Withdrawn Traces

by Sara Hawys Roberts

  The band’s tours in the summer and autumn of 1993 promoted Gold Against the Soul across the UK and Ireland, Europe and Japan. On 7 December, they played what would be their last live show of the year, in Lisbon, and it was here that they heard that Philip had passed away.

  In their tributes to him, the band acknowledged their manager’s crucial role in their miraculous journey from provincial obscurity to a degree of mainstream success. On a professional level, Philip had been pivotal and indispensable – yet he was also their friend and mentor.

  Philip’s illness had already had a tangible emotional effect upon the band long before his death. At their 1992 Christmas concert in London, Nicky Wire had caused shock and outrage by wishing that recent rumours about R.E.M. front man Michael Stipe were true, and that he would die of AIDS. Wire’s outburst betrayed his sense of injustice that one deadly disease garnered so much more public sympathy than the other.

  ‘Philip was a very special person to us,’ Richey told MTV. ‘We spent maybe a year and a half writing letters, phoning journalists, any address or phone number we got, and there was never any response. Philip drove down to see us practise in a crappy little schoolroom in South Wales, and looked after us.’

  Nicky Wire later pinpointed Hall’s death as the start of a disastrous crisis year for the band, ‘No one in my immediate family had ever died, so it was the first funeral I’d ever been to. He wasn’t just a manager.’

  Over Christmas 1993, Wire recognised the effects of recent events on Richey’s fragile psyche. ‘I felt he was the oldest and yet the youngest of us all. He’d only experience things by forcing himself into situations. He was quite immature in terms of what he’d experienced in life, never been in a relationship, things like that. So perhaps then I realised that he was beginning to feel emptier. No matter what I said, there was nothing I could do to make him feel better.’

  Richey’s family only learned much later that he had spent time at a health farm, and experienced difficulties throughout 1993. ‘The first time he went to a health farm was the summer of that year when Gold Against the Soul was released,’ says Rachel. ‘The second time in December after Philip died. We thought he was away doing band-related things, so when we found out a year later he wasn’t, it came as a surprise to us. I don’t know if he felt he couldn’t talk to us about going there because he didn’t want to upset my mam and dad, or because he may have felt like he was failing with his career in music, and didn’t want to admit it to anyone outside of the band’s circle.’

  Looking back on 1993, the band agreed something had been lost with Gold Against the Soul. It was, they admitted, an album made to please the record company. James Dean Bradfield said, ‘I think we became bland. “La Tristesse Durera” sounded like a video storyboard. Gold Against the Soul was too song-y, there was no linear directive.’

  If they feared they had sold out, it was arguably confirmed in September, when they played two shows supporting Bon Jovi at Milton Keynes Bowl. Richey would later comment, ‘What definitely came out of [supporting] Bon Jovi was that our next album will be a complete artistic statement. I love Gold Against the Soul, but the next one will truly represent us. Whether that means fifty minutes of misery or complete and utter punk, we don’t yet know.’

  As 1994 dawned, it found the Manic Street Preachers hell-bent on steering clear of the compromises involved in trying to repay others’ investments in them. January kicked off with some gigs around the UK, and the band’s desire to ramp things up musically and lyrically was complimented by a new sartorial aesthetic. ‘We went out of our way, going to every military surplus store in the country, just picking up little bits, so we could assemble our stage personas,’ Sean later explained. ‘We just picked up on bits of ideas we saw with The Clash and Sandinista! and tried to be really obvious about it.’

  Donning actual uniforms felt to the Manics like an inspired return to their earlier all-white wardrobe splashed with spray-stencilled slogans. Nicky Wire would later remark, ‘To have the security blanket of wearing those clothes and feeling really comfortable again in them – the inspiration of Echo & the Bunnymen and Apocalypse Now, that era – it was a massive release. We went to the NME Awards, and it was the height of Brit Pop; Damon was snogging Justine. And we were all in the corner, dressed like military outcasts. We just felt brilliant, we felt this is where we should be, looking really odd in the corner, but feeling utterly united.’

  Publicly, it was a show of band solidarity, in what Sean Moore looks back upon as the ‘Manic Street army/people’s army’ phase. And Richey’s role in forging the new era was critical. James Dean Bradfield recalls, ‘Richey had got his black sailor suit, and I remember going into an Army & Navy shop and seeing a white one. His looked really cool, so [I thought] I’ll have the white one. And I think it pissed him off a bit.’

  Of all the band members, Richey clearly harboured the greatest impatience with recent wrong turns. He led the way out of what seemed a careerist impasse and, as ever, forged ahead, setting the new style and content for the band’s next (and defining) chapter.

  ‘He has nothing left for his life but his prejudices.’

  Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey

  – quoted in Richey’s notebook, 1994

  On 5 April, Kurt Cobain committed suicide. The Nirvana front man’s death was to have an indelible impact on the Manics, and on Richey in particular. A decade later, Nicky Wire looked back on the precise moment the news came through, and the inevitable links that he, and everyone else, was making between Nirvana and the Manics.

  ‘Obviously we were huge fans as well. We were aware of every move within Nirvana that year, the constant breakdowns and the fuck-ups and everything. I remember we were in Britannia Row, which was where Joy Division recorded Closer, when we heard that Kurt Cobain had killed himself. We were mixing ‘The Intense Humming of Evil’, or some other really bleak track. It actually felt like a lot of connections were falling into place.’

  In 1993 Richey had developed a new-found appreciation for ‘grunge’. Previously meriting barely a mention by him, suddenly artists like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains became firm favourites. He even described the latter as the modern answer to Joy Division. The Seattle bands became part of the Manic Street Preachers lexicon.

  In a February 1994 interview, however, Richey’s jealous resentment of the rise of Nirvana at the Manics’ expense had surfaced. ‘I wish Nirvana had split up after Nevermind. I wish Kurt had never had the child; it’s like he’s some sort of representative for American family values. There’s not much difference between listening to Kurt now and listening to the wino down the street.’

  If he was insinuating people ought to question Cobain’s ‘for-realness’, the latter’s suicide, just weeks later, bounced the ball back into Richey’s court. The very fact that the Manics had given so much time and space to singing about, fantasising over and publicly praising the topic of suicide meant they felt obliged to react.

  Richey may have intuited a public expectation that he should play catch-up with Cobain’s death. Such phenomenal irrational pressure could not have arrived at a more dangerous time for his fragile mental state. Several sources have confirmed that early 1994 saw a marked increase in his drug taking, accompanied by a new development – a penchant for advising others to follow suit.

  A former member of the Manic Street Preachers road crew who spoke to us anonymously for this book tried at first to whitewash the whole issue of drug taking within the band. ‘There were never any drugs with any of them; at no point, never,’ he told us. We reminded him that Richey’s drug abuse had already been made public, the band admitting in 1994 that ‘even Richey is spliffed out these days’. The crew member then confessed that Richey had been smoking the occasional joint during that year, to curb his alcohol intake and help him sleep. He then admitted having himself introduced Richey to cannabis in an effort to reduce his dependence on alcohol.

  Yet smoking joints is ubiquitous in the music bus
iness, and does not equate with the disturbing talk of ‘drug abuse’ that whirled around Richey that year. Was he partaking in stronger substances? How would the rest of the band have felt, considering their very public condemnation of drug taking?

  Two years after Richey’s disappearance Nicky Wire told the NME, ‘I find people who take drugs incredibly tedious. People don’t seem to realise that their brains are being crushed day-by-day by it. They think they’re really intelligent when you’re talking to them and you’re thinking, “Why don’t you just shut up, you boring fucker! I don’t want any of your fucking marijuana.”

  ‘It’s just bad experiences [I’ve had] of being around people on drugs. I don’t mind legalising them as long as no fucking cunt comes up to me and starts talking about being on drugs and how great it is and how it expands your mind when all it does is kill your little brain cells bit by bit.’ Could these sentiments have reflected Wire’s own experiences with Richey?

  In March 1994, Richey moved out of his parents’ bungalow in Blackwood to the burgeoning former dockside area of Cardiff. Once the second busiest port in the world, thanks to the coalmines of South Wales, it had recently undergone a massive regeneration project which saw it transformed into ‘Cardiff Bay’ – with desirable new housing, cafés and hotels pushing out its previous inhabitants.

  While driving past show homes on Schooner Way, Richey made an impulsive decision. ‘I saw my flat one day, and I bought it the next, just like that,’ he told Melody Maker in December 1994. ‘I hadn’t thought about it before. I was just passing by, and Nick said, “Oh, let’s go and have a look at these,” and I thought this is all right. I asked her how much it was, she told me, so I said, “I’ll buy it.”’

  Rachel recalls how her brother put down a £10,000 deposit in cash. ‘He told me that the estate agent looked at him wide-eyed, as if wondering, “Who the hell is this guy?” It was definitely an impulse buy, and something I think he felt he had to do at his age, rather than wanted to. He’d end up checking into the Marriott hotel down the street from him in Cardiff so he wouldn’t feel so alone.’

  Richey soon began to make new contacts on the streets of Cardiff. He was now living in Butetown, adjacent to the city’s ‘red-light district’, and could step outside his apartment block and immediately find himself right in the capital’s centre for violent crime, prostitution and drugs.

  Rachel also tells us that after moving to the city, Richey began to frequent the newly opened Hippo Club, a nightclub situated just behind Cardiff Central Station, and a mere two minutes’ walk from Richey’s apartment. The Hippo was a dance club that drew in punters from across Wales, and had become notorious as allegedly the place to score a variety of drugs.

  Richey would soon experience first-hand the potential dangers of moving in new and unfamiliar circles. The same roadie who sought to disperse any talk of illicit substances says that Richey told him about a very frightening incident. Not long after he had moved to his new apartment, Richey ventured out in the Docks area to hook up with some new contacts, intending to buy marijuana. He was unable to get away from his dealers, who put him in the back seat of their locked car – sandwiched between two men – and proceeded to drive around Cardiff with him for several hours.

  At first glance, this could be no more than some Cardiff hard men going out and parading their local rock star around the area, perhaps to show off. Yet considering he disappeared mere months later, could the incident have sinister implications? The roadie says that Richey was frightened by the occurrence and had hinted heavily at something quite serious going on behind the scenes, yet had refused to say any more.

  Could Richey have fallen foul of local drug dealers and, if so, could this be of possible significance to the disappearance? If nothing else it gives an insight into his state of mind during that year, with drugs and the threat of violence perhaps exacerbating his feelings of vulnerability and paranoia.

  Richey’s falling deeper into habitual drug taking seemed to clash hypocritically with ‘Drug Drug Druggy’, and the accusations made in the lyrics of the Manics’ second album against the amorality of a sleaze-ridden music industry. The third album, The Holy Bible, was in the process of being written, and all signs suggested its dark subject matter would eclipse their earlier productions.

  One of the few politically inflected barbs on Gold Against the Soul was a line in the title track about Thai labour. By early 1994, the band were in the middle of a surprising burst of popularity in Thailand. The NME’s Barbara Ellen flew out to cover the Manics as they played two nights in Bangkok.

  The trip was the closest the Manic Street Preachers ever came to Beatlemania. However, it is also infamous as the moment Richey’s personal crisis surfaced very publicly. With the band having set out their moral stall with lyrics lambasting the abuse of Thailand’s working poor, the trip could be seen as a test of their integrity. Could they resist savouring the temptations offered to tourists by the fleshpots of the Patpong red-light district?

  Richey’s words and actions in Bangkok informed Barbara Ellen’s notorious NME cover story (‘Bangkok Sucker Blues’, 28 May 1994). The Thai trip signalled a rupture between Richey and the other Manics; the first indicator perhaps of that later permanent split. In Ellen’s account, every member of the Manics touring party (except Nicky Wire) enjoyed some of what Bangkok had to offer, including visits to sex bars. They were all intent on enjoying themselves. It has since passed into the orthodox retelling of Manics history that Richey went one step further, and was the only person who paid to go with a prostitute.

  Two decades on, we spoke with people from inside the band’s circle to gather further facts that may have been missing from the standard history. Some people recalled that Richey was becoming distanced from the band during the Thai trip. On the outgoing and return flight, while the rest of the party were socialising, he was tucked away at the back of the plane, estranged and alone.

  Barbara Ellen arrived a day or two into the trip and had not been there on the day that Richey was alleged to have visited a prostitute. So, how had she learned of his transgression? Easy, Richey had told her himself, as they were about to board the plane home.

  She wrote: ‘Richey slides into the seat next to me, and with an awesome articulacy – considering he’s drinking as heavily as everyone else – starts talking about what he sees as the misguided liberal snobbery aimed at Thailand. “All developing economies abuse their young. When Britain was a developing economy we sent our children up chimneys and down coalmines and out into the street to steal. This is just abuse on a wider scale.”’

  The whole debacle was an opportunity to share with NME readers something of the sordid truth of life in the music industry; and the way it enables well-off, middle-aged men to feed off the young. Taking the story to Bangkok was to witness the exploitative music industry in a fitting habitat.

  Having so often described himself as asexual, Richey was apparently detached from what Bangkok had to offer, ‘Very lame, it’s a male fantasy island for an older generation. Just an opportunity for middle-aged businessmen to buy women and feel like studs again’.

  The other members of the band were similarly un-enthralled, reported Ellen. ‘James rests back in his seat, eyebrows arched, chuckling every now and then at the torrent of lad’s talk spewing from the Cummins/Stringer corner [NME photographer Kevin Cummins].’ Her article would go on to describe record-label boss Rob Stringer as ‘the living embodiment of capitalist evil’, after he threatened her with libel lawyers several times during the trip. ‘He was paranoid about his corporate identity,’ James told Kerrang! later that year. ‘He didn’t want to get caught up in any of the seediness.’

  Was Richey’s confession a legitimate one, or was it a device to implicate others in the touring party? It could well have been both, but the effect created an uncomfortable distance between Richey and the band, and quite possibly between himself and those at the record company.

  The trip to Bangkok had a huge i
mpact on the band. Interviewed in 2014, Nicky Wire admitted, ‘Then all that goodwill kind of collapsed when we went to Thailand, I think. You’ve only got to read [Barbara Ellen’s] NME piece really, it’s the best document of a band on the edge.’ James concurred, stating, ‘There was something about that whole tour that unleashed a symptom that felt incurable to me. I think in Thailand, there was a bit of a bad feeling among the band.’

  After their final night playing to three thousand fans at Bangkok’s Mah Boonkrong Hall on 23 April, NME photographer Kevin Cummins was witness to an incident that would not only demonstrate Richey’s vulnerability but create one of the most startling and iconic images of him.

  Cummins recalls: ‘A fan sent some miniature ceremonial swords backstage before the gig with a note attached, asking Richey to slash himself onstage. He thought that was tacky. Towards the end of the show, James sang “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” solo and I went backstage to get some pictures of the rest of the band looking exhausted. I saw Richey looking at himself in the bathroom mirror [with his] chest slashed. I was shocked. I asked him why he did it and he said, “He asked me to. I didn’t want to let him down.”

  ‘Some people ask me how I could have taken those photos. They were surface cuts, nothing more. A bit showmanship-esque to a degree. There are some things as a photographer I’d never have taken pictures of, Richey cutting 4 REAL into his arm for example. I would have taken him straight to hospital. I’m not a war photographer, I’m a myth-maker, and I believe he had some control of what he was doing at the time. But, sometimes in a band people get lost, and I think Richey was a little lost in the way he navigated the adult world.’