3 Ways To See Despair

"It’s just fucking sludge rock, isn’t it? When we were playing it we thought, 'This could be on This Is My Truth…' It’s got that fucking misery beat, as we call it; [it's] a suicide ballad. We wanted to do something like The White Album produced by Steve Albini, we were looking for those big drums. I was looking at the pictures of Stuart Adamson, and it’s not specifically just about Stuart, just the idea of, 'How could things go so wrong?' How could something so beautiful and talented eat itself up with anxiety and self-doubt, and can you ever fucking stop it? Which you probably can’t. There’s a lot of Elliot Smith [in this], [in the] way he mixes Black Sabbath and The Beatles, I think only he can do that. There’s also the exhaustion of being in Manic Street Preachers, that line, 'I’m as tired as John Lennon sang'. I think ‘I’m So Tired’ by John Lennon is the perfect example of just being fucked, just that White Album haze. Lennon was incredibly intelligent, but he could distill that, and that’s the fucking hardest thing on Earth to do. You’re shutting down a little bit, you realise you have to be economical. That’s the miracle of ‘Tolerate...’, we didn’t shut down at all - we got a million words in and still managed to have a huge hit. It’s a rare beast. We always get that accusation of being clunky, but I’m glad we are. When it works, on a track like ‘Yes’, it’s better than some fuck-wit on the front of the stage banging a floor tom and shouting 'Woah', like every fucking band does now. There’s nothing more irksome than that, 'Oh look, another fucking floor tom.' It’s become this moment of rapture, the crowd want it right from the first get go."

-Nicky Wire