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Mon 07 Jul 2006Preacher man takes pilgrimage of his ownOn his solo album, James Dean Bradfield missed the creative tension of the Manic Street Preachers, he tells Tony Clayton-Lea.Not to put too fine a point on it, but Manic Street Preachers came out of the Welsh valleys and made music that meant something to many people. They were fiercely intelligent firebrands inspired by The Clash, Situationist sloganeering and far too many European philosophers. The Manics were famous for several things, not least being their initial bloody-minded manifesto (long since shredded) of breaking up at the point of selling one million copies of their debut album. They became infamous for a while when their guitarist Richey Edwards carved the slogan "4 Real" into his arm with a knife; they became objects of sympathy when shortly afterwards, in February 1995, Edwards disappeared without a trace (he is now officially presumed dead).