9 Times Manic Street Preachers Proved They Were The Most Exciting Band On The Planet
7. They Hung Out With Fidel Castro
After guitarist Richey Edwards' disappearance in early 1995, the Manics seemed to lose some of their desire to be controversial. The sloganeering was still there, as was the band's eye for a great interview sound bite, but some of the grandstanding left when Richey did. But in 2001, they pulled off a stunt that would generate headlines around the world, and see them accused of cosying up with a dictator.
Nowadays, Cuba has been rehabilitated and is slowly being accepted back into the international fold. But at the turn of the century, it was a pariah state, and its leader Fidel Castro an outcast. So the band's decision to be the first popular western rock band to play there was not greeted positively by all.
Most of the criticism aimed at them centred on Cuba's poor human rights record, but some asked who really benefitted from the gig - the people of Cuba, as the Manics claimed, or the band themselves? The concert was staged at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana, and the audience was largely made up of people who had never heard any Manics songs.
Beforehand, they met Castro and warned him that the concert was going to be very loud. In a response that spawned the title of the concert DVD, Castro memorably replied by saying: "It cannot be louder than war, can it?" He would know, after all.