose the 2 people who meant the most to me, who inspired me, who made me believe it was possible to say something with a guitar were Billy Bragg and The (4 people) - they gave me a sense that i could do it - and after being the kid in school picked last for football teams it meant a lot to me and i started busking and writing songs with Nick and believing in the band we were to become."  James elucidated "and today i feel that Fame Academy and Pop Idol encourage fame and legitimise fame as an end as a job and any band with something to say artistically, spiritually or politically will make their own rules, use their own language to express what they want to say whereas all those performers work to a formula, a set of rules - i always feel it's better to be self taught."

In a time when George Bush is struggling to find his weapons of mass destruction I venture to ask if the guitar, the pen, the paintbrush, the stage can change the world, can become weapons of mass construction?

"I think the targets have changed - like in 1988 the targets were easily defined - we hated Thatcher, Major, all tories in fact, The Royals and factory bosses and we wrote songs that addressed those issues and attacked our targets - I always felt as if it was US and THEM.  Yet today, it seems a lot greyer - a lot less defined into the good and bad guys - maybe its age and being more considered or in reality the targets, issues etc. have blurred into a vast morass."

"Where are the great works of art today?  Anything revolutionary is either silenced or bought by the establishment."  I pose to James, "Where"s Orwell, Camus, Picasso, Rothko.  Ginsberg?" "All we get is a light being switched on and off."

"Yeah, i know - as a band we wanted to be revolutionary but as you get older i think it's more about finding those moments of clarity, personal revelations when confronted with a book, a play, a song or a painting."

"Any recent moments of clarity?"

"I saw a film by Gus Van Sant "Elephant" which is based on the Columbine massacre and i just thought it was a brilliant artistic statement - it hit me, provoked me and made me think in a different way. Another film was La Haine.  Musically, I would say the Public Enemy album, "It takes a nation of millions to hold us back" was the last thing that did that to me.  I'm so sick of all these American bands' obsession with high school anger and boredom - you just get Slipknot and the rest going ... "The world is shit shit shit" - nothing changes, nothing is questioned.  There is no universal truth in the music."  James passionately defends his beliefs as we move on to The Manic Street Preachers and how their next album has developed.

"I just think we've realised that we love melody and that all the best songs we've ever written and those that we have listened to are just great pieces of music and so with this album, we've embraced it and made a sort of elegiac pop record - of course the guitars are still there.  There's a song called "Solitude sometimes is" which has this beautiful freeflow to it and another track, "1985" conjures up so many images of aftermath, of the miner's strike of personal memories and societal struggles - a great lyric by Nick and i just felt i had to do it justice with the music.  Then, there's "The love of Richard Nixon" which was sort of inspired by Bowie's "This is not America".  And Nick is always developing as a writer and finding new images, new ways of saying so it's been an exciting time and i really enjoyed just being in the studio, creating.

"I'm just inspired by great poetry, great words and have to reflect that greatness in the music.

"As a band, i think, we seem more at ease with ourselves, with each other, with the music and also, with Richey and how we remember him and what he meant to us and we feel we do it in the right way in the human way as Nick does in the words to "Cardiff Afterlife".

"And yet I kept my silence and the memories are still mine"

"In the cardiff afterlife we sensed the breaking of our lives"

James is a bit of a workaholic and when he's not creating riffs and melodies for the band he's producing or collaborating with others.

"Yeah, sometimes it works sometimes not - i loved working with Kylie, with Tom Jones, with 808 State and producing a young band Northern Uproar - again, i love creating and being in a studio with a guitar is just my ideal place."  I have press ganged James into a few collaborations and to put the record straight - it's not because he's a rock star or a mate it's because i genuinely love and respect his work and always felt as if i wrote in a similar way to how he played guitar.

"Yes, I did the music for Unprotected Sex in about 4 days and the same for The War is Dead, Long live the War and just sort of bounce off the script and certain words drive the sounds and atmosphere to create the sounds but i enjoy doing soundtrack as i don't have to worry about putting the words in so its a nice bit of freedom except i have to work with you."

Just banter as David Brent would say - he loves me really!

Moving on to belonging and a sense of place, James spends a lot more time in Wales these days;

"I feel as if my Welshness is personal and started off with a sense of awareness and always being aware of something happening - something political, something dangerous something to think about i suppose as i said a sort of US against THEM attitude which has fed my mind since an early age.  I have always felt very engaged in the political and environmental landscape of Wales and as a kid dreamt of working with the Forestry Commission and just being by myself off in the forests and then getting older and feeling there was a real need to think about politics and how it related to your own life.

"Patriotic?" i ask

"Really, on with sport - i feel very passionately about Welsh sport, especially Rugby and i just cannot believe our apathy with regards our national sport - i just cannot understand how people can smile at the camera after we have lost convincingly - it is sometimes just an excuse to get pissed, put funny hats on and paint your face - At the moment it doesn't seem that losing hits us hard enough."

I asked him about his Welsh heroes;

"R.S Thomas, Carwyn James, Pete Ham from the band Badfinger, Rachel Roberts the actress and John Cale (another collaborator with the film Beautiful Mistake) as i admire how he did his own thing and is still finding new directions for his music - i like that."

I finish on a sort of desert island discs type question asking "if you had only one bookshelf that could last you forever what would you put on it?"

After a considered pause: "My Napoleon biography by Frank Mclynn, Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus, Lonesome Traveller by Jack Kerouac, The keys to my neighbours' House by Elizabeth Neuffer, a statue of the Arms Park made from the debris from the Arms Park, given to me by my mother and father ......... and a photo of my mam and dad getting married - yeah, that's it."

I thank him for his time, remind him to turn up at Hay for our talk and say good bye.

The angry young lad who used to play guitar in my dad's shed has grown into a thoughtful, sensitive, still angry (more focussed though!!) man .... revolutionary ... I know who I'd pick to have on my team.