Manics On New Football Single

Manic Street Preachers have been talking to Simon Price for The Quietus about their football anthem 'Together Stronger (C'mon Wales)', written to celebrate their national team's historic success in qualifying for this summer's Euro 2016 championships in France

“I think Nick, back in Sparky's (former Wales manager Mark Hughes) tenureship, started the lyric then,” singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield explains. “I went to lots of those games, and I remember going to the San Siro game in 2003 when we lost 4-0 to Italy, which was just a terrible day for more reasons than one (Italian fans infamously rained bottles, coins and urine down onto the heads of Wales supporters). And that lyric bit the dust, and so did the plan to write the song. But we always had that ambition.”

“It had been around for a while,” bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire confirms. “Not fully-formed, but I'd always had the genesis of a lyric which went through all the fucking tragedy of being a Welsh football fan, the play-off cock-ups, and so on. I was actually there that night in Ninian Park in 1986, against Scotland, when we could have qualified for the World Cup, and Davie Cooper got a dodgy penalty, and (Scotland manager) Jock Stein had a heart attack and later died. And the Paul Bodin penalty miss (against Romania in 1994, ending Wales' hopes of qualifying for that year's World Cup). And losing to Russia in 2003. So all that stuff was there, but I didn't write it down this time until we'd qualified. And the basis of the song was to have a sort of Send Away The Tigers/Postcards From A Young Man anthemic feel, and if it's not good enough to be on one of those albums, let's not do it. So we didn't even tell anyone at first. We just did the song, before even being in contact with the FAW.”

The Manics have a long-standing affinity for the overlaps between music and sport. “I always got a thrill when 'Australia' was used on the Nationwide League's goal round-ups for three or four years,” James admits, “or when (Bradfield solo single) 'That's No Way To Tell A Lie' was used on Match Of The Day's Goal Of The Month for two or three years. I always loved that. Also, I've always loved sports themes: there are loads of sports themes from the Seventies and Eighties which have got a bit of a Krautrock element to them. 'Chaseside Shoot-up', for example, the old golf theme by Brian Bennett, is fucking brilliant. So this is just one of those little Manic holidays where we thought we could do something good for it. I went to four of the qualification games, and we're all big sport heads, so to not celebrate something like that would have been churlish. Game on! Let's do it!”