Withdrawn Traces

by Sara Hawys Roberts

  ‘When I came home I was so excited to see him, and couldn’t wait to pick up where we left off, but when we actually met up, he ended it on the spot,’ recalls Claire, who was broken-hearted at the time. ‘I begged him not to and he had tears in his eyes and kept repeating “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” over and over without much explanation. But I knew it was because he couldn’t deal with the inadequacy and jealousy that relationships made him prey to.

  ‘Those themes and issues in those letters to me are apparent in his later lyrics. When I would read things in the press about him being anti-love, it just didn’t sound like him at all. He was trying to be cold-hearted and denying that other layer of himself, that of a true romantic. It wasn’t his essence; it wasn’t his true heart, and denying that must have made him really unhappy.’

  ‘Girls – I dunno, what a pile of shit. But they also look so fucking beautiful. I mean sometimes I see a girl I’ve been obsessed with and it makes me feel brilliant all day. Claire made me feel brilliant but I couldn’t let the things she said not bug me. Even on a really low level of importance – say music. They just like a tune – I want more. On Saturday this really horny girl came up to me and just as I thought “Fuck, she’s horny” she asked me to dance to the Cult! Stupid ain’t it? And they think I’m stupid for wanting too much.’

  Richey, letter to Mark Hambridge, 1989

  Earlier that year, before Richey had started seeing Claire, he’d attempted some dates with a few girls, but with limited success. We speak to some of them and learn that he was invariably the perfect gentleman – opening car doors, paying for their drinks and walking them home at night.

  In October 1987, however, Mark Hambridge received a letter in which Richey detailed one of his disastrous forays into the dating world. Richey was then nearly 20, yet his tone suggests someone much younger. It has often been said, when people have been describing him, that it appeared he was missing a layer of skin. In the bulk of Richey’s letters to Mark, his main grievance is with the opposite sex and the dating world. He doesn’t hold back in expressing what he thinks about the disappointing ways of ‘girls’. An overly idealistic and sensitive teenager comes to the fore in this autumn letter.

  It shows Richey beginning the night positively, enjoying himself as he emerges from his usual introversion, but the episode soon transforms into what he feels is public humiliation – once the males in the party start highlighting Richey’s alleged naïvety and inexperience with women. They take the mick and happily neglect him – and his date Karen goes along with the peer pressure and walks away with the gang of males.

  Richey’s reaction to how others perceive him is one of confusion, disarray and hurt. He also conflates his idealised take on love with his equally idealistic appreciation of guitar-based music, neither of which he claims those around him can match, nor understand.

  Within this letter, composed well in advance of his fame with the Manic Street Preachers, are the basic elements that would make Richey such a magnetic figure to many. Surrounded by boorish reactions to his awkwardness and sensitivity, rather than give in to peer pressure, he stands his ground, brandishing his differences as something dear and worth keeping.

  We get an early glimpse of Richey’s formula for beating the odds, and surpassing his peers. ‘Kris’, of the now largely forgotten Cardiff indie group Papa’s New Faith, might have had all the girls and the attention then, but by deploying greater intellect and sensitivity, Richey would trump them all, in his own bid for fame and recognition – a personal success rooted in his superior love of music and truth. It was the world that would have to change, and come around to his unique way of thinking and perceiving.

  ‘I will bring the whole edifice down on their unworthy heads.’

  John Morlar in The Medusa Touch

  – quoted in Richey’s archive, 1994

  Waiting on the horizon was the vehicle that would facilitate his transformation and become his salvation. With their anti-love credo, the Manic Street Preachers’ musical aspirations would provide the perfect way out of Richey’s relationship impasse.

  ‘Forget girls, they are too complex,’ wrote Richey in late 1988 to Mark Hambridge. ‘Don’t know about you but I’ve just about given up. I think you must concentrate on going to America, as I must my guitar. We must both have complete blinkered vision and not allow anything to interfere in it. If we fall in love … we will have given up the chance to affect any kind of change.’

  As Richey’s second year in Swansea drew to a close, former housemate Jemma Hine shares a memory which has stayed with her over the ensuing years. ‘It was late at night and I could hear ping, ping, ping coming from the room next door. It was a really horrible noise, so I got up and knocked on the door and saw Rich sitting on the edge of the bed in total darkness, with a new guitar he must have bought. So I said, “What are you doing?” and he said totally sincerely, “Jemma, I’m going to be in a rock band …”’

  Chapter 5

  Drop Your Life and Pick up Your Soul

  ‘Imagine just driving into towns, flinging open cold mechanical van doors and outpouring the energy of youth. A band: a belief – a feeling – of energy – of hate and war – of love and peace – of attitude. Rickenbackers and Les Pauls diving onto stage, capturing bodies tricked by acid house, re-establishing the bonds of youth, accentuating generation gaps, vital and burning. Go on stage and kick their zero whiteness into submission – make them feel like you did when you saw your best ever concert.’

  Richey’s archive, 1988

  Richey’s entry into the Manic Street Preachers is not quite so shrouded in mystery as was his departure, but the facts vary, depending on who you talk to and what you read and would like to believe.

  ‘I’m not 100 per cent certain myself as to when Richard became a fully fledged member,’ admits Rachel Edwards. ‘He was on the periphery for a while, and it seemed he had one foot in and one foot out when the band was in its infancy.’

  Ever searching for that ‘perfect band’, Richey was constantly on the lookout for new artists locally and any seeds of potential greatness emanating from South Wales itself. Having waited in the wings, watching for encouraging signs that the Manic Street Preachers were the band to back, by 1989 he had fully aligned himself with three friends from Blackwood.

  ‘Down in Swansea, he was the music aficionado. He’d always have heard of a band before anyone else, and always had their records first,’ remembers Simon Cross. ‘He’d talk about Birdland before anyone had even heard of them. He had a love of music, its theory and the message it could convey – which was much more passionate than the average person. He’d be down the university shop first thing on a Wednesday morning buying all the music papers. It was an obsession. He knew everything about every band.’

  Richey knew that he carried inside him something precious; a vision of what might come true given the right formula. He sought a band who could share his principles; political and aesthetic. Nothing but the best would do.

  James Dean Bradfield was born on 21 February 1969 to Monty and Sue Bradfield of Pontllanfraith. His arrival created a degree of disharmony between the couple when they were unable to agree on a name for their newborn son. As an avid moviegoer, Monty threw Hollywood names into the ring, with the proud father initially opting for Clint Eastwood. Sue refused point blank, and Monty compromised, with James Dean making it onto the birth certificate.

  Sue Bradfield’s sister, Jenny, had given birth to Sean Anthony Moore, seven months previously on 30 July 1968. More than blood ties would bond the cousins, when Sean moved into the Bradfield household during his parents’ divorce. Each an only child, the boys were like brothers, sharing bunkbeds throughout their time in primary school and high school.

  A mile down the road in nearby Oakdale lived Nicholas Allen Jones. Born on 20 January 1969 to parents Allen and Irene Jones of Park Terrace, Nicky had an older brother, Patrick, born in 1965.

  All four future band members attended Pontllan
fraith Primary School. Richey and Sean were in the same academic year, and Nicky and James in the year below them, but it was the latter pair, who were in the same class, who formed a strong friendship from the outset.

  Nicky reached a height of six foot three during his teenage years, and his gangly frame and long legs led to his nickname of Nicky Wire. Built for speed, it seemed a football career beckoned him, and at 14 he captained the Welsh Schoolboys XI before going on to be offered trials by both Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal.

  At senior school James became the victim of a bullying campaign which mainly focused on his small stature and his lazy eye, for which he earned the nickname ‘Crossfire’. By his own admission, he was a ‘Woody Allen-esque little nerd’. To compensate for his short stature, he began to turn himself into the archetypal stocky Valleys male. With his dedication to weight-lifting and a natural flair for running – especially the steeplechase – James went on to develop considerable athletic prowess. Assuming a ‘hard man’ image and spurred on by the Falklands War, an early dream was to enlist in the military.

  During his adolescence, Sean participated far less in sport. His enthusiasm was reserved for music. His considerable musical talent led to involvement with the South Wales Jazz Orchestra, where he played the trumpet and cornet. During the 1984–5 miners’ strike, he played while marching alongside NUM strikers down the streets of Blackwood.

  Nicky’s hopes of a future in football were dashed by injuries to his back and knee. He began writing poetry and lyrics instead. The first he named ‘Aftermath’, which he later described as ‘a real doggerel diatribe against Margaret Thatcher’. James, too, had changed direction, transferring his energies into music after an increasing interest in punk rock – especially The Clash – overtook any dreams of a military career. Behind closed curtains in his parents’ front room, he taught himself guitar and developed the skills required to be a lead singer.

  ‘The way the miner’s strike ended had a massive effect on us,’ James was to admit. ‘At that point we hated words like “sincerity”, “passion”, “ideology”, “belief” – we just wanted to turn all those words into something else. We wanted to be so intelligent that we’d never get bludgeoned – as our history was bludgeoned and beaten into the ground.’

  James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore formed the Manic Street Preachers in 1986. In the years before Richey, others were tested out. One was bassist Miles ‘Flicker’ Woodward, who played nine gigs with them before departing amicably in spring 1987. ‘I left because they were going more pop – I just wanted to go more hardcore,’ he would say in a later interview. ‘We used to like a lot of the same groups, but the others were also into indie while I liked a lot of heavy metal and American punk.’

  Another incarnation saw them adopt the indie trend for female-fronted guitar bands set by the likes of Altered Images, The Primitives and Talulah Gosh. They recruited Nicky Wire’s then girlfriend, Jenny Watkins-Isnardi, as lead vocalist, changing their name to Betty Blue, after the French art-house film based on a chaotic woman’s descent into madness. After three months, the trio dropped Jenny and became the Manic Street Preachers once again.

  For James, staying a three-piece was never an option, it was ‘too much like The Jam’ for his liking. He would later say, ‘It was always meant to be four; the two gorgeous wingers, the stalwart in the middle and the drummer.’

  ‘We’re haunted by the way we looked – the symmetry – the four of us – everything was perfect.’

  Nicky Wire, 2004

  As James was front man and lead guitarist, many saw the band as his baby. After Crosskeys College, he and Sean remained in Blackwood. James worked nights behind the bar at local rock and metal hotspot Newbridge Memorial Hall, while Sean took a desk job at Islwyn Borough Council.

  After Nicky Wire made his way to Swansea University, the band took a brief hiatus then regrouped the following year. Mark Hambridge remembers 1988 as the time when Richey formed more concrete ties with the band. ‘Richard and Nick got to know each other better when Nick arrived at Swansea University. Nick knew James and Sean well, so when the two came home, we’d all hang out together, drinking, laughing and talking about the world around us, but most importantly how to change it.’

  Richey, Mark, the three Manics and a couple more local boys in Blackwood set up a movement called The Blue Generation. It was an attempt to get something artistic, creative and political happening in the town. Taking inspiration from the Beat writers – Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kesey – the new collective began to write fiction, poetry, plays and journalism.

  They had all seen a Channel 4 documentary celebrating the tenth anniversary of punk two years earlier. Directed by the founder of Factory Records, Anthony Wilson, it inspired an ambition in them to ignite a punk-rock music revival, which they gave the name ‘Bluebeat’. (In their provincial innocence, they didn’t know they shared their moniker with a famous Jamaican record label of the 1960s.)

  The Manic Street Preachers were firmly at the forefront of this movement. Mark and Richey were part of the writing division. They called themselves ‘Denny Blue’ and ‘Ritchie Vee’, and set out with an all-encompassing and purposeful attack on the world at large.

  ‘I want kids to look at Bluebeat and wish they could have been around when this generation takes off. And it will. To change something, to change people you either have to antagonise or energise them. Make them want to start a band, quit their job, cut their hair even. If you don’t do that you fail. I hate clubs, I hate dancing to dance records. I hate those words that say nothing. God it was brilliant seeing the press. We can substitute all that Gothic bullshit for a beatific crescent of awareness, of choice. We are a suburban cut too deep to heal, a strait-jacket too tight to breathe. People will try to write us off, put no faith in us, laugh at us. We are a state offence cos we care. We can substitute all this acceptance / apathy for positivism. Ok I know there’s nothing worthwhile happening in the world but we can take it down and make it happen.’

  Richey, letter to Mark Hambridge, 1988

  ‘Before he joined, Richey was a fan of the Manic Street Preachers, or the MSP as he used to call them,’ Simon Cross recalls. ‘I remember going over to his house and he’d carved “I’M GOING DOWN TO SUICIDE ALLEY” into his desk. He thought they had great potential.

  ‘He came home from a weekend in Blackwood once, really upset because the boys had decided to turn their backs on rock music and form a hip-hop band. Apparently, James was really into Public Enemy at the time. Richey was gutted because he didn’t think people would take the band seriously if they were rapping.’

  By late spring 1988, The Blue Generation’s musical division was beginning to gather momentum. Judging by their first piece of public press in Cardiff listings paper Impact in May 1988, Ritchie Vee was very much a part of the band.

  ‘The Blue Generation’ is a definite body of ideas and people, we are: – Seany Dee, Jamie Kat, Nicky Wire, Ritchie Vee (The Manic Street Preachers), Rusty Blueheart, Stevie-boy Gee, Tariq Tennessee, as well as these names we have a posse of howl-spirited bluebeats cruising the zero sidewalks of Blackwood, dropping their lives and picking up their souls and declaring that, this is the groove! Dig it kats or buy a body bag. So you want us to put our money where our mouths are. We will, but for a short while we will proceed to protrude our tight arses and heroic bulges on deep blue nights. Brahms And Liszt, Newport (town centre) 2nd June, is one of these nights. Come and watch the Manic Street Preachers and witness us kickstart the youth into the purest state of ignition ever seen. See the wave crash into Newport and replenish the burnt out adrenalin reserves of a zero generation. Steal a car, hitch a cloud and motor on down to the beat of the street.

  Seany Dee & Jamie Kat, Blackwood

  Despite Richey being listed as a Manic Street Preacher, their self-financed debut single ‘Suicide Alley’, released weeks later, showed only James, Nick and Sean on the cover. The three posed in the alleyway in leather jackets,
tight white T-shirts and jeans. Richey got a photographer’s credit, and the chance to freeze-frame the band before he impacted them fully.

  ‘I think he was a silent member at the time,’ remembers Adrian Wyatt. ‘In the background contributing with some lyric ideas here and there, and helping them out practically – like hiring vans and driving them to gigs, because he was the only one with a licence.

  ‘He was a bit like an unofficial manager. He would get to the venues early and plaster the tables with black and white photocopies of his collages, and the band’s Bluebeat manifesto about inciting revolution and burning down the House of Lords. I do think the band wanted him on stage with them, but he hung back a bit for whatever reason, maybe because he knew he had his final year of university coming up, or maybe because he felt his guitar playing wasn’t up to scratch at the time?’

  During Richey’s final academic year, with graduation and the world of work looming, he wrote to Mark: ‘How’s the job hunting going? Fuck knows what I’m gonna do after university. I hope to get a van and tour this shithole country, driving Le Preachers to fame and fortune.’

  Having played driver, promoter, designer and photographer with ease, Richey soon learned that becoming a bona fide guitarist was not so simple. He became discouraged by his lack of progress, later telling the music press: ‘I can’t understand bands who like practising. I’m a pretty sad person, but anybody who practises guitar in their bedroom is a fucking sight sadder than me!’ In another interview he claimed he disliked his guitar so intensely, that ‘I can’t even be bothered to smash the fucking thing. It doesn’t deserve death.’