James Dean Bradfield: ‘I was astounded by how beautiful Victor Jara’s music was’

This time the singer and guitarist, now 51, has focused his attention on Victor Jara, the Chilean singer and activist who was murdered by the army after a military coup in 1973.

Song lyrics for Even in Exile were written by the poet and playwright Patrick Jones, brother of the Manics’ Nicky Wire.

Bradfield recalls: “I think the first time I remember seeing Victor Jara’s name was on Washington Bullets, a Clash song from Sandinista! Then I remember Working Week doing a song called Venceremos.

“After that it was reading a piece about the film Missing, which had Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek in it. It was about people who disappeared in Chile.”

Over the years Jara’s name popped up again – Simple Minds dedicated their album Street Fighting Years to him, while Christy Moore, Calexico and the Welsh singer-songwriter and politician Dafydd Iwan wrote songs about him.

“He just kept coming as a reference point,” Bradfield says. “A whole chapter in Dorian Lynskey’s book 33 Revolutions Per Minute was about Victor Jara, so by then he’s somebody whose story I know. I didn’t know so much about his music, I must say, but I know the tragic arc of his story.”

Two and half years ago Bradfield discovered Jones, the older brother of Nicky Wire, was writing prose and poems about Jara. At that point, he says: “Patrick and Nicky had been going through a tough time, they had lost their mother and then their father became ill quite quickly after.”

The pair had been friends since their teens and remained close, with Bradfield regularly calling on him en route home from visits to his father in the Valleys.

“We’d just catch up every week in his living room. I said, ‘What are you up to at the moment? Have you got a play on the go?’ He said, ‘I’m just writing reams of stuff at the moment about Victor Jara. Do you remember him?’

“There was prose, there was poetry, there was almost like a little one-man play as well, just beginnings of stuff. I said, ‘How does this get published then?’ And he said to me, ‘It doesn’t, it’s just a writing exercise. There’s so much bad stuff in the air at the moment and so much sadness with my parents, I just want to write something that you can trust in’.

“I was confused by it, putting so much effort into something that was never going to be released, but then a light went off in my head.”

With bassist Wire and drummer Sean Moore wanting a two-year break from band activities, Bradfield says: “I just started thinking, ‘I could turn this into a concept album, the words are leaping off the page, it’s something I connect to and discover more about.”

Although Jones was sceptical, he let Bradfield take some of his work away. “It became songs really quickly, so we went for it,” the singer says.

Jara’s life story might be best known outside Chile for its tragic ending – rounded up with other supporters of socialist president Salvador Allende, he was tortured and then shot dead – his protest songs remain remarkably potent, not least for their poetry.

Bradfield says: “I think Patrick’s interest in Victor Jara had been kicked off by an album he picked up in a second-hand shop, called Manifesto. It’s quite a strange little album because you’ve got little excerpts before the songs which are translated into English. Pat said, ‘You should take this album because it will tell you more about Victor Jara than you thought you knew’ and I played the record and I was astounded by how beautiful it was.

“Here’s something which is broadly termed as protest songs but it didn’t fit the same form as what you usually expect protest songs to be. Usually protest singing places its feet squarely at the subject or at the accused and confronts something; these songs don’t do that, they’re beautiful and they’re inclusive and sometimes they’re more inclined towards reconciliation and peace. I was struck how feminine his music was, that became the new part of my obsession.”.

He says he chose to include Jara’s own song La Partida midway through the album with considerable care. “I was never going to go down the Graceland route of trying to include Chilean musicians or use Chilean instruments in an age where you can get accused of cultural appropriation. I am not an authority on Victor Jara. Even though I know a lot about him and I’ve listened to his songs more than anybody else’s music in the last few years, this is still an outsider’s point of view, this is still somebody from let’s face it a European perspective looking at somebody in admiration, but also looking at it in confused horror how everything ended up.

“I included La Partida because I wanted something to go towards the Victor Jara estate. I did want a Chilean voice in there but I still wanted it to be interpreted by me. I did try to sing some of his songs but it was problematic, it made me an empty vessel when I tried to sing his songs. It’s hard to sing those words about somebody else’s country, somebody else’s history, in my voice. I tried it once very roughly and I quickly realised it was pointless, I could not sing those songs with that conviction, with the experience and with that inflection that he did. I put that idea down straight away, but it left me wanting to do a Victor Jara composition, so I did La Partida. Since I’d become so obsessed with his musical voice it felt like a good thing to do.”

Being freed from the pressure that he has in the Manics of having to write at least three singles per album was, he says, was a relief. “After three tracks it was obvious I was writing an album that was slightly proggy and slightly conceptual and it was about somebody who, let’s face it, most people don’t know about, and I thought I’m not going to try and dilute any of that, I’m not going to try and write a single, I’m happy with this as a loose concept album and if something comes out of the wash that somebody can play on the radio then fine, but it did free me up straight away.

“All the music that I’ve loved from when I was a kid was kind of inspired by that purpose from a band to write a song that’s going to break them. Whether it be Spirit of Radio by Rush, White Man in Hammersmith Palais by The Clash or Fight The Power by Public Enemy, all of those bands knew when they wrote them that there was some massive chance of connecting with other people who hadn’t bought their records yet. I love that challenge...but once you take it away then you do feel different and it gives you something new to explore.”

Even in Exile is out on August 14 on Montyray.