the lyrics editing...

[Phil C]

Just wanted to chime up on this. I agree to an extent that some of the lyrical editing was heavier than I expected, but the way I look at it is that the lyrics as printed in the special edition represent Richey as an individual poet/lyricist. The words as sug represent Richey as a part of Manic Street Preachers. Which is only fitting - they were written to be sung and to make songs out of them. If that means editing them then the band are absolutely right to do so - especially as the original versions have been made available. As has been said, we know the Manics lyrics get edited (Nick has said that 'Design For Life' was originally much longer and James edited it down) and we don't get to see that process.

That doesn't mean I agree with every edit. 'Doors Closing Slowly' for example has lost its best verse for some bizarre reason - 'The merciful cast the last stone' verse is lovely. But overall for all we know what's happened on 'Journal' is what happened on their other albums, but behind closed doors.

On a slightly different note, I prefer the way Nick pasted the 'DCS' and 'All Is Vanity' lyrics together for 'Picturesque' as they fit well together - better than the way Richey pushed together the vanity bits together with the bits about wanting no choice. So, there's a severe edit that was for the benefit of the lyrics.

[hummingbird]

i'm glad they published the unedited lyrics.. delighted in fact. When Nicky said WLW was a piece of prose i imediately thought *wish i could read the whole thing* and there it was in all its glory

The lingerie line does make JCEQT make more sense but apart from that i have no complaints and even that isn't a real complaint. As others have said...they didn't HAVE to do this album and i'm very very glad they did !

[Mr Richey]

As I said in the 'Picturesque' thread....

I love how certain people on FD have criticised the way the Manics edited the lyrics for the JFPL album (while I personally see no problem with them myself) and yet so many of those same people say they prefer 'Picturesque' to the two songs its lyrics are taken from.

This seems bizarre to me...so Nicky editing two sets of lyrics from two different songs into one song, resulting in an ill fit that doesn't work, is OKAY but taking a few dodgy lines out of JCEQT is CRIMINAL?!

You're all entitled to your opinions, but to me that comes across as double standards.

[chinaboatman]

I think they should have put the lyrics first, that's all. Sublimated their own egos for one record for the sake of doing the best possible for a friend. The Manics have the opportunity to make loads more records after this; Richey doesn't. They could have done more to honour his lyrics the way he intended them on his final hurrah.

All of the unconscious plagiarism that litters the album smacks of writing the tunes 'too easilly', of taking the first thing that comes into their heads and running with it. And clearly this has resulted in ruthlessly excising any lyrics that don't fit easilly in with these tunes.

Fuck all of this "it's a Manic Street Preachers record, it's the way they've always worked etc etc". This is a one off. This is a special case. This isn't always for fucks sake. This is history. This is a friends's fucking legacy.

No, they didn't have to do this. But they chose to do it. And that confers responsibility on them as far as i am concerned.

I think they've made a brilliant Manics Street Preachers record, dont' get me wrong. I don't think they've created a brilliant tribute to their former friend. I think that his (presumably) intended valediction has ended up as grist for the album mill and that dissapoints me. I would like to see other artists get a crack at writing music for the songs but i know that won't happen.

[Bought In]

Originally Posted by Richey83

As I said in the 'Picturesque' thread....

I love how certain people on FD have criticised the way the Manics edited the lyrics for the JFPL album (while I personally see no problem with them myself) and yet so many of those same people say they prefer 'Picturesque' to the two songs its lyrics are taken from.

This seems bizarre to me...so Nicky editing two sets of lyrics from two different songs into one song, resulting in an ill fit that doesn't work, is OKAY but taking a few dodgy lines out of JCEQT is CRIMINAL?!

You're all entitled to your opinions, but to me that comes across as double standards.

Peope seem to miss a certain element to this arguement, the music. Even some of the bigger critics of the editing will still stand by the claim that this is a great album musically. Even the final lyrics are a million times better that the 99% of bands produce today.

I'm critical about the editing for the reason that i have every confidence in the band to actually pull off richey's lyrics, look at THB in terms of the singing, James has the ability to sing richey's convoluted verses, and amazingly, make it sound incredible. The angle I'm working is that the lyrics should of been followed a bit more rigidly, it feels like the lyrics were sacrificed to make the music better but considering it's a tribute album, I don't agree with that. It would be like editing heath ledgers performance in the dark knight to make him more hollywood esque.

JPFL is a musical adaption, we've all read books or comics that were made into movies I imagine. I don't think anyone can say that they've been happy with every adaption 100%, there's always something lost in translation. Once I step back from the music and just listen to some of the words being sung, it falls flat, especially the title track. However I must say that Facing: Page Top Left was edited perfectly and captures the virtues of the original lyric. I can't complain about Nicky's interpretation of WLW, if I knew richey, it would be very easy to extract that meaning from the piece.

[Bach Psychosis]

Manic Street Preachers, if any of you are reading this thread, I apologise for your fans. I hope that you are laughing at them and not taking to heart the entitled bullshit they are spewing regarding this album.

[Bought In]

Originally Posted by Bach Psychosis

entitled bullshit

.

[The Gutless Wonder]

I think they've done the best job they could have and it is still a tribute to Richey.

[Mr Richey]

Originally Posted by The Gutless Wonder

I think they've done the best job they could have and it is still a tribute to Richey.

This

[Lydia]

I don't understand the fuss. I'm sure that this is exactly the way they worked when Richey was around, and has anyone ever heard him complaining about it? Also, I think James, Nicky, and Sean are far more likely to know what Richey would have wanted than us. Anyway, Richey never wrote in a way that lent itself to song, so what he wrote was always going to have to edited, otherwise it just couldn't fit.

I realise everyone is entitled to their opinion on which lyrics are good and which are not, but I don't think you can possibly accuse the band of not doing their best for Richey and his lyrics. People shouldn't accuse them of being selfish in the way they treated the lyrics; just doing what they wanted, or what was easiest - that's completely out of order, and pretty insulting. They could have just left them be, but they decided that they wanted to do them justice. And as I've already said, they're far more likely to know what Richey would have wanted than we are. We should never presume to know him better simply from being fans than they do from being his best friends and growing up with him. Unfortunately, some people don't seem to be able to understand that. I just hope that when Sean is on here he avoids threads like this.

[mrsmanics]

I can't see why people feel that it isn't a tribute to Richey! They've used the lyrics he left them and made a brilliant album with them. The lyrics for The Holy Bible were probably edited, too, so I can't imagine Richey would have had a real problem with them being edited for JFPL. The Deluxe Edition features all of the complete lyrics as well as Richey's artwork, so it's not like we're being denied the original words - we're actually being spoilt by being shown something so personal.

I may have said that I think William's Last Words was edited into a far more leading set of lyrics, but that doesn't mean I think they've done a bad job in the slightest. I'm bloody grateful they've made this album at all!

[Matt_o_Mac]

I think overall it's been a decent job, the odd line here and there that are stunners have been lost but most of it is pretty good.

I remember attending some Manics Photo thing in London and seeing a picture of the FD lyrics, and a whole verse was missing from that, ironically I thought it was better with that Verse but Nicky or James must have scrapped it from the final version.

Eithier that or I am losing it.

[Phil C]

Originally Posted by chinaboatman

I think they should have put the lyrics first, that's all. Sublimated their own egos for one record for the sake of doing the best possible for a friend. The Manics have the opportunity to make loads more records after this; Richey doesn't. They could have done more to honour his lyrics the way he intended them on his final hurrah.

All of the unconscious plagiarism that litters the album smacks of writing the tunes 'too easilly', of taking the first thing that comes into their heads and running with it. And clearly this has resulted in ruthlessly excising any lyrics that don't fit easilly in with these tunes.

Fuck all of this "it's a Manic Street Preachers record, it's the way they've always worked etc etc". This is a one off. This is a special case. This isn't always for fucks sake. This is history. This is a friends's fucking legacy.

No, they didn't have to do this. But they chose to do it. And that confers responsibility on them as far as i am concerned.

I think they've made a brilliant Manics Street Preachers record, dont' get me wrong. I don't think they've created a brilliant tribute to their former friend. I think that his (presumably) intended valediction has ended up as grist for the album mill and that dissapoints me. I would like to see other artists get a crack at writing music for the songs but i know that won't happen.

No Richey can't make another album - and who's responsible for that? Not the rest of the band. Yes, they could have treated it as a legacy to a friend. But looking at half the printed lyrics you'd have got a poor album as quite a few of the lyrics look all but impossible to sing - they're not structured as lyrics. 'The Holy Bible' lyrics were difficult. Some of the 'Journal' lyrics look all but impossible to make a good song out of.

As a matter of interest, if it turned out that 'The Holy Bible' had been edited as much as 'Journal' what would you say about it?

I'm sorry but the above post is daft. It's another fan doing the 'I know what Richey would have wanted more than the people who actually knew him do'. Richey gave them the lyrics and then vanished. Maybe if he'd stuck around he could have told the band he wanted his lyrics as on the page and not edited. But he didn't.

After my last post I re-read the lyrics as printed in the special edition and compared them to what's sung. And actually, with only a couple of exceptions, what's sung is *better* than what's written. Most of what's written feels like notes for a lyric rather than a lyric itself, with the band imposing the structure the words needed. Most of the verses missed out weren't that great. There are exceptions (one of the missing verses from 'DCS' for example is great) but if anything, the editing has done more to preserve Richey's 'legacy' than if they'd have sung the lyrics as written.

[BranCox]

Phil C, I agree.

[pennyroyalty]

they probably tried to use all of the words at some point and they just sounded shit in the songs. you cannot simply sit there with a lyric like some of these and come out with decent, integrated pieces of music that work with all of it. you have to sit there and try out bits and bobs, and successes in that process will naturally guide the song in a certain way. i expect that some lines which may look just as good on paper didn't match up when it came to the music that was working, didn't sound as powerful with the vocal delivery, the phrasing etc. given the lack of fondness for proggy rock concept albums round these parts, i'm sure that very few of even the peeved off people here would actually have liked the record which would have resulted from treating some of these lyrics as gospel which dictated the movement of melodies and musical structures.

what you can probably tell from the JFPL special edition is that The Holy Bible had the more 'difficult' structures not simply because Richey's lyrics were that off the wall but because that was what James was into at the time... i mean come on, as a composer he didn't go from Gold Against The Soul to that in like a year just because his lyricist went nuts. the words have always been filtered through the wing of the band that had actual musical talent and Richey would have known that whe he wrote them. it would have been nice if even more of Richey's leftovers had worked with decent music but evidently they didn't, 'cos if they were that great as lyrics they'd have, you know, been in the songs.