Nicky Wire strikes back. Again.
Manic Street Preachers' Nicky Wire has struck the latest blow in a war of words with Radiohead's Ed O'Brien over their diametrically opposed views on file sharing. The row began in late 2007 when Wire claimed Radiohead's pay-what-you-want policy for that year's In Rainbows "demeans music". O'Brien hit back saying Wire was talking "bollocks", only for Wire to call him a "cunt" onstage at Glasgow's King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in February.
The bassist is now taking the argument to the next Manic Street Preachers album, Postcards From A Young Man. One track, All We Make Is Entertainment, bemoans industrial decline in Britain, tying the collapse of heavy industry in the '80s to the parlous state of today's music industry.
"It's saying that all we make is entertainment and we're even trying to destroy that, to give it away, piss it away and degrade it down to nothing," says Wire. "It's the quintessential British thing to do."
As for his spat with O'Brien, Wire says, "It's all the fun of the fair that, but if he fancies cracking me one, fair enough. The piousness of millionaire rock stars never ceases to amaze me. It's pointless pretending I believe that file sharing enhances your career because I don't, and when the message comes from multi-millionaires who sold all their records in the '90s, I find it deeply upsetting. Everyone's realising that this miraculous idea, that you give music to people and it lets you tour, is bullshit"
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