Evil (Is Going On) cover

Evil (Is Going On) is coming out next weekend on White's Third Man Records. Only 100 copies of the 'tri-coloured' seven inch will be available to purchase, all through Cardiff's Spillers Records.

Spillers, reputed to be the oldest record shop in the world, will only have one day to sell the record, but I'm sure that'll be more than enough for all the copies to shift.

Speaking to The Western Mail's Dave Owens, Spillers owner Ashli Todd said: "The first we heard of the release was one of our Twitter followers suggested to Third Man Records on Twitter that Spillers should get the honour of selling the exclusive version of Tom's new single.

"A few weeks passed and Forte, who are the distributor for Third Man's releases here in the UK, sent me an email to say that they had proposed Spillers for the exclusive. We were sworn to secrecy as the logistics of us stocking the release were batted back and forth."

It was worth the wait for Ashli, though. "In terms of interest, it's been quite overwhelming. We've had people from all over the country ringing up about the release and even an email from a man who is coming over from Italy to get a copy."

Evil (Is Going On) goes on sale on Saturday 3 March, priced £15. Spillers opens at 9.30am, and is located at 31 Morgan Arcade in Cardiff.

A further 50 copies of the tri-coloured single will be randomly inserted into orders from the Third Man website.

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Gavin Butler and Neil Starr

Ghosts & Echoes, an acoustic 10 track record by Gavin Butler of The Blackout and Neil Starr of Attack! Attack!, will be released on 1 April.

I caught up with the duo prior to the recording, to find out more about this self-released album.

"I'd had songs written for The Blackout's album Hope that didn't really sit with the vibe of the album," says Gavin. "So I took them on the road with with Neil's other, first, band Dopamine in December. I had a great time playing them, it was so a new and challenging for me. I thought it's pointless having these songs and shelving them. Then Neil asked if I wanted to to a split and I thought, why not, I've literally got nothing to lose."

Neil: "For me the idea came about after Dopamine had Gavin come on tour with us in December. I've written songs in the past which i deemed 'not right' for Dopamine or Attack! Attack! and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity for us both to get a release out, not having enough songs on our own to release albums on our own yet.

"Gav and I have been mates for years and years. I got to hear his stuff for four nights in a row on the Dopamine December tour and loved it. I dropped him a text in the new year and said would he be up for it and he was. It was lucky we could work it out with the busy schedules of our bands!"

Gavin Butler

How would the men describe their own sides? Gavin is influenced by Britpop royalty: "I'm not the most technical of guitarists, so I rely a lot on simple but interesting chords. One of my favourite song writers is Noel Gallagher and I think he's been a big influence on me.

"Wonderwall is one of the most uncomplicated songs ever written yet one of the biggest and best. There's a beauty in simplicity. That is until I learn how to shred then it's all about tapping and acoustic pinched harmonics."

"My side are songs which were written on acoustic guitar and therefore have a much more laid-back feel," says Neil. "There is a lot more emphasis on the melody and lyrics rather than the music behind it . A lot of my stuff is a finger picked style."

And how would they describe the other side? "Neil has one the best voices in the 'biz'," says Gavin. "He took an old The Blackout song which was pretty metal-ish and totally reworked it into an amazing acoustic song."

Neil Starr

"Gavin's songs are more focused on the strumming then the picking but again are all acoustic based tracks," says Neil. "I think the two sides will blend together nicely. We are recording them with [Dopamine and Straight Lines member] Todd Campbell at the same studio so that'll help with the overall feel too.

What are the mechanics of the release of Ghosts & Echoes?

"It's the epitome of DIY," reckons Gavin. "Self-funded, self-released; I even did the artwork. We're kind of lucky that the Internet can provide a ridiculous platform for us. If it was 10 years ago we'd need distribution and labels to get CDs into shops. Now we can sell and ship a CD to anyone in the world on our own."

Neil agrees, and embraces the self-reliance necessary in a release like this. "We are funding it on our own, we are recording it on our own and we will be the ones sat around my dining room table packing and posting them off after we have signed them.

"We are only pressing 1,000 CDs so it'll be limited edition from that point of view. With the power of social networking sites we can easily reach out worldwide: we have already received orders from all over the world. It's great!"

The duo have an eight date tour in support of the release in April, so what should people expect to see when they appear live? Any duets?

"We might do a sneaky collaboration, who knows?" says Neil. "The tour is still in its early stages of preparation but i know I will be doing some Dopamine and Attack! Attack! songs in my set too."

Gavin: "On the last Dopamine tour Neil and I did the cover of The Blackout song You And Me Vs The Revolution that I mentioned earlier. So there's always a chance we'll work on something, maybe a TenMinutePreview/Dopamine/Attack! Attack!/The Blackout medley."

Lastly, in an ideal world, who would they love to release a split album with?

"What you mean apart from Gav?" laughs Neil. "For me it would be Daniel Johns from Silverchair. He's a musical genius in my eyes and that would be a dream come true."

"That's a tough one," says Gavin. "[Faith No More frontman] Mike Patton is notorious for his side projects, one of them being one of my favourite bands of all time. He's always so left field and I think he'd just produce something that people wouldn't expect."

For more information, check out Gavin's Tumblr, Attack! Attack!'s official site, and The Blackout's official site.

You can watch a clip of the performance on YouTube.

Stereophonics and Tom Jones

The annual music industry celebration has become well-known for its duets, but for me the best was PJ Harvey and Björk's version of The Rolling Stones' Satisfaction from 1994.

Unfortunately that didn't prove popular with the respondents, but luckily neither did Bon Jovi and Dina Carroll doing Sleep When I'm Dead, also in 1994.

In this week's news are Queen, who announced a performance at Sonisphere. In 2000 they performed with 5ive.

Rapping boybands with elder statesmen of rock? Whatever next?

In the Mastercard/ICM poll Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' performance of Empire State Of Mind also did very well, being narrowly pipped by the Welsh combo of Jones and Stereophonics. Lest we forget, that song gave the world Newport State Of Mind.

Three performances shared the accolade for Overall Favourite Brits Performance of All Time: Amy Winehouse's Rehab (2007), Take That's Back For Good (1995) and Michael Jackson's infamous Earth Song performance of 1995, when he was singularly upstaged by Jarvis Cocker's posterior.

Among the male respondents, embarrassingly, it was Phil Collins' Another Day In Paradise from 1990.

Music journalist Paul Lester said: "It makes sense that Stereophonics' and Tom Jones' performance at the 2000 Brits was voted the most memorable Brits duet of all time, because it followed Re-Load, the hugely successful duets album Jones released in 1999.

"What makes this duet so priceless is seeing performers from the same nation - Wales - but quite different generations trying to out-do each other for sheer energy and exuberance. No wonder it has gone down as one of the most popular duets in the history of the Brit awards."

Military Wives Choir are up, at tonight's Brits ceremony, for Best British Single for Wherever You Are, written by Wales' Paul Mealor.

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Super Furry Animals

The artists will play prior to kick off at Cardiff City Stadium on 29 February as Wales play Costa Rica in remembrance of the Wales manager.

Ten per cent of proceeds from the match will go to charities chosen by Speed's family.

The Football Association of Wales said: "This will be an opportunity to celebrate the life and achievements of a great servant to Welsh football both as a player and as a manager."

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We invited Amy to write a piece for us about her time with Ed:

Amy Wadge and Ed Sheeran

For the first time in my career as a singer/songwriter, which I am slightly astonished to admit now spans some 20 years, I will be watching The Brits knowing in some tiny way I am part of things. It's been a long time coming but thanks to a 21-year-old ginger-haired guy from Suffolk called Ed Sheeran my life has completely changed in the last year.

Four years ago, as I was about to have my first child, I realised that the endless touring that I had done for my own career was about to come, in some part, to an end. Although I still intended, and have continued, to work as a singer/songwriter in my own right, gone are the days of chasing a deal and hoping for mega stardom.

I had co-written a fair amount and always felt that as a lyricist and top line writer I had something to offer. Luckily Sarah Liversedge at BDI Music Publishing thought the same and signed me.

Working with Sarah changed everything as suddenly I was being hooked up with new unsigned artists from all over the UK.

The very first person I was sent was Ed.

I distinctly remember picking up this young lad at Trefforest station with a 'back packer' guitar thinking 'What the hell is going to happen here?' But then we drove back to my house, sat in my kitchen and he sang to me.

I can't imagine there will be many times in my life that I will meet someone so incredibly gifted and to be honest I spent much of the next few days running in from my studio in the garden to tell my husband how sure I was that he was "going to make me a millionaire".

In a normal writing session I would hope to get one or two songs, but with Ed we wrote nine in two days. It was just one of those crazy things that is very rare - we clicked and what happened was amazing.

Another few sessions followed and then Ed asked me to do backing vocals on an EP he was doing at the time. I was heavily pregnant with my second child so couldn't travel. Ed carried on without me and the EP was released, and to my surprise he'd called it Songs I Wrote With Amy.

Last February, as Ed was about to be signed to Atlantic, he called and asked to come down to write again. This time when I picked him up from the station people were recognising him and it suddenly became clear that things were about to change. And boy, they changed.

The various EPs he'd done, including Songs I Wrote With Amy, started selling by the bucket load and charting. I then got the call to say that one of the songs we'd written on his last trip down had made the Deluxe Edition of +, his new album.

The day it went to number one I went up to London and we all had + tattoos to mark the occasion. Since then it's been incredible to watch things get bigger and bigger. I played Cardiff with Ed and for the first time in my life heard 3,000 people singing a song I had written back at me. The album has just crossed the million sales mark and he's about to head Stateside.

A track from Songs I Wrote With Amy was recently featured on an episode of Cougar Town and is the b-side to the American release of The A-Team, so I will now be watching the American Billboard chart to see what happens.

All of a sudden all the doors that were so tightly shut before have flown open and I am writing with some incredible new artists. It's the most exciting time in my career and I can do it all from the comfort of my own home.

And Ed? He hasn't changed one little bit; he's still the most laid-back person you will ever meet. But I did go to see him play in Wolverhampton a few weeks ago and for the first time realised that this guy who I think of as my little brother is now a huge star. Live, Ed is a force to be reckoned with but there is still so much more to come.

He was 17 when we wrote a song called She and he came up with these words:

Strange as it seems
She is endless to me
She's just like paperwork
But harder to read

I knew right then he was incredibly special.

Join Amy Wadge with Roy Noble on BBC Radio Wales this Wednesday (22 February) at 4pm.

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Marina And The Diamonds

Electra Heart, the follow-up to the successful Family Jewels album, is due for release on 30 April through 679/Atlantic.

It will be preceded by a single, Primadonna, on 16 April.

"It's an ode to dysfunctional love," said Diamandis. "I based the project around character types commonly found in love stories, film and theatre, usually ones associated with power and control in love, as opposed to weakness or defeat.

"I guess it was a way of dealing with the embarrassment that, for the first time in my life, I got 'played'. Rejection is a universally embarrassing topic and Electra Heart is my response to that. It is a frank album."

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Listen to Simon Price and me talk to Jamie and Louise on the station this morning:

And listen to Oli and Bethan of Good Morning Wales talk to Manics producers Steve Brown and Greg Haver, plus Samoans guitarist Daniel Barnett, who was influenced to take up the instrument after listening to the album.

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Here we publish, with kind permission, an excerpt from the piece as we mark the 20th anniversary of the release of the Manics' first album, Generation Terrorists.

The Manics are pop's conscience, except that they are not sniping from the sidelines. They are right in there in the middle of the fray. They have the ability to be hilariously rude and disarmingly polite. They loved The Clash but were smart enough to use Guns N' Roses as the chassis of their sound, adding the Clash's swagger and soul and subtracting the Guns N' Roses crass dumb rhetoric. It's difficult to believe now that they are constantly fêted and groaning under the weight of music-biz awards, that when The Manics burst onto the scene in 1990 they were treated with contempt and a thinly veiled near racism that sneered at their Welsh background.

In the middle of the baggy era they were out of time, they believed in skin-tight punk-rock songs, a vicious attack of socialist slogans and an outright contempt for their contemporaries. They were a long way from the stoned play-dumb of most bands at the time and a long, long way from the 1990 zeitgeist but for a few of us that believed in their dream they were a welcome godsend.

I'd already reviewed them, mentioned them in dispatches, but it was getting them on to the cover of Sounds with their third single the Heavenly released Motown Junk that still gives me the biggest buzz from my journo days.

Interviewing The Manics for their first-ever front cover that was published on 26 January 1991 was a different affair than now. Cooped up with the penniless band in the back of a transit van grabbing quotes, we were round the corner from Jeff Barrett's Heavenly record label who were frantically attempting to sell the band to a sceptical music business...

Instead of having qualms about 'selling out' or cowering under the Indie Law, The Manics were already thinking big. They were also distancing themselves from the crippling indie thinking that was crushing most post-punk guitar hustlers of the time.

'You've got to reach out on a massive level,' claimed guitarist Richey James Edwards in the ice-cold van. A typical tour bus piled with cheap amps and expensive rhetoric, adding 'Once we've done that we will fade away. We want to make ourselves obsolete as fast as possible. It's no good just inspiring groups. People go on about The Stones inspiring the Paris riots in '68 which was fine but they just carried on. That's so obscene.'...

The band itself was a classic mix between two almost earnestly talented musicians, James and Sean, and the two maverick souls of Richey and Nicky- the onstage wingers who wrote the words. Words that James would shoe-horn (occasionally there were just too many words resulting in a few slurred lines!) into his music and bring to life with his powerful rock 'n' roll voice...

The band released two singles on Jeff Barrett's Heavenly label to whom they signed in August 1990. There was the 1991 released fast shots of Motown Junk and the anthemic You Love Us, a response to the music media who felt that the band was cartoon punk. The Manics were meeting the massive wall of indifference head on...

Their first release on Sony was the July 1991 single Stay Beautiful (No. 40 in the UK charts), followed by October 1991′s Love's Sweet Exile (No. 26); the major label backing saw them inching towards the mainstream. The re-release of You Love Us (No. 16) early in 1992 finally saw the band in the top 20. The Manics were on a slow upward curve. That March the crunching, stunning Slash And Burn headbutted its way to No. 20. Their Molotov missive stuffed début album, Generation Terrorists, released in 1992, had scraped the teens of the album charts. This was fine but hardly the multi-million-selling missive that they had boasted they would release and then split up afterwards when their work was done!

The band were hit by the truth, rock 'n' roll was a long, slow grind and their ecstatic fantasy of selling 10 million records and then splitting was starting to look like a pipe dream. Real life is always tougher than the romantic vision. So they started to grind it out, if this was going to be a war of attrition the so be it. Throughout 1992 they were hammering home the mini hits. Their fan base was growing. For all their polemic and at odds defiance of the musical trends they could play great pop music. Track after track was being pulled from the Generation Terrorists album and hitting the Top 20... the powerful Slash And Burn (No. 20), the anthemic Motorcycle Emptiness (No. 17) and then that September they finally scored the big breakthrough with the cover of 'Theme From M.A.S.H.' (number seven) putting them into the Top 10.

At last they had been accepted. Especially by their core fanbase... a coterie of leopard-skin-clad desperadoes who looked like the coolest pop kids on the circuit. The Manics' gigs were a flurry of flamboyance and feather boas. Their fans oozed sex and situationism. The Manics were attracting the same cabal of intense letter writing fanatics as The Smiths had in the eighties but somehow flasher in their intensity.

I interviewed them just before they hit the stage at Birmingham Aston University in the summer of 1993 and the band were as combative as ever. In the tiny motel room before the gig they were still gunning for the same targets as they piled on the pre-show make-up. Already there were signs of the sort of wear and tear that being on the road can etch onto the psyche. Richey was by now drinking and Nicky was relating tales of his partner's post-gig back to the hotel love life... not hard to miss when you're sharing a tiny room.

While Richey threw on his fake leopard print coat, Nicky related that his love of beat literature came from his elder brother Patrick Jones. They piled into the car outside the hotel in a blur of fake furs, make-up and teased hair. They had the star swagger - living out their rock 'n' roll dream as we got lost in the winding roads, crammed in their car, towards the gig.

Read the full version of John's blog on Louder Than War.

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Gruff Rhys

On Friday 16 March Rhys will join Anna Calvi and Beth Jeans Houghton And The Hooves Of Destiny in Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Another gig on the same night features Laura Marling and Lianne La Havas, in the Purcell Room.

Bob Shennan, controller of BBC Radio 2 and Radio 6 Music, said: "This has been an incredible first decade for Radio 6 Music. In addition to its recent record listening figures, it has proved itself as a unique and much loved service and a real showcase for the music that encapsulates the alternative spirit. I am proud that it has played such a key role in encouraging the take-up of digital radio across the nation."

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Manic Street Preachers. Photo: Martyn Goodacre

That simple fact is enough to make a lot of people exclaim something along the lines of, 'cor that makes me feel old'. Including me.

It wasn't their best-selling album, even though prior to its release they expressed a desire for it to sell millions before their imminent split.

Neither was it their most acclaimed album, that honour probably going to the caustic classic of psychological and political malaise, The Holy Bible.

So why celebrate this anniversary? Well, it provided six top 40 singles. It introduced four alien-looking, glammed-up Welsh punks to the world. The album's promotion put these eyeliner- and slogan-smeared young men, barely out of their teens, onto magazine front covers in an era in which 'shoegaze' and 'grebo' were genres of serious critical consideration. They talked antagonistically and passionately through a lens of well-read education.

Of course it was Richey's infamous '4Real' self-harm incident that brought them to wider public attention; luckily they had the musical and intellectual chops for this not to became their defining career point. It was a journo-baiting stunt of horrifying, cold, calculating clarity that was designed by Richey to prove a point.

That point was that they weren't a joke. Looking as they did, sounding like they did, it would have been easy to write them off as such. But no joke bands ever delivered a double album, 18 tracks long, that included Motorcycle Emptiness, Little Baby Nothing, You Love Us, Slash 'N' Burn and Condemned To Rock 'N' Roll.

As some of our interviewees admit, it's over-long and sometimes overblown, but it holds up as a Welsh classic. That's why, two decades down the line, we're devoting this week to Generation Terrorists.

• Manics biographer and music critic Simon Price on the album and its legacy
• Radio Wales celebrates Generation Terrorists
• Interview with Traci Lords, guest vocalist
• Interview with Steve Brown, producer of the album
• Interview with Dave Eringa, session music and Manics engineer
• Interview with Matthew Olivier, studio in-house engineer on the album
• Video and audio clips
• Interview with Sally Margaret Joy, Melody Maker journalist and musician
• Thoughts of Jarrad Owens, Welsh journalist and Manics super-fan
• John Robb on Generation Terrorists
• Adam Walton: Generation Terrorists And Me
• What the papers said

Thanks to Katherine Hinds-Payne, @manicstmania, Hall Or Nothing, Ben Marshall, Black Barn Studios and Jarrad Owens in assisting with these features.

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Manic Street Preachers - Generation Terrorists

New Musical Express
"What's more important is that the Manic Street Preachers have transcended their sleepy provincial roots and produced something for the Global Everybody. Their enemies expected London Calling:The Remix and they've come up with the Use Your Illusions I and II the Gunners only ever had illusions about."

The Guardian
"Generation Terrorists is stuffed with speedy guitar riffs, spring-loaded hooks, and - in Motorcycle Emptiness and Little Baby Nothing - two potential US hit singles. These boys have a plan. It might work."

The Independent
"Rock'n'roll is our epiphany/Culture, alienation, boredom and despair,'' sing the Manic Street Preachers on their début album, a protracted bout of sullen huffing and puffing desperately trying to fan the flames of a punk revival. Except... there's no punk revival happening, as far as I can tell, and I suspect it will take rather more than this tired collection of glam-punk tat and hand- me-down hard rock stylings to create one."

The Daily Telegraph
"Some of the lyrics are clumsy and banal, and many of their targets are predictable: the monarchy, financial institutions, the male psyche (on the LP's finest tune, Little Baby Nothing, featuring porn star Traci Lords on little-girl-victim vocals) and religion. It's their less frantic sentiments that strike the most persuasive tone. 'It's not that I can't find worth in anything,' they sing at one point, 'It's just that I can't find worth in enough' - and suddenly their despair seems rather reasonable."

The Washington Post
"Caught between their 'new Clash' beginnings and an unexpectedly American hard-rock sound, these Welsh neopunks are exceptionally stirring when they're not being too silly or too metal."

Billboard
"English [sic] quartet stakes out territory as the new Clash with a sometimes caustic brand of guitar-driven rock and politically conscious lyrics. Material here isn't as harshly punk-oriented as early punk material, though, with both producer Brown's commercially oriented work and the slick vocals of James Dean Bradfield lending the music a radio-aware sheen. Numbers like Slash N' Burn may heat some modern rock channels."

Allmusic
"While the album is loaded with a little bit too much unrealized material in retrospect, its best moments - the fiery Slash N' Burn, Little Baby Nothing, the incendiary Stay Beautiful, the sardonic You Love Us, and the haunting Motorcycle Emptiness - capture the Manics in all their raging glory."

And here's a selection of reviews of the album's singles from the NME, which more often than not gave coveted 'single of the week' status to the band:

You Love Us
"The masterstroke that becomes the title is enough on its own to endear it to anyone with their wits about them. Imagine the worst possible reaction an audience could give the Manics... Then chuckle when you realise they've got this song to shove LOUD right in the opposition's faces."

Motorcycle Emptiness
"At last. At long long last! Columbia/The Manics/whoever have finally got round to releasing the one indisputably great moment this band have so far forged. Suddenly, glaringly, all our championing of them, and our indulgence of their... excesses, is explained and repaid. In triplicate. In solid gold."

What do you think of Generation Terrorists? Feel free to comment! If you want to have your say, on this or any other BBC blog, you will need to sign in to your BBC iD account. If you don't have a BBC iD account, you can register here - it'll allow you to contribute to a range of BBC sites and services using a single login.

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Steve Brown

"I got the job with the Manics because they liked the work I did on the Love album by The Cult. I was working at the time in the States, so I'd not heard anything by them, although I had seen the press. On the record, I wanted to achieve what they wanted to achieve - and they wanted to be the biggest band in the world.

"They had full control of their creative direction, but I steered them on the singles front. Creatively, they were - and I think still are - very unique.

"It's not true that only James [Dean Bradfield] and Sean [Moore] recorded material used on the record. The whole band had a major input into the writing and playing of the album.

"I don't think the double album format detracted from the record; I love everything on Generation Terrorists, and so do a whole lot of other people!

"My favourite track on the record is Condemned To Rock And Roll, I think. There's nothing on the record I'd change and I'm very proud of my work on it. Lots of people have told me it's a classic.

"I'm glad it's regarded as being important in UK music history; we all worked very hard on it. I love the fact that I did it, and I least like the fact I'll never be able to do it again for them."

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Dave Eringa with James Dean Bradfield, backstage at Reading Festival, 1992

"I was the assistant engineer on the first couple of Heavenly singles and played a bit of Hammond organ. The band were kind enough to ask me to play on the album too, so I was just an extra musician back then - I didn't start engineering for them until I produced and engineered [second album] Gold Against The Soul.

"It's hard to remember exactly what got used! I know I'm on You Love Us and Spectators Of Suicide and I definitely tried Motorcycle and Little Baby Nothing but wasn't good enough for the piano parts. It's all a bit of a blur because when I went on tour with them in 93-94 I would play organ on a lot of Generation Terrorists songs that didn't have it on the album so it's all a bit hazy.

"The band had this romantic idea that, like the famous Rolling Stones session musicians, I'd be their Ian Stewart and that someone else would be their Nick Hopkins. The truth which they discovered was that when I said I was a bit crap on the keyboards I wasn't being self deprecating, I was being truthful! Luckily they tried me out producing and engineering and the rest was history.

I was the tea boy on Motown Junk and You Love Us and we really hit it off over a shared love of Guns N' Roses. They were so kind to me, sending me postcards from tour and things like that, so I was already a massive fan and a friend by the time they got their deal with Sony. I had never met a band like them - so intelligent but so visceral too - they were a brilliant antidote to a lot of the sessions I was doing at the time and I was hooked.

"The band are always in control of their direction - the manifesto sonically, politically and lyrically has always come from them. The producer Steve Brown obviously had a very big impact too though with his radio sensibilities.

"I'm not normally a fan of double albums but I can't imagine any other way for this band to announce their arrival - what an amazingly over-ambitious statement it is.

"Sonically I guess some of the drum sounds haven't aged so well, but it's a great record anyway and given the choice would I really change any of it? Probably not! Bands these days don't get a chance to develop in the way the Manics did. I like the fact it's imperfect in some ways; it's more romantic that way.

Is it true that only James and Sean actually recorded material that was used on the record? Not at all - Nicky played all the bass. Richey was much more of a lyricist than a guitar player and James is such an astounding musician I guess there seemed no point in Richey playing.

"Two years later I insisted that Richey play one part on Gold Against The Soul, so he did the power chords behind the chorus of La Tristesse Durera and as far as I know I was the only guy to ever get to record him. I'm proud of that.

"It's definitely a classic in that it announced the arrival of a truly important band. Lyrically it's a classic, but I think it wasn't until The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go that you could call them classic albums in all the usual ways.

"I remember Steve Brown writing 'Jon Lord Woz 'Ere' on a bit of masking tape stuck to the Hammond that I did You love Us on. James had tipped him off that John was my favourite keyboard player - I thought it was such a nice thing to do to put me at my ease and make me feel like they wanted me there.

"I always remembered the way he made me feel when I came down to the sessions and have always tried to make musicians that come and play on my sessions feel the same way. Steve Brown is a dude!

"When I heard Motorcycle Emptiness I knew they had a stone cold classic that would prove to people that there was classic song-writing and amazing musicianship behind all the punk proclamations. It wasn't until people heard that song that they got taken seriously as musicians - there was even a ridiculous rumour that went round at the time that Jeff Beck played all the guitar on the album because people couldn't believe that these make up smeared Welsh punks could play so good!

"I didn't know how long they'd last as a band though - they were promising to break up after one album after all.

"My work with the band has continued ever since. What's not to love? They are the most fiercely intelligent band of the last 30 years, they are outrageously inventive musicians and amazing songwriters who have a very specific vision for their music. They are a gift to any producer and it has been an amazing privilege to work with them for so long."

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Manic Street Preachers. Photo: Tom Sheehan

"At the time I was the in-house engineer for Black Barn where the album was recorded. I think the studio must have persuaded [producer] Steve Brown that I was good enough.

"I read the NME at that time and so knew of them and their reputation. I guess I was a bit apprehensive, not knowing quite what to expect and it being just after the photos of Richey were in the magazine. I liked what they were about and the way they were going about it. I had bought Motown Junk so knew their music already.

"I suppose the album is a bit long! But I guess that was part of what they were about, releasing a double album as a début. I remember them wanting it to be a triple album but I think that was a bit too much for Columbia. Oh and there are some great guitar sounds on it.

"I think my favourite track always was Little Baby Nothing but I really like the Bomb Squad remix of Repeat. Being a fan of Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad productions it was great to hear what they would do with one of their tracks.

"It's very difficult for me to comment on whether it's a classic. Having been closely involved in it I think that I listen to it in a different way. I seem to remember that we spent many, many weeks in Black Barn working seven days a week so it's impossible to distance yourself and not hear it without all the stuff that went along with the making of it.

"I am proud of my work on the record. I think I worked hard on it. When you work on something like that you do get very involved and thinking back to it now I certainly have some really good memories of those sessions and that time.

"Being in a residential studio for that amount of time is bound to create certain incidents. One thing I remember very clearly was managing to break the headstock off of James [Dean Bradfield]'s Les Paul Gold Top by knocking it off its stand. A little bit awkward!. He was very good about it but I still remember feeling really bad. It was fixed though and I imagine he still has it.

"Maybe a better memory was driving the band to London to buy Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and II. They were released during the sessions and Tower records on Piccadilly Circus opened at midnight to allow people to get it as soon as it was out.

"It probably seems a bit silly now as I'm sure the CDs could have been sent down to the studio for the morning but that wasn't really the point. So we drove up to town in whatever old car I had at the time, queued up and bought the CDs. As a thank you they bought me a CD. I think I chose Metallica's 'black album' just to be different. We drove back and immediately listened through to both Illusion albums all the way through. I can't quite remember the reaction. Mixed I think!

"Is it important in UK music history? I guess it is! Personally, as I said, I don't or can't listen to it with any real degree of objectivity. It was certainly important for the band and they have obviously gone on to bigger things with a 20 year career behind them.

"But when I look back at these sessions I just remember it as being a really good time. I was young and working as an engineer in a recording studio with some really nice people. It is difficult to see it or listen to it in any other way. I mean you do hope that everything you work on will be well received and there was obviously a lot of talk and anticipation about the album. Some obviously think it is important and hence this 20 year anniversary thing, but for me I'm just really glad to have been a part of it."

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Manics at The Marquee in London, 1991. Photo: Martyn Goodacre

"Generation Terrorists (working title Culture, Alienation, Boredom And Despair - the refrain from Little Baby Nothing) was, and still is, a truly incredible album: a double feature, 18 tracks in length and clocking at over 70 minutes. The incredibly ambitious début was released as the antidote to the drugged up and dumbed down 'Madchester' scene; the laddish, lairy early 90s indie movement that was a world away from what was happening in the Welsh valleys.

"1992 saw the Manics cross-pollinate their main influences at the time featuring Sex Pistols sloganeering, Guns N' Roses guitar licks and Public Enemy politics resulting in some sort of Never Mind The Bollocks/Appetite For Destruction hybrid. Aside from the music, perhaps the band's biggest grandiose statement was that they planned to split up upon its release and the album would sell 16 million copies worldwide.

"The subject matter of the album, like any truly great musical work, is still relevant today, questioning work, the economy, education, the media, religion and the human condition. Guitar and bass on the album was recorded in whole by lead singer James Dean Bradfield [something producer Steve Brown denies], with digital drums programmed by Sean Moore and piano accompaniment by Nicky Wire on Little Baby Nothing; this fact is testament to the sheer musicality of Bradfield, a guitar hero in the making.

"The only problems the album presented arose when it came to performing the songs live, probably due to James being the only member who performed on the album. The most extreme case being Motorcycle Emptiness, which was performed for the first time a whole four months after the album was released at the Town and Country Club in London.

"Stand-out tracks include the soaring epic Motorcycle Emptiness, the ironically titled You Love Us (a sarcastic love note to the tabloid newspapers that despised them), rip-roaring first single Slash N Burn, and hidden gem Condemned To Rock n Roll."

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