MSP and Birdland
 

Been having a bit of a Birdland revival here at R*E*P*E*A*T Towers.

Despite what they would later say, the young Manics clearly wanted to be in Birdland.

Apparently Richey and Nicky wrote 'Birdland' on the back of their jackets and James Dean Bradfield went as far as ripping off the guitar solo from Hollow Heart and using it in Motown Junk.

In the NME in 1994, JDB would talk of a Birdland gig as being seminal in the development of the band:

"They just started smashing everything up, and beating up the security in front of hysterical screaming kids. It was just great: I felt a bit like Joe Strummer seeing the Sex Pistols or something … not quite that far maybe, but it but it made me feel like I wasn’t so far out of place. We used to play in our school shirts and things and it gave us the confidence to think that if we got any shit, we were still cool.” [James Dean Bradfield, Manic Street Preachers; ‘Best Gig I Ever Saw’ NME, 10 September 1994]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N37uwgcVng0

My only contribution to this thread is that the Royal Court theatre did a Simon Stephens play called Birdland in 2014 with Andrew Scott in the lead role (it was about an extravagant rock star on tour) and the programme/script used one of Kevin Cummins' shots of Richey:

https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/bj/9781472587671.jpg

I do love it when my interests collide.