Little Baby Nothings
Manic Street Preachers by Valerie Phillips
A limited edition photo book published by Longer Moon Farther, summer 2024.
“It was a bitterly cold day in late winter March 1991 – Vox magazine are coming down for a photo shoot – like everything back then it feels important and vital – then a ball of American energy bursts through the door – wide eyed optimism and thankfully some severe sarcasm are quickly evident, It doesn’t take long to realise that some magic is happening.” Nicky Wire
“When I was a baby photographer obsessed with records and seeing bands, I was asked to get a train to a small town in Wales to take pictures of Manic Street Preachers. I hadn’t yet figured out how to take the kind of pictures I wanted to take. So I made it up. That day. With the beautiful Manics. We were both in our own starting-out all-consuming little worlds and now those worlds collided.” Valerie Phillips
Manic Street Preachers and photographer/artist Valerie Phillips have announced details of a collaborative photo book out 28th June 2024.
Little Baby Nothings collects together many previously unseen photos of the band in the period leading up to and immediately following the release of their classic debut album Generation Terrorists.
Following a first meeting thirty-three years ago in Manic Street Preachers’ hometown Blackwood, Valerie Phillips was given unprecedented access to the most exciting rock‘n’roll band of their era at the point they exploded onto the national stage.
Shooting the band regularly in bedrooms, hotel rooms, on video shoots and in venues, Phillips perfectly captured their burning intensity during the period, as well as the unshakeable bond that the quartet shared off stage.
In the years covered in Little Baby Nothings, Manic Street Preachers went from a controversial, cult concern to regularly appearing on Top Of The Pops and at gigs in front of an increasingly fervent fanbase. Photo shoots took place in multiple venues on the British gig circuit that are now razed and all but forgotten, those whites-of-the-eyes clubs from Norwich to Northampton that formed the backbone of the British live scene.
Designed by longtime Manics collaborator Mark Farrow, Little Baby Nothings collects Valerie Phillips photos from 1991 and 1992. The book came about after Wire found prints of the band in their early days in the Manics archive that he had long thought lost. After getting in touch with Phillips to share them, she dug into her own archive and unearthed even more never before seen pictures. The result is an insightful, inspirational and intimate book that portrays a band out of time, utterly alone in their self-belief and in their presentation; a book where each frame reflects the inimitable chemistry between band and photographer.
Little Baby Nothings is published by Longer Moon Farther. It is limited to 2000 copies and is available on its own or as part of a bundle with a small run of t-shirts (the t-shirt is also available on its own via Manic Street Preachers website here). Very limited copies of the book will be available on the forthcoming Manic Street Preachers sold out joint headline tour of the UK with Suede. It is also available through: Art Data (UK/Europe) and Marginal Press (Japan/Asia).
Manic Street Preachers and Valerie Phillips have continued to work together in the years since the period documented in Little Baby Nothings. The band notably used images from her book Monika Monster, Future First Woman on Mars for the sleeve of their 2007 album Send Away The Tigers and associated single sleeves. She also directed the video for that album’s Autumn Song.
Valerie Phillips is a photographer and artist who regularly self publishes books (for more information, contact via Wynter In Space).
Manic Street Preachers are a rock’n’roll band from Wales.
Photo credit – Valerie Phillips/Press photo