A few months later, in September 1989, Rachel Edwards saw her brother play live for the first time at Cardiff’s Radcliffe Square Club. ‘Around that time Richard was buying stencil kits to decorate some of my mum’s old blouses and encouraging the band to bring their clothes over so he could write on their shirts too. When I saw them play the Square, they came out with slogans all over them and did a really frantic, energetic set – but there were only about five of us in the audience, and about three of us paying attention.’
After playing a handful of South Wales gigs, including TJ’s in Newport, Richey knew the next logical step for the Manics. ‘We saw bands do all the pubs where we lived, do two hundred gigs a year, get really big local followings, and they’re all under the illusion that somebody from Sony Music will be driving through the middle of South Wales and go, “Hey, what a good band! Let’s sign here!”’
By contrast, within months of his graduation, and due to his relentless PR offensive, the Manics were performing in London, courtesy of Richey’s pen pal Kevin Pearce.
‘Kevin was at the heart of the fanzine circle,’ recalls Alistair Fitchett. ‘I remember him writing to me about a single he’d been sent, “Suicide Alley” – he said it wasn’t that great, but it was the letter that Richey sent him that had made him want to hear more. He said it was the kind of letter you carry around in your pocket for days because it was so enthusiastic, so passionate and inspiring and was saying all the right things. He could see with someone like Richey, who appeared so clued into the rock and roll game, that something big was going to happen for them.’
On 2 September 1989, the Manic Street Preachers played to 17 people at the Horse and Groom, an old Victorian pub in the East End. Dressed in their DIY spray-painted shirts (ENGLAND NEEDS REVOLUTION NOW / CLASSIFIED MACHINE / SUICIDE BEAT) they performed nine tracks, including ‘Suicide Alley’ and ‘Anti-Love’ – to a lukewarm reception.
Bob Stanley of Melody Maker was there and remembers the audience’s stifled laughter. ‘I was asked along by Kevin Pearce because he’d read me one of Richey’s letters and I thought there was something special in it, so it was worth going to check them out. We were laughing but only because it was so unexpected. The presentation was total Clash but they had an energy and conviction that was missing with so many other bands at the time.’
More pleased with securing a London gig than dejected by their reception, the band were delighted when they scored their first live review in Melody Maker courtesy of Stanley, and Kevin Pearce invited them back to play a further two gigs at the venue.
By now Mark Hambridge was the band’s designated driver, allowing Richey to knock back some Dutch courage before taking the stage. Mark shows us a pile of water-damaged photos from the first Horse and Groom gig. The faces of the other three Manics have been corroded, but Richey’s remains intact.
‘We used to hire a van from a nearby garage and spend the day driving down to the gig and the night driving back,’ says Mark. ‘There was another gig I drove them to in the early days in London, and Richey got drunk. We stopped at a service station on the way back, and Richey went AWOL, and we couldn’t find him. We were all looking around the service station, only to go outside and find him in the van, drunkenly doing circles of the empty car park. We were shouting for him to stop, and he only did when he bumped into a bin and dented the side of the van.
‘We got back at 6am after that gig, and in the sober light of day, we all panicked because we had to return this rental van and get the deposit back. James and I took it on ourselves to fix it. I held the door open and James punched it to get the dent out. Luckily it worked, and the rental place didn’t notice.’
Mark reveals the atmosphere in the van was always lively, with the band talking politics, music, sport and film, as well as usual laddish joking and mickey-taking. ‘I remember the boys calling Rich “Norfolk” (No-fuck) because he’d told them he’d never slept with a girl. He didn’t mind, though, it was just that kind of banter you have when you’re a group of boys together. They were really happy, innocent times.’
During the band’s early forays to London, they crossed paths with writer and film director Alan G. Parker. At the time working for the alternative punk magazine Spiral Scratch, he saw them at The Bull & Gate in Kentish Town, and became an instant convert.
‘After the gigs, they’d hang around to talk to journalists,’ says Alan. ‘A lot of people were laughing at them, because they thought they were a Clash rip-off, but I remember telling everybody “I really have just seen the next Clash!”
‘When you got talking to them, it was cemented because they had this integrity, and although they were very “boys next door”, there was another dimension to them that made them so compelling. You knew there was so much more going on underneath. I remember chatting with Richey about conspiracy theories, and how he didn’t believe Lennon got shot by a “mad fan”. He’d talk about the CIA’s covert involvement and was really clued in on what others would call conspiracy theories. He knew culture and he knew counterculture, and then some.
‘They told me they were going to sell 25 million records and split up by burning themselves alive on Top of the Pops. Well, it was Rich and Nick’s motto at least, but I remember telling James later on and he didn’t have a clue about it, he was like “What?! They’re actually serious?!”
‘Nick and Rich wanted to be really big and throw it all away, because which band would actually do that? They were out to prove a point about music, the human psyche and the world at large. To get to a massive stage and throw it back in the media’s faces. They were talking an A game, in terms of originality. They wanted to be immortal.’
‘The only monument that counts is the one already imagined as ruin.’
Andreas Huyssen, US academic
In 1998 Sean told the BBC’s Close Up documentary, ‘Richey was, for want of a better word, our minister of propaganda. He’d studied modern political history so in a way he was our think tank.’
Rachel Edwards agrees. ‘I do think Richard was the heart and soul of the band in those early days. As soon as he graduated in 1989 – he started making things happen for them. I imagine he could have joined any band and got them signed to a major label. You had lots of bands around here at the time like Funeral in Berlin, and others that faded into obscurity, but Richard gave the Manic Street Preachers his formula, and they reciprocated by letting him join the band, despite his lack of musical ability.’
‘They knew how outrageous they had to be to get attention,’ remembers Bob Stanley. ‘They said they were all teenagers and Sean was still 16 and doing his GCSES when we first met. They knew how to play the game and how to get a reaction from everyone around them.
‘Richey was definitely inspiring because he looked like a pop star, spoke like a pop star and had that extra “meta” layer where you knew he was fully in charge. He made such an impact on me that I went on to form Saint Etienne despite not being able to play an instrument. That was the point with the Manics – their whole deconstruction of the world of rock and roll.’
In their first televised interview in 1991, Richey defiantly stated: ‘Youth is just the ultimate product. We just want to mix, like, sex and politics. We’re the most original band in the last 15 years just because we don’t want to do anything that’s been done before. What we aspire to isn’t what other bands aspire to.’
But exactly what would it take for the Manic Street Preachers to ‘do what had never been done before’ and to go where no other band had dared venture? And, pertinent to Richey’s disappearance, was his commitment to propelling himself into immortal status greater than his peers?
‘I didn’t really know him well, but it seemed like he really meant everything he said in terms of going out in a blaze of glory,’ says Bob Stanley. ‘More so than the other band members, he had this need to prove he was authentic in his words, and he could walk it like he talked it. You just knew as a new band something big was going to happen for them.’
Chapter 6
Imitation Demigod
Over the ensuing years, the Manic Street Preachers were to jump through all the hoops of the music business: the radio interviews, autograph signings, TV appearances and awards ceremonies. Their adolescent dreams were realised – international tours, critical acclaim, bigger sales and plaudits than any Welsh artists of recent memory.
Leading up to this, Richey must have written to half of the London music industry. Rachel Edwards hands us a stack of correspondence from 1989 to 1991, comprising her brother’s impassioned petitioning on the band’s behalf. The letters captured Richey’s naked ambition, with the guarantee of blood, old-school rock tragedy, and the alluring promise that industry types could ‘do what they wanted’ with the young band. Intrigued by these promises, one man emerged to help them secure their major career breakthrough.
Philip Hall had created his PR company, Hall or Nothing, in 1986, winning awards for his campaigns for the Pogues and the Stone Roses. It was a family business that involved Philip’s wife, Terri, and his younger brothers, Martin and Michael. Hall was more intrigued by Richey’s written manifesto than the music it accompanied. He drove down to South Wales with Martin to watch them rehearse and then secured them a gig at the Rock Garden in London. This show earned them an offer of a record deal from a hip independent label, Heavenly Records.
Philip Hall also made the Manic Street Preachers an offer. He wanted to be their PR man – and he also wanted to manage them. Having accepted both propositions, for the next few weeks the band drove between London and South Wales for meetings and for studio sessions financed by Heavenly.
‘I remember them in the early days parking their van outside our office,’ says former Hall or Nothing press officer Caffy St Luce. ‘They were always so polite and unimposing. They’d rarely come into the office and we’d go out there with cups of tea and coffee for them. Sometimes they’d even sleep overnight in the van if needed.’
However, it soon became clear that if their thirst for world domination was to be realised, they would need to move to London. In January 1991, all four Manic Street Preachers moved in with the newly-married Philip and Terri in their house in Shepherd’s Bush. James and Sean shared one double bed, Richey and Nicky another. The Halls re-mortgaged their house to finance their efforts and began to apply their ferocious hustling skills to furthering the Manics’ cause.
It was certainly a seductive and persuasive cause. In 1991, music papers like the NME and Melody Maker were still packed with guitar bands revelling in English parochialism. It was all about the apolitical ‘shoegaze’ scene and the idea of bands passing political or social comment seemed passé. It was no longer possible to be a rock rebel.
To break that apathetic mould, new tactics were required. Yet initially the Manics’ outspoken interviews and barbed sloganeering grated on London’s musical tastemakers. Was their rhetorical brashness, their cocky sloganeering, genuine? Or was it just a knowing piss-take? If the Welsh upstarts really were more than empty blowhard bluster, where was the proof?
Richey Edwards famously upped the ante spectacularly at Norwich Arts Centre on 15 May 1991. After a rather lacklustre gig, then NME journalist Steve Lamacq, who was on the road with the band, told Richey: ‘I just don’t think a lot of people will think you’re for real.’
Richey reacted by taking a razor blade and gouging ‘4 REAL’ deep into his own arm. ‘He was dripping blood all over the floor,’ a shocked Lamacq was to report. ‘I went out and found the manager and told him to get backstage pretty damn quick.’
Richey was bandaged up, but spotting NME photographer Ed Sirrs, he rolled down the dressing and invited him to photograph his gaping wounds. Sirrs and the NME had their money shot – and Richey was taken to hospital to receive 17 stitches. As the damage was self-inflicted, Richey, ever thoughtful, was adamant all the other casualties should be seen before him.
As we discuss this infamous incident with Rachel, she places a maroon leather washbag on her mother’s living-room floor. Inside are blister packs of Prozac tablets; unopened packets of Durex, dated 1989; military face paint; Soviet-era military badges; French Paradox pills; mascara and foundation … and a small pack of double-edged razor blades.
Richey Edwards’s life trajectory arguably hinged on this brutal self-assault. Whatever their critics thought of them, it stopped people calling the Manic Street Preachers poseurs or charlatans and placed them on a plateau distinct from their peers.
Richey’s alarming self-mutilation nudged the most astute critics into understanding the subtler sensibilities that he, and the band, had on offer. They had to ask, what kind of person lay behind this act? From Sid Vicious to Iggy Pop, self-mutilation as a form of showmanship was nothing new in the world of rock, but this latest public act captured the attention of a new generation of music fans. And many were left wondering how far did Richey’s suffering extend? Was he 4 REAL in his suffering or was it part of the rock ’n’ roll package?
An NME editor, future Loaded founder James Brown, contacted known Manics fanatic Alan G. Parker, begging for the pair to take a trip to the Valleys, to sample first-hand the bleak caricature of a place which dominated the band’s fabulist back story.
‘James Brown wanted to go to Blackwood,’ says Parker. ‘We journeyed up on the train, just to see. Yes, they captured our imagination to that extent. Blackwood? They could have come from space!’
The Manics’ genre was not so much punk as ‘meta-rock’; they seemed to relish playing the music business the way Richey probably should have been playing his guitar. Acutely postmodern, Richey and the band were aware of how the music business worked and weren’t afraid to impart this knowledge at any given opportunity. Circumventing the apparent randomness or arcane formulas bestowing success or failure, they treated the affair as a game, whose rules could be known and which could be won. Nicky Wire had wasted piles of cash trying to beat the system on the slot machines during his time at university. Rather than waste endless months getting equally frustrated by provincial obscurity, it was as though Richey had swivelled the apparatus around, and invited the boys to laugh at the simplicity of the inner workings of this new and bigger game.
Yet if the band were to realise their grand vision, a cottage-industry indie label such as Heavenly Records could only take them so far. Having gigged continuously throughout 1990 and the first half of 1991, it was only after Richey’s bloodletting incident that the major record companies came calling. Before long they had signed to CBS/Sony Records. They were later to explain that there were two basic reasons for this choice. One was CBS’s previous involvement with their heroes, The Clash. The other was the enthusiasm of the pursuing A&R man, Rob Stringer.
As CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, Stringer is now one of the most powerful figures in the global music industry. In 1991, he had gone from being a graduate trainee in the marketing department of CBS Records to an A&R man, and was about to enjoy his first major success.
‘[Manic Street Preachers] were the first band I signed at CBS,’ Stringer has said. ‘I went to see them at Moles in Bath. And I loved them. When I met them as people I loved them even more. It was something I believed in passionately from the start.’
A close and lasting relationship was formed between Stringer, Philip Hall and the band. When Stringer received a rapid promotion and become head of Epic Records the following year, he took the Manics with him.
Famously, the Manics then immediately and provocatively declared their intention to make one double album that would sell 20 million copies, change the face of rock and roll and split up. With hindsight, it has been suggested that Stringer indulged their vision too readily, giving them the go-ahead to release a 73-minute double album featuring 18 tracks.
‘I didn’t even try and talk them down to a single record, because that was the manifesto,’ Stringer was later to explain. ‘And if you were a Clash fan, and if you loved London Calling and Sandinista!, you understood. The truth is, as t
hey’ll tell you now, we barely had enough material for a double. We stretched it a bit. I love them, I love them as colleagues and partners and friends, but that first album … we look back and laugh about it still.’
Manic Street Preachers entered Black Barn Studios near Woking, Surrey, in July 1991. Their declared mission was to record their one-and-only album to win over first America and then the planet. Notoriously, Richey played not a single note on the record that was to become Generation Terrorists. Nor, in fact, did Nicky Wire. Musically it was mostly all down to James Dean Bradfield, whose creative abilities surfaced in full, astounding his bandmates.
It has been widely reported that, making the album, Richey’s total lack of guitar-playing ability bred in him a new crisis of conscience and confidence. Yet should his presentations to the other Manics be read at face value? Legend has it that musicians sell their souls to ‘the man’ for success. So did Richey’s consciously continued non-playing in fact advertise his determination to keep his soul intact; to play the game on his own terms?
The band’s would-be portentous, aesthetically definitive first album, Generation Terrorists, certainly had major expectations to fulfil. To the amazement of many, it largely came through with the goods. What was remarkable was the apparent ease and concision with which the Manics got to the heart of things. It was a sensitively wrought, insightful and compelling portrait of the nation’s political and social predicament.
Consider its second track: ‘Natwest-Barclays-Midland-Lloyds’. In October 1986, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government had carried out its ‘Big Bang’ deregulation of financial services. Where previous rules separated retail from investment banking, suddenly those rules were gone. London became the world’s predominant financial centre, surpassing even New York.
In this song, the Manics recognised the human consequences of society’s shift to usury-on-steroids. Such deep structural transformation barely registered with most musicians, but the Manics provided a brilliant, laser-point dissection of how contemporary society was organised.
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