8 Celebrities Who Fraternised With Dictators

By Allan Johnstone / February 3, 2014

3. The Manic Street Preachers and Fidel Castro

The Dictator: Fidel Castro, notorious trillion dollar note thief The Celebrities: Welsh rock iconoclasts the Manic Street Preachers The Friendship: At first, this one makes sense. The Manics have always couched socialist lyrics in stadium rock theatrics, and given Cubas own political alignment- apparently theyre all Communists over there- it does make sense that the band would play to a sold out crowd in Havanas Karl Marx Stadium in 2001, and even meet President Castro before the gig.

Exceptthings werent quite that straightforward. Cuba does, of course, have its own rich musical heritage, in no small part due to the suppression of Western pop culture on the island. This means that apart from a small hardcore of fans, Blackwoods finest were completely unknown, and probably not much to the taste of the aged party officials who kept a close eye on proceedings. Nonetheless, the band considered the gig an honour and documented it on their Louder Than War DVD- so named after Castro questioned, in amusingly dismissive fashion, just how loud the band could possibly be.

El Caballo himself has something of the aura of a rock star, but is not known for a love of music, preferring cigars, women and dodging CIA assassination attempts. While most politicians jump at the chance of burnishing their youth credentials by appearing with trendy rockers, its likely that the Manics gained more from this typically bombastic gesture than Castro did.