WHEN THE MANICS MET FIDEL CASTRO
FIDEL Castro was not your typical rock ’n’ roller. It’s unlikely he attended many gigs during a lifetime as Cuba’s president. But when the Manic Street Preachers arrived in Cuba in 2001, to become the first Western band to play there in more than 20 years, he joined the crowds for the hour-long set at the Teatro Karl Marx. The venue was more used to political rallies.
The 74-year-old was joined for the night by Cuba’s long-haired culture minister Abel Prieto, a poet. They took their seats alongside 5,000 other fans of the Blackwood band at the invitation-only event. He stayed seated for the set but got up for an ovation to an acoustic version of the song Baby Elian.
The reason was clear. The tune is an anti-American tribute to Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old who in 2000 was caught in a seven-month tug of war between Havana and relatives in the US.
It dubs the US “the devil’s playground” and says Elian was “kidnapped to the promised land”. He is now a student who lives in the island’s city of Cardenas.
The band also dedicated a song to three-time Cuban Olympic boxing champ Felix Savon.
Before the show – held in front of a giant Cuban flag, with tickets 17p – Castro went backstage for a chat.
The Manics called this “the greatest honour” of their lives. The Daily Mail reported they were “very nervous” about this.
The 90-minute performance was a chance for the Manics to show their disdain for globalisation.
“Cuba is an example that everything doesn’t have to be Americanised,” said singer James Dean Bradfield at the time.
Nicky Wire was adamant the visit was “not like a student Che Guevara sort of thing”.
“Cuba for me is the last great symbol that really fights against the Americanisation of the world,” he said.
But Havana had long held a dim view of pop culture. To the government it was little more than a decadent indulgence. It had been that way since 1959’s Cuban Revolution.
Many Cubans were harassed for having long hair or listening to rock and pop from Europe and America.
Gil Pla, the singer with local rockers Joker, was at the concert.
He said on the night: “That the president of the island comes to this concert is truly a revolution.
“For a long time we were catalogued as anti-socials, but this shows that now we are OK, they have realised that rock is culture too.”
Before the Manics arrived, the last Westerners to play had been Billy Joel and Kris Kristofferson in 1979. This year the Rolling Stones played there.
“Had the strangest of dreams last night – I was playing a free gig in Havana, Cuba, at the Karl Marx Theatre 15 years ago!” the Manics tweeted.
The Manics’ visit, documented in the band’s Louder Than War DVD, would not have happened without Neath MP Peter Hain.
A fan of the group, he met them during the campaign for a Welsh assembly. He used his contacts to convince the Cubans they had left-wing cred.
The band got in touch with him when he was at the Foreign Office and asked if he could help set something up.
Mr Hain paid tribute to Castro, who died yesterday aged 90.
“Although responsible for indefensible human rights and free speech abuses, Castro created a society of unparalleled access to free health, education and equal opportunity, despite an economically throttling USA siege,” he said.
“His troops inflicted the first defeat on South Africa’s troops in Angola in 1988, a vital turning point in the struggle against apartheid.”