If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" | ||
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| Single by Manic Street Preachers | ||
| from the album This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours | ||
| Released | August 24, 1998 | |
| Format | CD, cassette | |
| Recorded | ? | |
| Genre | Rock | |
| Length | 4:51 | |
| Label | Epic | |
| Chart positions | ||
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| Manic Street Preachers singles chronology | ||
| "Australia" (1996) |
"If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" (1998) |
"The Everlasting" (1998) |
"If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" (sample ) was the lead single from the Manic Street Preachers' fifth studio album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. It was released on August 24, 1998. All three members of the band shared writing credits.
The song was about the Spanish Civil War, and the idealism of volunteers from around the world who joined the International Brigade fighting Franco's fascist insurrection against the Spanish Republic.
The song takes its name from a Republican (i.e. left-wing) poster at the time. A young child killed by the Nationalists was portrayed on the poster and a stark warning written at the bottom: “If you tolerate this, your children will be next.” (View poster) A variant poster came with the similar message, “What Europe tolerates or protects. What your children can expect.”
Various works on the Spanish Civil War were the inspiration for this song, most notably George Orwell's first-hand account, "Homage to Catalonia." Nicky has acknowledged that he was also inspired by a song by The Clash, "Spanish Bombs", which has a similar subject.
Certain lyrics seem to pertain to these works. For example, the line “If I can shoot rabbits/then I can shoot fascists” is attributed to a Welsh farmer who signed up with the Republican fighters.
“I’ve walked Las Ramblas/but not with real intent” brings to mind the account in Orwell’s book of fighting on the Ramblas, with the various factions seemingly getting nowhere with the fighting and often a sense of camaraderie overriding the vaunted principles each side was supposed to be fighting for.
The single reached number one in the UK charts on September 5 1998 to become the first of their singles to achieve this. ("The Masses Against The Classes" also made number one on January 22 2000.) The song is in the Guinness World Records for being the number one single with the longest title without brackets.
It is the only Manic Street Preachers single ever to be released as a single in the US.
There were two CD singles; the first also included versions of "Prologue To History" and "Montana Autumn 78"; the second featured a 4'54" remix by Massive Attack and a 10'02" The Class Reunion of the Sunset Marquis Mix by David Holmes.
The song also made an appearance as track number three on Forever Delayed (2002), the Manics' greatest hits album.
The song was covered by David Usher on his 2003 album, Hallucinations.
Contents |
[edit] Track listing
[edit] CD1
- "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" - 4:51
- "Prologue to History" - 4:44
- "Montana/Autumn/78 - 3:12
[edit] CD2
- "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" - 4:50
- "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (Massive Attack Remix)" - 4:54
- "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (David Holmes Remix)" - 10:02
[edit] MC
- "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next"
- "Kevin Carter" (Live At Manchester NYNEX, 24th May 1997)
[edit] Creation
The following is condensed from the following article:[1]
The song was the first to worked on during the "This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours" sessions at Rockfield Studios (January 1998). However, because of the long title and at the time a lack of arrangement, the band and producer Dave Eringa considered it as a B-side, little more than a track to 'start the ball rolling' for bigger tracks such as "Be Natural"[2].
After spending the best part of a day setting up the drums to the band's taste, drummer Sean Moore did a drum take which featured a drum beat with a distinctive, irregular hi-hit pattern. Eringa, whilst not overly concerned at this jerky beat (because it was being treated as a B-side), took the beat into Pro-Tools for editing (this had been the first time Eringa had used the software). When Moore does a take, he always has other elements, such as percussion, ready in mind, and he and Eringa quickly added this. Next up was bassist Nicky Wire, who did one take on a Fender Jazz bass played through a Ampeg SVT2 amplifier before saying "Oh, no, I've got a migraine now Dave, that'll have to do!"
With the bass and drums down, lead singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield recorded the rythym guitar part on a Gibson acoustic miked with a AKG C28 - a microphone that Eringa says he's never seen anywhere apart from at Rockfield Studios. At the time, Bradfield was more into being minimalist and did not want anything too extravagant or rocky. This did leave the track feeling a bit empty. He did, however, record a small electric guitar part that features in the song's middle-eight and outro on a 12-string Rickenbacker plugged into a Trans Am amplifier - the first amplifier he bought when he was sixteen years old. To help 'lift' the chorus, the strings were then added to the chorus, but the Manics did not want to be 'tied down', they wanted a different sound than their critically acclaimed album Everything Must Go. Bradfield therefore insisted that the keyboard strings should be put through his Boss delay pedal. To help balance the sound in the lower-mids, some Hammond organ was added.
James then sang the vocals on a hand held microphone - he said he just found the hanging mics too confrontational that day. After just three takes, the vocals were edited, with the best parts of each used. He then added the harmony parts.
By now the song was beginning to take shape, but there was one thing that was missing. The following is an extract from the aforementioned article, as it best describes this part:
"That Pheeeooow Sound In Full: With drums, bass, acoustic guitar and a guide vocal on tape, it became obvious to everyone that the verse of 'If You Tolerate This...' needed something else - but no-one knew what. "Eventually," says Eringa, "James decided that something should be going 'pheeeooow', and then just left me and Nick Nasmyth, their keyboard player, to see what we could come up with!"
What Nick and Dave came up with was, in the end, almost unrecognisable as a keyboard part. "All the reviews of the single said 'there's this spectral guitar effect in the verse'," he complains, "but it's actually a Wurlitzer electric piano, put into my Korg MS20, distorted beyond all piano-ness and filtered live using both the low- and high-pass filters, with resonance set really high to get that extreme distortion. It was a live, kind of organic thing - him hitting the chords and me turning the knobs! Because the filters would sweep back too far, we had to record chords one and three, and then go back and do chords two and four. We disciplined ourselves to do the whole thing live. It's too easy just to go into Pro Tools and take one good one and copy it, and then it doesn't sound as real or earthy." "
James has since said (Renfrew Ferry Gig, 2002 [3]) that he wanted it to sound like a comet visiting the Earth, and then a comet leaving Earth. He has said this in various, but also adding "...pretentious as Fuck" with a smile.
The record company then visited the Manics at Rockfield Studios to check the band's progress. James commented on how they had this song kicking around and it was sounding great. Eringa and the band had five minutes to hastily put together a monitor mix for the record company. Eringa comments on how lucky they were to "fluke a good one". The company loved it and immediately said it should be the leading single, a statement that bemuzed the band and producer Eringa - after all, it was little more than a B-Side to them.
In May, the song was mixed at Air Studios in London. The mixing sessions were long, Eringa comments: "It had been the longest album they'd ever done, and they were all quite tired. James had a very clear idea of what was in his head, and you either got it or you didn't. By now 'Tolerate' was coming out as the front runner for the single, and we were starting to think it was a good idea, so when we went in to mix it the pressure was really on. It took a while, as well: normally I only take a day to mix a track, but a couple of tracks took more than two days, which is horribly bloated and I'm terribly ashamed of it!"
The song was tidied up, with panning going onto the soon to be infamous "pheeeeeoow" sound, and a few effects and reverb through a Leslie speaker were added to the end of the song as it was not quite exploding into colour. The most important change to the song was the introduction of a third chorus, at the record company's behest, which again adds to the wonderful climax of the song. This did present a few issues, such as arrangement and getting the drumbeat into the arrangement to everybody's desire, as Eringa comments:
"The most important change which was made to 'Tolerate' at the mixing stage was the addition of a third chorus, at the record company's behest. "There were some complications because of things happening between the beat, which made it easiest to edit it in SADiE at the mix. Rob Stringer came down and we just kept cutting it up in SADiE until there was an arrangement that everyone was happy with," recalls Eringa. "Now, looking back at it, it's a really obvious arrangement. It just basically goes verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle eight/chorus/outro.""
After all the trials and tribulations of a four-month gestation period, 'If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next' was finally released in August 1998. Eringa's hard work, and that of the band, was rewarded by first-week sales of 156,000 in the UK, and the single duly went straight in at the top of the charts.
For more in depth information relating to the equipment used etc please read the article that this has been based on at: [4]
| Manic Street Preachers |
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Band members: James Dean Bradfield - Nicky Wire - Sean Moore |
| Former members: Flicker (Miles Woodward) - Richey James Edwards |
| Discography |
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| Albums: Generation Terrorists - Gold Against the Soul - The Holy Bible - Everything Must Go - This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours - Know Your Enemy - Lifeblood |
| EPs: New Art Riot - Life Becoming a Landslide - God Save the Manics |
| Compilations: Forever Delayed - Lipstick Traces |
| Preceded by "No Matter What" by Boyzone |
UK Singles Chart Number 1 single August 30, 1998 for 1 week |
Succeeded by "Bootie Call" by All Saints |
