Manic Street Preachers, Indie's autodidacts, provoke the masses

21 January 1991: Number 36 in our series of the 50 key events in the history of indie musicWith lines like "I laughed when Lennon got shot", Manic Street Preachers' first single for Heavenly, Motown Junk, was a shot across the bows, a kamikaze manifesto, and an act of flamboyant heresy, establishing the Welsh quartet as indie's provocateurs-in-chief. Infusing the outsider spirit of British indie with the outrageous spectacle of Public Enemy and Guns N' Roses, they machine-gunned disdain at their...

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