Withdrawn Traces

by Sara Hawys Roberts

  ‘He admired people like Yukio Mishima, who put themselves in every possible situation they could, no matter how extreme, just to participate in as much of the unknown life as they could. I wonder if Richard felt he needed to experience those kinds of situations for himself.

  ‘Even though he could identify with the sadness and desperation that drew him to those books, films and individuals, by 1994 his sense of self and his identity were so shattered that these could have influenced him further, in ways he wasn’t even consciously aware of.’

  While writing The Holy Bible, Richey read a biography of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. One of the chapters was called ‘Archives of Pain’, which became the title of one of the album’s tracks. He would also tape a BBC documentary about the controversial author, wherein Foucault stated an artist’s life and work should always be judged separately and the work must stand alone on merit, and be as far removed as possible from the life the artist lived.

  ‘Whether or not Richard felt he should or even could separate the two, I honestly don’t know,’ says Rachel. ‘But I do wonder what kind of pressure he felt to prove the very real depression and pain he was suffering to the outside world, especially to the music press that had him under a microscope after Kurt Cobain’s death.’

  A physical examination in Whitchurch recorded details of the self-inflicted lacerations from Richey’s suicide attempt, described by the doctors as ‘superficial wounds’. This verdict was surprising news for Rachel, and immediately invites the question: was it more of a cry for help?

  ‘One doctor’s opinion on superficial wounds could completely differ from the next doctor’s opinion,’ says Rachel. ‘Because of the scale of Richard’s self-harm in the past, and the depth of the cuts he’d made through the years – especially the 4 REAL incident – I don’t know if the medical staff were judging them by those previous standards. But Richard knew his self-harm was escalating, and he admitted he no longer had any control over it. He definitely needed some kind of intervention.’

  The routine in Whitchurch for patients like Richey consisted of the sleeping ward being emptied at 8am and the patients herded into one big communal room. They were allowed back to their beds at 10pm. Other than a table for tea and coffee, a television and the opportunity to interact socially with fellow inmates, there was little on offer that was conducive to helping with Richey’s state of mind at the time. Breakfast, lunch and dinner punctuated the day, together with breaks for medication, and visitors twice daily. Patients could walk the grounds with staff, and some, depending on the severity of their illness, could enter the nearby village, to browse in the local shops.

  A young psychiatric nurse who was working on the ward at the time, and who recognised Richey Manic, gave us his recollections. Understandably limited in what he could say, and necessarily anonymous here, he remembers Richey as an isolated and lonely figure, even by Whitchurch standards.

  ‘He would sit alone and keep himself to himself most of the time,’ he says. ‘We had one patient on the ward who was prone to “acting out”. He’d tip over coke machines and knock over the tea and coffee tables and could get quite violent within what were the very small surroundings of the communal area.

  ‘I remember this happening twice, and both times Richey’s eyes locked on mine and it was a stare like “What the HELL am I doing here?” He was one of the more fluid ones, who’d be able to bear witness to what was happening around him.’

  Richey made one friend during his time on the ward. A female in her early twenties, who was ‘quite mysterious. A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl – very quiet, very beguiling,’ remembers the nurse. ‘She was an artist and an academic, and if he’d go out for a smoke she’d go with him and they seemed to get on.’

  This girl later moved to Israel. It may be telling that before the fateful trip to America that Richey never made in 1995, he told Rachel that he would much rather visit Israel.

  In a 2009 interview, James related how Richey would speak of ‘token gestures of insanity’ during his hospitalisation, and how he was tempted to start ‘hiding in bushes, barking orders, putting an éclair on his head, and talking to an imaginary giraffe’ in order to be able to get the treatment he felt he needed.

  Later that year, when speaking to the music press, Richey described Whitchurch as a place with little funding and scant resources. He also sought to clarify his emerging reputation as rock’s next doomed poet, and turned the attention away from himself to highlight the plights that others using the facilities were facing.

  ‘The Cardiff hospital was no good for me. After eight days in there, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. James will tell you, I couldn’t even talk, I was just stuttering. I was taking medication – Librium and stuff. Though it calmed me down, because I could get to sleep at night.

  ‘I mean … a lot of letters I’ve got have said, “Oh, it’s natural, it always happens to poets.” Which is fucking bullshit. When you’re in the places I’ve been in, the first place especially, it’s just any job, any occupation. Housewife, bricklayer, plumber, somebody who works for South Wales Electricity Board, whatever.

  ‘It’s very romantic to think, “I’m a tortured writer,” but mental institutions are not full of people in bands. They’re full of people with so-called normal jobs. Sixty-eight thousand beds have been closed down in the last couple of years, which I wouldn’t have been aware of unless I was actually in one.’

  Richey’s erratic state of mind was evident in Whitchurch. During one of James’s visits, he offered to leave the band. The two discussed what would be best for him and what would aid his recovery. They agreed Richey could contribute artwork and lyrics without the stress of being a performing member – much like how he had begun.

  Richey waved James off at the hospital doorway. Yet, by the time James arrived back in Blackwood, Richey was on the phone in fits of tears saying he’d changed his mind, he wanted to stay a full member of the group in every aspect.

  ‘I don’t know if he was testing the waters in terms of if the band would carry on without him,’ deliberates Rachel. ‘He used to point out to Jo after he came out of hospital how Joy Division could just carry on without Ian Curtis, as if he was so easily forgettable and replaceable. He felt really useless, and I think he was testing others’ opinions to see if they felt the same.’

  Richey was to tell the NME, ‘It’s not enough for me to do the words. I kind of think I’d be cheating on them ’cos the touring part is the worst bit, the bit that no band really enjoys. It’s the thing that makes it feel like a job because you know what you’ll be doing in three months’ time at two o’ clock in the afternoon.’

  Yet despite Richey’s professed animosity towards life on the road, he clung to it. He would often say the band was all he had. At the time of his hospitalisation Richey wasn’t in contact with Jo. His desire to build the perfect relationship, coupled with his insecurities and jealousies, meant the two broke off contact only days before his arrival at Whitchurch.

  Band manager Martin Hall visited Richey at the hospital. After seeing him spaced out on meds, he made arrangements to move him somewhere he hoped would prove more beneficial. On 28 July, Richey moved to the world-famous Priory Hospital in Roehampton, south-west London.

  An ornate Grade 2 listed white Gothic mansion just north of Richmond Park, the Priory could not be more different from the dark, provincial Whitchurch. Indeed, one tabloid described it as ‘The Savoy spliced with Broadmoor’.

  It is known as a place where celebrities confess their sins, purge themselves of the excesses of their lives and publicly press the restart button. Stars who have crossed its threshold include Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse, George Best and Robbie Williams. Richey’s hero, Rolling Stone Brian Jones, had repeatedly checked in. When Richey entered the Priory in the summer of 1994, there were already several well-known faces in situ there.

  ‘I exist to worship the past, dead poets and Brian Jones. Icons are my anchor. My only chain of
reference. My one constant love. I could travel anywhere. I could have any habit I choose. But I don’t. I just sit and stare/alone. I entered a paper chase. It led to burnt books – and a dead end.’

  Richey’s archive, Priory notes, 1994

  The Priory is often mistaken for an exclusive health spa but in reality it is a serious psychiatric clinic, top of the range and with the price tag to prove it. In 1994 a day’s stay would cost £310. It treats a number of disorders, including anorexia, alcoholism, drug addiction, severe mood disorders, and a variety of other complex cases, of which Richey was one.

  Presenting with symptoms of self-harm, low weight and non-dependent use of alcohol and substances, he was placed in the Galsworthy Lodge Addiction Treatment Unit, an annexe adjacent to the main building. There he began their strict six-week regimen.

  On entering the building, patients are frisked for contraband items, with even mouthwash removed for its small alcoholic content. Automatically each inductee is obliged to undergo three days of cold turkey withdrawal from whatever substance they were abusing. Richey was able to forego that part of the process, having already been alcohol and drug free in Whitchurch for eight days. It was mandatory that he should sign up to the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps programme. He also had to take a 60mg dose of fluoxetine (Prozac) daily. This is the maximum recommended dosage, and is normally prescribed in the hope that it will improve the patient’s mood sufficiently to motivate them to begin eating again.

  Each week, a daily schedule was drawn up to occupy the patients’ time from 8.30 in the morning until 9.30 at night. Along with group therapy and private counselling, the Priory offered more alternative occupational therapies including classes in yoga, drama and flower arranging. Unlike Whitchurch, the patients were given some semblance of personal privacy with an en suite room of their own, and the luxury of an onsite swimming pool and gym.

  However, according to ex-patients, spending too much time alone or immersed in activities outside the suggested daily routine was generally frowned upon. Galsworthy Lodge residents were expected to work, eat and live together, and aid each other’s recovery as part of a collective group process.

  A couple of the names found in Richey’s last address book were of people he befriended at the Priory. One was journalist Rosie Dunn. She now specialises in real-life crime stories and tales of survival, and has written books on the murdered Liverpool toddler James Bulger and, more recently, the publicly executed soldier Lee Rigby.

  Rosie was an in-patient at the Priory and attended the same daily therapies as Richey. Then Crime Editor at the Sun, her work involved hanging out with some of Britain’s biggest gangsters, and inevitably necessitated late nights and considerable heavy drinking, which led to her eventual alcoholism. Richey was admitted days after her arrival.

  ‘He was just this skinny, tiny, fragile-looking little lad, with a white T-shirt and a man-bag across his chest,’ she remembers. ‘Drainpipe jeans and converse pumps. He was just so sweet-looking, with these huge Bambi brown eyes. He was like a little baby brother that I wanted to look after.

  ‘I had absolutely no idea that he was part of this really huge cult band. I didn’t know he was famous, I didn’t know he was a rock star. When I asked him, “So, what do you do?” he said, “I’m a musician” and didn’t elaborate further.’

  With only a year between them, the two became firm friends and were to keep in touch up to Richey’s disappearance.

  ‘He loved what I did for a living,’ says Rosie. ‘He thought it was fantastic that I was a girl, who wrote about crime for the Sun. He was the famous one, but he always wanted to hear my stories. Many people are snobbish about red-top papers, but he didn’t have a snobbish bone in his body.

  ‘For someone so highly intelligent and literary, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had been somewhat uppity about the paper, but he loved that my writing could reach so many people. So to wind up in a hospital with a crime reporter with all this juicy gossip was heaven for him.’

  All patients on the Galsworthy programme started the day by taking medication and reading motivational material to prepare them for the day ahead. At 10am, a group of ten to fifteen patients would meet for their group therapy session, and everyone would spend a few minutes reflecting on their current mood and thought process.

  ‘Group therapy was always quite highly strung,’ confirms Rosie. ‘It was the time of day where you go in and you’re supposed to get off your mind what’s going on inside. The whole point of getting better is not to get angry or emotional and then to turn to a substance to make you feel better. It’s about reaching out to fellow people who understand, and expressing yourself so that you don’t feel the need to go and anaesthetise it.

  ‘Sometimes there were fights. People would even throw chairs at each other. You’ve got a lot of creative, emotional people, who are coming off various substances, and they’ve all got a lot to say. In many respects, a lot of people were vulnerable and fragile, but a lot of them also had a core of steel running through them.

  ‘Richey was always very outspoken in terms of what he felt needed to be said. He could get quite angry, there was a lot of fire in his belly, but I remember the first time I saw him shout at another person – I was like “Wow! Go Richey, go!” I didn’t know he had it in him.’

  During his time at the Priory, Richey took a personal dislike to a retired ex-army captain who he felt was macho and repressed. The two would often get into heated discussions. It came out in group therapy that Richey felt uncomfortable with the man because he reminded him of his father.

  ‘He loved his dad dearly, there was no question about that, but he felt frustrated that he never expressed his feelings properly,’ says Rosie. ‘He told us about the time he heard his dad crying through the walls when his nan died, and how he just couldn’t get to grips with the fact that men had to be so macho and weren’t supposed to express their feelings. That was such a huge frustration for him, and I think it left him very confused in terms of how to react emotionally to certain situations.’

  After the morning session, Richey and Rosie would often walk down to the old chapel in the main building. Sometimes they would be joined by a well-known singer, who was also undergoing the same treatment. The three would sit alone, and the singer would sing hymns and prayers to the empty space. ‘Once the singer sang “Ave Maria”,’ remembers Rosie, ‘and we sat there listening in awe. It was a spine-tingling, goosebumps all over moment for me and something I’ll remember until the day I die.’

  The singer wrote Richey a letter which starts: ‘NEVER be ashamed of your Tenderness. Nor of what you had to do to cover it up. We all have man AND woman inside us. What’s wrong in the world is that people have lost contact with the feminine.’ They also enclosed books with the letter, saying ‘My favourite poem in the whole world is “Emerging from Childhood”. The first poem in the book. It’s by a man called Khayapati – or something [Vidyapati] – it’s to DIE for (Don’t take that literally, ha ha!)’

  One of the books the singer mailed Richey after leaving the Priory remains in his family’s possession, and is a copy of Sacred Sex: Erotic Writings from the Religions of the World by Robert Bates (1993). Richey’s copy has the corners of several pages turned down, drawing attention to poems related to disappearance. In the chapter titled ‘Islam’, verses about slipping into madness and wandering the world as a nomad are highlighted.

  Both of them rebellious, sensitive, wounded, angry, androgynous, and brutally truthful – it should not be a surprise that Richey and the singer made friends at the Priory, and kept in touch afterwards, with the singer apparently retaining an interest long after his disappearance.

  Could it be that this singer brought into Richey’s world a very pertinent text at that susceptible time? Certainly, some of the material could be read as having the alchemical potential to take what he felt were his deepest problems, and transform them into the basis of divine wisdom in the universe.

  All patients
on the Galsworthy programme had to attend an evening AA meeting three times a week for the duration of their stay. A minibus transported them to the Priory’s sister buildings in nearby Chelsea and Richmond, where groups of 15 to 20 patients met to speak about their alcohol dependency. They would also hear from fully rehabilitated ex-addicts who acted as group mentors.

  It’s well known that, for Richey, the hardest part of his treatment was the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps programme. It is frequently accused of having religious connotations, with confession and restitution at its commandment-like core. At the end of each meeting, members are expected to recite the AA ‘serenity prayer’, and vow to ‘keep coming back’ to help them recover. James Dean Bradfield described Twelve Steps as a ‘quasi-religion’, with Richey struggling to get past the second step: ‘handing your power over to a God of your own understanding’.

  When Richey had left the Priory, NME journalist Stuart Bailie told him that Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder used an image of his nan in step two to represent ‘God’.

  ‘Lots of people have said things like that,’ replied Richey. ‘But I could never pick things like that because they would die. How can you reconcile yourself to a living god like that? Some people take their cats or their dogs as their god, but I think that’s nonsensical, because your god is not gonna die on you. The closest I can get to it is nature probably, but then nature is very cruel.

  ‘Step one is fairly easy: to admit you are powerless over your addiction and your life has become unmanageable. Well, it’s easy to admit, it’s hard to accept in your own mind. Because I do feel my mind’s quite strong. Obviously not as strong as it could be. It’s just a question of working it all out, and I’ve got a lot of time on my hands, so I can think about it.’