Yes the first track on The Holy Bible is an onslaught which kind of sums up the entire mood of the album in one song. Written by Richey Edwards from the perspective of a prostitute. It samples the 1993 documentary Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns, by Beeban Kidron, about the prostitution trade.
The song starts off with a sample from the aforementioned documentary “You can buy her, you can buy her. This one’s here, this one’s here, this one’s here and this one’s here
Everything’s for sale.”
For sale? Dumb cunt’s same dumb questions.
Oh virgins? Listen, all virgins are liars honey.
And I don’t know what I’m scared of or what I even enjoy.
Dulling, get money, but nothing turns out like you want it to.
And in these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything.
For 200 anyone can conceive a God on video.
He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock.
Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want.
I eat and I dress and I wash and I still can say thank you
Puking – shaking – sinking I still stand for old ladies
Can’t shout, can’t scream, hurt myself to get pain out.
I ‘T’ them, 24:7, all year long.
Purgatory’s circle, drowning here, someone will always say yes.
Funny place for the social, for the insects to start caring.
Just an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff.
And in these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything
For 200 anyone can conceive a God on video.
He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock,
Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want
If you want.
I eat and I dress and I wash and I can still say thank you
Puking – shaking – sinking I still stand for old ladies.
Can’t shout, can’t scream, I hurt myself to get pain out
Power produces desire, the weak have none.
There’s no lust in this coma even for a fifty
Solitude, solitude, the 11th commandment.
The only certain thing that is left about me,
There’s no part of my body that has not been used.
Pity or pain, to show displeasure’s shame,
Everyone I’ve loved or hated always seems to leave.
And in these plagued streets of pity, you can buy anything.
For 200 anyone can conceive a God on video.
He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock,
tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want,
If you want.
Power produces desire, the weak have none.
There’s no lust in this coma even for a fifty.
Solitude, solitude, the 11th commandment.
Don’t hurt, just obey, lie down, do as they say.
May as well be heaven this hell, smells the same.
These sunless afternoons I can’t find myself
[Sampled Outro]
Two dollars you rub her tits
Three dollars you rub her ass
Five dollars you can play with her pussy
Or you can lick her tits
Choice is yours
‘Prostitution of The Self. The majority of your time is spent doing something you hate to get something you don’t need. Everyone has a price to buy themselves out of freedom.’
Richey Edwards
While the word ‘yes’ might naturally be taken as a positive affirmation, it is also a warning shot of complicity and moral resignation. As Bradfield declared in a concert at the London Astoria in December 1994, ‘yes’ is “the least progressive word in the English language.” How are we to fathom such contradictory meanings? This is the work of The Holy Bible – an impossible goal perhaps but one that the album explores with unusual intensity.
Yusuf Sayad
In my research for manic Street Preachers I came across Yusuf Sayad who I have to say has researched extensively on this album.
‘“Yes”, for example: we had just read this article about prostitutes in Nottingham and it was written around that… Prostitutes are derided by society as a very low form of human life, but most people do the same thing every day of their lives – they just don’t do it in a sexual way. But in all honesty, the lyrics are about being in a band and prostituting yourself every day. It completely is. There’s one line in there, “There’s not a part of my body that has not been used.” We feel like that really, being in a band – there’s not much left with any purity.’
Nicky Wire
In the modern age, the 10 Commandments have crumbled away. We wanted to reflect how the world’s changed and rewrite the 10 Commandments. It’s not anti-religious as such, it’s just us saying how we think the world has become and how human nature has been destroyed.’
Nicky Wire, interview in kerrang!
With ‘Yes’, Manic Street Preachers achieved one of the most astonishing opening songs of any rock music album, collaging both a lyrical and musical style to create a vivid and urgent sound. Taking cues from barbed post-punk, the dynamics of grunge and introducing extreme images, with excerpts from documentary television and newspaper journalism, as well as personal experiences, the aesthetic of The Holy Bible is established. And with references to ‘virgins’, ‘plagued streets’, ‘purgatory’, a ‘commandment’ and a ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ that ‘smell the same’ a world divested of divinity, with a scripture all its own, is made palpable.
Yusuf Sayad
Prostitution is illegal in the U.K. but it still operates and advertises online here is City Sauna with a fetish list:
As you can see from these adverts which are legitimate women are bought and sold as a commodity and men too to a lesser degree.
Everything is for sale, desire is purchasing power.
The internet has only exacerbated the problem with pornography and instant gratification.
Love is only a dopamine hit etc.
Montage of the sex industry from articles of sex shops in a Sheffield magazine such as La Chambre (swingers club), sex shops and brothels (City Sauna).
Images from lingerie magazines, Zenith (repulsion to a transwoman), bondage and a scene from Crash (arousal to car crashes).
Text “I am not a client, a customer.” taken from I Daniel Blake film poster.
Incidentally there is also a nod to prostitution in that movie when Katie a single mother turns to prostitution to “get by”.
A film that is a searing indictment of our dehumanising benefit system and lack of empathy for the individual.
This image was inspired by the journey project which was about walking through town and documenting what I saw.
My main preoccupation was the sex industry and unemployment two polar opposites that actually thrive off each other.
The first building I drew is of the Sheffield job centre a building I know only too well.
I used the phrase “the importance of being earnest” a novel by Oscar Wilde which oasis then used as the importance of being idle.
I changed it to “the impotence of being idle.” A comment on how the unemployed are viewed and how not working could affect the view of usefulness of an individual (or a collective).
Arbeit Macht Frei (work makes you free) was a sign at concentration camps which in this case was actually literal. People survived by being useful.
A good example is from the film Schindler’s List where Oskar Schindler convinces the commandant not to execute the children as their tiny hands can clean inside the bowls in the factory.
The sign is over a brothel called Paradise in Sheffield which is a bit ironic as the work provided here doesn’t make the women free but exploited by an industry that placates a man’s insatiable need for sex.
I have added Lost to Paradise which is a reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost which in itself concerns itself with the fall of man.
There is an attitude that sex work is work and women need to be protected and that women can be empowered working as a stripper exploiting men.
Spearmint Rhino in Sheffield is such an establishment (now closed during the pandemic and now a Sports bar).
Can a jobcentre pursue these jobs as employment for young women and as a parent would you be concerned or would you be happy they have gained employment?
https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2010/08/02/sex-work-ads-banned-from-job-centres/
I was looking for a job is a line from The Smiths “Heaven knows I’m miserable now.”
I was looking for a job then I found a job and heaven knows I’m miserable now the lyric goes.
Finally a homeless man negotiates his terms and he will work for minimum wage literally beggars can be choosy and showing just how close to poverty the working class can be.
https://www.npi.org.uk/blog/income-and-poverty/work-poverty-what-it-what-it-isnt-why-it-matters/
Really happy with how the Yes panel has turned out and used elements from the Mondrian merged with the dancing girl silhouette the Yes sign from the bank.
A quote from Nicky Wire in regards to the song.
I did a crit recently and showed the yes panels, apart from the tutor Yuen the class were all female and one of the criticisms of the image s was that I used a woman to be objectified within the frame of the Mondrian construct.
Maybe the context of the song was needed but I took the advice and looked into the male side of prostitution which is kind of alluded to in the lyrics: He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock.
“Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want.
He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42265838
It is estimated there are as many as 100,000 sex workers across the UK, and about 20% of them are male. Some of these men see their work as a positive choice, but for the most vulnerable it can be little more than a means to survive.
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