Hot Press was there when the Manic Street Preachers played in front of Fidel Castro

Hot Press got up close to Fidel Castro on February 17, 2001 when our man Stuart Clark journeyed to Havana to see the Manic Street Preachers play their historic Karl Marx Theatre gig.
"There's obviously something contradictory about a regime that, on one hand, espouses hardline socialist principles, and on the other allows rampant capitalism," James Dean Bradfield told Stuart beforehand over a cuppa. "Everything has to be measured against the fact that, for the past 30 years, this tiny island has been bullied and intimidated by its superpower neighbour. What I admire about Fidel Castro is that rather than caving into them, he's told America to 'fuck off!'
"The Bay of Pigs/Cold War scenario says an awful lot about the United States. Their arrogance in thinking that you need McDonald's and Burger King to lead a fulfilled life is breathtaking. They go on about a lack of human rights in Cuba, without ever acknowledging the superb health system they have, or the educational standards, which are higher than any other country in the region.
"Worse than that, they're willing to break international law and maintain a blockade against a country whose biggest crime is not wanting to have their culture taken away from them."
Says Stuart today: “I have very mixed feelings about Fidel – on one hand, Cuba has a brilliant health service but on the other, I met a nurse who was forced to prostitute herself because she was only earning $30 a month – but I’ll never forget the roar from the crowd when he duded in with his brother Raul and the country’s Minister for Culture looking like a cross between ZZ Top and The Clash in his military fatigues.
“Afterwards, the Manics apologised to him for the noise levels, and he shot back: ‘Nothing is as loud as war!’ Fidel didn't go to the celebratory all-night party the Manics threw in the Hotel Nacional, which is perhaps why one of his very drunken aides took me to a window at 6am, pointed at the coast road below and said, ‘There will be a Sheraton, there will be a Hilton… The land has already been sold. Nothing will happen now, but when Fidel dies everything will change. The Americans will come.’ I suspect they will.”
Asked for his thoughts on the gig a year later, Nicky Wire told Mr. Clark: "Cuba is one of the last places in the world with a totally different political system and we wanted to see it. It wasn’t a carte blanche endorsement of Fidel Castro, although I have to say there were some things, some remnants of human spirit, which seem to have disappeared everywhere else.
"The thing about the Cuban revolution is that it was so iconic. The hiding out in the mountains, the riding into Havana on donkeys… it’s all on film. Half, maybe three-quarters of it was a romantic gesture on our part. Somebody asked recently, ‘What would you have been like parachuted behind enemy lines age 19?’ and I said, ‘Fucking useless!’ I’m always self-critical about my lack of urgency. It’s alright for me to sit around being a thinker, but Camus and Orwell actually put their bollocks on the line and went to the front in the Spanish Civil War.
"It wasn’t from the higher echelons, but two weeks before we flew over a fax arrived asking, ‘Do you think Nicky will be wearing a dress on this trip?’ It was a good communist subtle hint! Not feeling the need to be a revolutionary among revolutionaries, I settled for a feather boa instead!
"The gig itself was majestic. It was like 1972 in Sacramento watching The Eagles. You had people playing air guitar, black girls disco dancing to us and Fidel nodding along. The disquieting bit came afterwards when you realised that the propaganda machine was in full swing. You realise who you’re dealing with when you say, ‘Sorry, we can’t come to lunch because we’ve got to fly home’, and he goes, ‘We’ll hold the plane!’ I don’t know if he’s well briefed or just takes a keen interest in everything, but Fidel was completely on the button. There were lots of things – like him knowing the subtle differences between England, Wales and Scotland – that impressed me. He also serves a mean slice of cake!"