Bright Eyes

Release date: 15/04/1996 | Length: 3:13 | Release: A Design for Life

Following the river of death downstream

God this song’s depressing. Art Garfunkel and Mike Batt’s song from the late 70s was written for the 1978 film Watership Down, a grimly mortal tale about rabbits. It fits the brief perfectly, don’t get me wrong, but I never want to actually listen to this song.

Richard Adams’ book (which I highly recommend) and subsequent cinematic adaptation scarred children due to its graphic depiction of death, so it’s only natural that a pivotal song on the soundtrack confronts this in a raw and blunt fashion. There are moments of poetic beauty in the song, namely the chorus: “Bright eyes, how can you close and fail”, but any song that refers to a ‘river of death’ needs a serious talking to.

The song was slow and dreary, so of course it went on to spend six weeks at number one in the UK and sell over a million copies.

You may have noticed that I’ve yet to mention the Manic Street Preachers on this entry about a Manic Street Preachers song, and that’s because as with most Manics covers, little exciting happens. Recorded live at the Astoria at the end of 1994, it was thrown on as a b-side to jukebox and cassette versions of A Design for Life.

The Manics’ gigs at the Astoria are infamous in the band’s history for being the final time that Richey Edwards played on stage, and for the group totalling their equipment in spectacular fashion. This wasn’t just a rock ‘n’ roll explosion, it was a human explosion. It may have felt thrilling watching it in the crowd, but the frenzy at which the band obliterated their guitars (and in Richey’s case, himself) was an image of a burn-out, not a triumph.

James Dean Bradfield took on Bright Eyes himself, and whilst he does little to alter the song, its sheer sparseness is remarkable. I wouldn’t call this ‘great’, but it’s a uneasy calm before the storm when you consider the intensity of their performances over the three days, and the self-destruction that would happen one night later.

Start Me Up

Release date: 10/10/14 | Length: 3:21 | Release: Sounds of the 80s | EMS: #296

You make a grown man cry

The Rolling Stones is hardly the first name that comes to mind when thinking about the 80s, though their top 10 swansong Start Me Up is at least one of their more recognisable tracks. I’m far from a Stones fan, but I imagine calling this one’s favourite song of theirs would be the same as someone thinking Owner of a Lonely Heart is the best song by Yes. The Manics have covered the Stones before in similar circumstances, contributing Out of Time for an NME-curated compilation album in 2002, but Start Me Up makes up the numbers on a pre-Christmas BBC Radio 2 double CD.

Unlike Out of Time though, this cover feels rather basic and rushed as if – god forbid – designed for a high-priced cash-in before the holidays. Whether the band chose this song or were handed it is a question I do not know the answer to, nor am I willing to go to the effort of finding out considering how un-noteworthy this song is. The main observation I can pick up is that the drumbeat is more mechanical on the Manics’ version, but when that’s the only thing to talk about, well…

It would’ve been a lot more interesting to see them take on a song outside their comfort zone, like Don’t Talk to Me About Love by The Altered Images, or Bruce Springsteen’s sublime Atlantic City. Instead, we have Texas and Ed Sheeran on duty with these songs. Texas quite literally share a band member with The Altered Images, and Sheeran’s take is far too clean and tryhard for such a harrowing song. It feels like all of these songs have been covered to pay tribute to the 80s icons rather than make the songs their own, and as I’ve explained elsewhere, seldom makes for interesting results.

Working Class Hero

Release date: 07/05/07 | Length: 2:47 | Release: Send Away the Tigers | EMS: #223

As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small

As Winterlovers comes to an end, you’re left wondering what to make of this Manic Street Preachers comeback album (well, a comeback in the sense that it was seen by many as a return to their swingeing anti-capitalist, punk roots, and after a brief hiatus for James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire’s solo records). But wait, there’s more! Only a few seconds after the final track pulls up, more sounds are made! What joy!

The main godsend about the band’s cover of John Lennon’s Working Class Hero is that we didn’t have to sit through minutes of silence to reach it, as is often the fashion for hidden tracks on CDs. It very rarely justifies itself, but as this isn’t the case, I shan’t waste words lamenting this practice.

To try and claim that the Manics cover is greater seems a little fruitless, seeing as how Lennon’s original composition has such a subtly scathing anger to it, something that’s impossible to match. His legend and character is woven into the song’s DNA, so for a version to trump the 1970 song it’d have to utterly deconstruct and reimagine it. I’ve got more thoughts about what a cover should do, but that’s for another day.

The Manics’ version adds a bit of grit and aggression to the music, and whilst it’s played electrically, it doesn’t have the rock factor that dominated Send Away the Tigers. Each verse throws in a seemingly improv riff, creating quite a DIY sheen to things, as if this did just conjure out of a play around in the room. It’s also a minute shorter; the Manics clearly in a rush to leave the studio.

James’ drawl suits the song, almost as if he’s spitting in disgust as he reels off lines about the putting down of the ‘lower’ class of society: “They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool”. The background of the band and what they stood makes Working Class Hero a perfect bedfellow, but my question is why was it cast aside as a hidden track? Too good for a b-side, but not good enough for its own track number? It’s a strange halfway house, and gives the impression that they didn’t know what to do with it themselves. It would’ve been a lot more interesting had they the guts to shove it right after The Second Great Depression and say, ‘Hey, we’ve just covered one of the greatest songwriter’s greatest tracks, listen to it’. But instead it exists in a weird purgatory, to be forgotten almost. Ho-hum.

Damn Dog

Release date: 10/02/92 | Length: 1:52 | Release: Generation Terrorists | EMS: #200

Feed me, feed me, can’t you hear me howl

There’s something to savour about a sub- two minute song on an album that stretches well over an hour long, and it’s one of two reasons that makes Damn Dog such an oddity. The other is the fact that it’s a cover. Typically Manics covers have been left in the shadow of big singles (Australia alone had three covers on its CD release), or tucked right away at the back of albums after a period of silence (We Are All Bourgeois Now from Know Your Enemy), but Damn Dog sits peacefully as track 15/18 on Generation Terrorists.

For any other band, this would have been an unusual choice for a cover. The song, an original from the 1980 movie Times Square, very much ties in with the ethos that the Manics were projecting at this time. It’s glam and slightly effeminate, though the cover bludgeons this by upping the tempo and coming across as more punk than glam rock. One can imagine a young Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards watching the film with awe and a minor glint in their eyes, as they even went so far as to include quotes in the packaging of the album.

It feels more like a Queen song, something that would be found from their 1977 LP News of the World. It’s straight-forward rock and roll and the lyrics evoke the animalistic energy that Freddie Mercury exuded during his live performances, and unlike so much of the material on Generation Terrorists, there’s no convoluted second-meaning to the song. It’s simply a rather primitive song of primal passion: ‘Got a taste for flesh, Got a taste for danger.’

It’s unfair to single out this song as a reason as to why Generation Terrorists can feel so unbalanced, as bluntly put, there are worse songs from the album. Damn Dog at least does something different, and axing a two-minute song from a 73-minute album isn’t going to make any difference at all. It’s fun, and holds a strong bond to the influences of the Manics that would later be referenced on Roses in the Hospital, and for that it deserves a slight nod of appreciation. That said, it’s no surprise that the song hasn’t seen the light of day since 1992.