136. Manic Street Preachers
Liberty Stadium
28 May 2016
Llanelli. Gateway to the Gower and the closest thing South Wales has to the Mos Eisley Cantina. We should’ve known. The clues were all there. A spur-of-the-moment decision to road trip it to see the Manic Street Preachers in Swansea, except, crucially, we forgot that Swansea only has about four hotels, all of which had been booked out by die-hard fans and travelling rugby teams since 2006.
Our fallback was a modest 13-mile detour to Llanelli’s finest establishment, with a name that sounded like it was a hotel jazz bar in Vegas from the early Seventies. The truth however, was that was where any comparison to sophisticated rat-packery ended. The “reception” (and I use that word as generously as possible) was accessed by walking across a warped laminate dance floor, beneath a spinning disco ball, before being greeted at a bar that doubled as check-in desk, pub, nightclub and, presumably, the object of several crime scenes.
The locals hadn’t seen anything like us since the Queen’s Jubilee. Two English blokes walking in without rugby shirts or criminal records? Suspicion levels were high. The barmaid, sorry receptionist, eyed us like we’d just tried to pay in Yen. Explaining we were in town for the Manics gig seemed to settle them a bit. Sort of. I still think half of them assumed we were undercover bailiffs.
The gig itself was glorious chaos. This was a homecoming of sorts, and the Liberty Stadium was packed to the rafters with emotional national pride, overflowing pints, and a sea of grown men in cagoules screaming “You Love Us” like it was the Welsh national anthem.
James Dean Bradfield and co were treated like holy prophets returning to the valley temples. You couldn’t help but get caught up in it. One chap, resplendent in a bucket hat, punched the air and bellowed “Welsh lads rule the world!”, although he was singularly lacking any objective proof points.
Returning to our temporary hotel sanctuary-cum-hellscape, the disco was already in full flow. A flock of glammed-up race-day escapees tottered in, all fascinators and false eyelashes, like a hen do crash-landed in 2003 and no one had told them it was over.
At this point, flushed with gig euphoria and preposterous decision-making, my pal and I ordered a bottle of champagne. Not real champagne, mind, it may well have been Prosecco decanted into a Babycham bottle. But that didn’t matter. Like moths to a flame, or locals to a grievance, we became a focal point. The mums descended. The blokes scowled. And suddenly the air turned from sticky to hostile.
Let me be clear: at one point, we were invited “outside” by a man with a neck wider than his head and the conversational range of a KFC Bargain Bucket. We politely declined.
By 3am, the disco finally died and we retreated to our sticky-carpeted, low-ceilinged rooms with dignity vaguely intact and teeth accounted for. However, never again, Llanelli. Never again.