GIFT OF A PIANO SPARKS ALBUM
MANIC Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield has revealed how his 105-year-old neighbour inspired the band’s latest album.
The singer told of how his family were gifted with a piano from the elderly woman shortly before she moved into a care home prior to lockdown kicking in early last year.
The 52-year-old Blackwood rocker added that it was on that instrument that he’d ended up composing the Manics’ upcoming 14th studio record, The Ultra Vivid Lament.
“It seemed like fate, getting that piano when we did,” said Bradfield. “The lady’s a friend of my wife’s and gifted us with it shortly before moving away – it’s a lovely upright piano from Leipzig (in Germany). Actually, I think it’s around a hundred years old too.
“I ended up playing it all throughout lockdown, learning as I went. Once I had enough chords under my belt to bang out a tune, I started writing my own songs on it.”
He explained that tracks like the recent single Orwellian came about as a direct result of the pensioner’s donation, making the LP the first the band has ever initially conceived on piano rather than guitar.
Bradfield added that the Manics were looking forward to playing live again soon after 18 months of Covid restrictions.
“Not performing is frustrating, like being stuck on the subs bench with no chance of a game in sight. So I’m glad that finally seems so be changing.”
And, on a more personal level, the pandemic has also proved difficult: “I’ve got a five-year-old and a nine-year-old, and seeing little cracks appear in them every now and again was hard.
“They didn’t understand what was going on 100% of the time, and it was tough trying to explain lockdown and why we couldn’t pop down to the park whenever we felt like.”
As a result, Bradfield said he turned his back garden into “a gladiator arena” and “let the kids kick the s*** out of me”.
“We’d do football, rugby and basketball – I’d get properly beaten up,” he laughed.
The Ultra Vivid Lament by Manic Street Preachers is out on September 10 and the band play two soldout shows for the NHS at Cardiff’s Motorpoint on Sunday, September 19, and Monday, September 20.