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Manic Street Preachers at the O2, London

Post categories: Live

James McLaren | 12:25 UK time, Tuesday, 20 December 2011

Manic Street Preachers played their one-off Greatest Hits show at London's O2 on Saturday, with guest appearances from Gruff Rhys and Nina Persson. We asked some attendees to give us their impressions of the night.

, Manics producer

Nearly 22 years ago one of my long defunct bands had a full page "Next big thing..." article in the South Wales Echo. At the bottom of the page was a footnote that a new South Wales band, the Manic Street Preachers, had released their first single.

Fast forward two decades to last Saturday night in front of a packed O2 Arena in London the Manics played that very song, along with another 37 of their hit singles which spanned the intervening years. It was a celebration of an amazing career, every song a snapshot of my - and the audience's - life over that time.

From that newspaper article, through my involvement with them when we shared a backstreet Cardiff rehearsal room, to becoming their engineer and producer for part of their career and a live musician during the Greatest Hits tour was a wonderful journey which defined a large part of my life, making last night quite emotional. We may not see a band like them again. I look forward to their next move with excitement and anticipation.

I'm sure they won't disappoint.

Simon Price, Manics biographer and journalist

The Manics set themselves an insane challenge, playing 38 a-sides in one night at Britain's biggest mega-shed and selling it out. But when you think about it, the Manics' entire career has been one long insane challenge, trying to bring intelligence, literacy and socialist principles to the masses via something so dumb as rock'n'roll music. And, more often than not, succeeding.

The 02 is Britain's most Hellish venue, from the excessive security searches to the obscene drinks prices to the steeply-banked seats that are so far away from the stage that you might as well be watching on TV, but the Manics fans made it less like a battery farm and more like an indoor safari park, with the abundance of faux-leopard fur and flamingo-pink feathers.

"We're here to celebrate the possibly defunct form of the Situationist-esque pop-punk single," announced James Dean Bradfield, but the format meant that they couldn't cherry-pick just their favourites. My personal highlights of this unique show were two songs which, in the normal run of things, they're reluctant to play: Revol and Life Becoming A Landslide. By definition, the completist format of the show obliged them to revisit singles which are neglected and unloved (whether by the band, their public or both). In a surprising number of cases, these bastard children of the back catalogue shone: Empty Souls and There By The Grace Of God, in particular, seemed to rise to the occasion, although James' pessimistic predictions about the reaction to So Why So Sad became a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Well, I enjoyed it.)

There were a couple of special guests: Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys helped to bring a minor Manics single, Let Robeson Sing, to life, and The Cardigans' Nina Persson thrillingly reprised her duet with Bradfield on Your Love Alone Is Not Enough, although the feverish rumours about who might join them for Little Baby Nothing (will it be Kylie again? Will Traci Lords show up?) came to nought as James took on the entire song.

Bradfield and Nicky Wire emerged as a skilled comedy double act, the latter teasing the former by announcing "I can't wait to get into a dress. How about you, James?", and the singer complaing that the bassist had snipped a ribbon from the back of his sailor suit "because it doesn't suit me".

It's a tribute to the quality of their songwriting that this epic gig never seemed to flag, and also to their physical strength (even if Wire admitted he'd done his shoulder in midway through the second half). After a show which lasted for over three hours, Sean Moore, in particular, deserved some sort of endurance medal for pulverising the drums for so long. And it was a relief that James, who has a habit of contracting laryngitis or flu at just the wrong moment, managed to hold out.

As Wire smashed his bass in a blizzard of confetti 'snow', it felt like yet another against-the-odds triumph. By all accounts the band themselves were exhilarated and buzzing backstage, and the talk of an "indefinite hiatus" after the 02 show has shrunk to "three years", then "two years", and then "" (from the band's official Twitter account, ). Which is as predictable as it is heartening: I knew the Manics' work ethic and restlessness would kick in and prevent them taking too long a holiday. We can't afford to do without a band this great for long.

The setlist was non-chronological, and in two sections with an interval in between. The second half began with Australia.