Withdrawn Traces

by Sara Hawys Roberts

  ‘The Normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes: – alright. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills – like a god. It is the Ordinary made beautiful: it is also the Average made lethal. The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health, and I am his priest.’

  Dr Martin Dysart in Equus, Sir Peter Shaffer

  On one occasion when Rachel visited the Priory, Richey told her of yet another diagnosis he had been given. ‘He told me he’d been talking to the hospital’s counsellor, who believed that the death of our nan, seven years earlier, had left him suffering from unresolved grief,’ Rachel says. ‘I can see how this conclusion was drawn, because Richard did idealise his childhood a lot.’

  Years later, Rachel spoke to the counsellor in question. He said he didn’t believe Richey suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder, and although unresolved grief played a part in his adult difficulties, it was not the sole issue. He declined to elaborate any further.

  Did Richey receive the appropriate treatment at all? Medical notes show he was exasperated at being put in the Alcoholics Anonymous group. He believed that the AA see drinking in binary terms – you are an alcoholic or you are not. He told staff at the Priory that he could make it through most days without alcohol or substances. Many close to him have since commented that he wasn’t as alcohol dependent as his reputation suggested.

  ‘He could and did give up alcohol very easily,’ recalls Rachel. ‘He didn’t drink every day or mask daily reality with it. He would use it sometimes to get on stage and occasionally to sleep. He felt that he had more pressing problems that demanded more attention beyond the drinking and he never reconciled why the Priory thought the Twelve Steps should be the main course of treatment for him.

  ‘I feel with Richard’s level of questioning, especially of the 12-step process, it became a case of doctors throwing up their hands in despair. I don’t think anyone knew what to do with him by the end. I had a mental health professional tell me that they’d rather treat a hundred patients with depression than one with Borderline Personality Disorder because they’re far too clever for their own good.’

  ‘But simple people don’t understand complicated ones and thrust the latter back on themselves, more ruthlessly than any others, I thought. The biggest mistake is to think that one can be rescued by so-called simple people. A person goes to them in an extremely needy condition and begs desperately to be rescued and they thrust this person even more deeply into his own despair.’

  Thomas Bernhard, The Loser

  Towards the end of Richey’s stay at the Priory, his weight dropped further, despite an initial gain at the beginning of his treatment. In his last few weeks there, he would sit in the cafeteria with Rachel and their father, picking at his food, only to immediately excuse himself to use the bathroom afterwards.

  ‘It made me wonder if he was being sick in there, because at the time he had been put on a special diet to gain weight,’ says Rachel. ‘Towards the end of the year, Richard’s teeth were starting to corrode, and I know that’s something that can happen if you’re bulimic, or if you abuse drugs.’

  Living nearby, James Dean Bradfield was another frequent visitor. During one visit, Richey told him, ‘You know if you took just one of these tablets a day you could really open up your creative senses!’ To which James replied, ‘No, Richey, I don’t really think so.’

  James continued to visit the Priory, taking his guitar and a Nirvana chord book, to help ‘the poet who couldn’t play guitar’ finally master the instrument. Richey was experiencing a deepening anxiety about being publicly ‘caught out’ and he would discuss this worry frequently with Jo, on leaving the Priory.

  Given the explicit message-driven content of The Holy Bible, did Richey feel he was failing as the band’s wordsmith and chief strategist, when the album’s singles kept charting so low? Did he believe that by becoming a proficient guitarist, he could assuage some of the guilt he was feeling?

  ‘When he was in the Priory, he may have been searching for a definition of himself, and what he could and couldn’t be,’ says Rachel. ‘Being a part of the creative division and unable to play an instrument, he might have thought that his place in the band was in jeopardy.

  ‘His sense of himself as a good lyricist may have been hard for him to see at the time, but with a proper skill, like learning the guitar, it would be something more tangible for him to prove his worth within the band. He told the psychiatrists that all he wanted was to find one thing he could do that would give him confidence. He knew he could give up the bottle, but he told them he needed something to feel confident and passionate about when he came out of there.’

  ‘Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.’

  Dr Martin Dysart in Equus, Sir Peter Shaffer

  Implicit in the treatment programme was the hope that patients would be able to reconnect with their lives prior to becoming ill. Richey, as well as acquiring new guitar skills, also attempted to rekindle past passions.

  ‘He would talk a lot about the interests that he had as a child. We were both into animals and animal rights in a big way,’ explains Rosie Dunn. ‘Some weekends we were allowed to bus into central London and once Richey went to London Zoo. He came back really upset because all these beautiful beasts were caged.

  ‘If you listen to his later lyrics, you can see “Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky” as a metaphor for how trapped he, himself, was feeling. He used to have interests, that I would call his “obsessions” at the time – he’d talk continuously, and go on and on about the concept of a Perfect Circle, the Fourth Dimension and Apocalypse Now. I can’t say I fully understood them at the time, because he was a level beyond when it came to that kind of talk. One thing I thought was strange, was how much he used to talk about liking the old television show, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.’

  A 1970s BBC sitcom based on the David Nobbs book The Death of Reginald Perrin, the series told the story of Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, a middle-aged executive in the throes of a mid-life crisis. To escape his dreary existence, he faked his death, leaving his clothes on a Dover beach. Such a pseudocide is consequently often colloquially known in Britain as ‘doing a Reggie Perrin’.

  ‘Richey kept mentioning it to me, like he wanted it to hit home somehow,’ says Rosie. ‘But I didn’t really think about it until after he’d disappeared. I don’t know if he would have done a Reggie Perrin, or if he just found [the idea] appealing? Maybe it’s just what he wanted other people to think, regardless of what actually happened to him.

  ‘Richey could be very provocative and would make all sorts of bold statements, some things he really meant, and other things you knew he didn’t – often he was just looking to get a reaction. He could be really shocking at times, and there were many unfathomable layers behind his behaviour, which you couldn’t quite unravel.’

  Rosie says, as do many others we have interviewed for this book, that Richey could never be read simply and taken at face value.

  ‘One day he didn’t turn up for group therapy, and when I went to look for him he was in the hospital wing, having cuts on his arms stitched and bandaged by the nurses. I’ll never forget him smiling at me after he’d done it. I was saying, “You silly bastard!” I kept asking him for days, “Why?” And he’d tell me there was no way anyone could have talked him out of it, because the only way to alleviate the emotional pain was to administer physical pain as a distraction.

  ‘He told me he was going crazy and had to empty his emotional dustbin. But it also seemed like a statement, and it was almost like he was proud of what he’d done and was testing my reaction to the fact he’d cut himself so badly – I mean right down to the muscle! What stood out was the way he seemed to find it so amusing that I was so disturbed about it. I felt like I’d failed him because I thought we were close.

  ‘I never got the impression he tried to slit his wrists to die, [it was] just a release. There were times w
hen we were fed up, and down, but our talking would bring us out from that. We had a laugh. Never once did I think this is a man who wants to die, and slit his wrists properly.

  ‘What’s hardest for people to reconcile is that he wasn’t all doom and gloom. He was honestly the funniest person I’ve ever met. His sense of humour was so silly, and really imaginative. I had a horrible boss in work at the time, and Richey and I used to think about scenarios where he’d transform into a fly, and how we’d swat him. It was that “out there” and zany sort of humour that not many would associate him with.’

  On 8 September, after six weeks in residence, Richey’s treatment at the Priory officially ended. Staff recommended he stay longer, believing he could benefit from further support. Richey thought the programme was doing him no good. He declined their offer.

  Still eligible for the Priory’s aftercare plan, Richey was expected to attend follow-up appointments at the hospital, go to AA meetings, and maintain contact with others on the programme. Crucially, on-release individuals were encouraged to make a conscious effort to change the habits which had led to their hospitalisation. However, less than a fortnight later Richey had joined the Manic Street Preachers in France for the first leg of their European tour.

  ‘When you come out of the Priory, it’s a brand new world and reality. A sober world, a scary world,’ remembers Rosie Dunn. ‘Drinking was a by-product of my job, and I imagine it was the same when Richey was on the road. The fact he went on tour with the band, and to play on stage sober only two weeks out of the programme must have been really daunting for him.

  ‘You’re meant to do things gradually, but he made himself so vulnerable. It’s not just about putting down the drink; it’s about your whole lifestyle. He went straight back on the road and straight back to his old way of life.’

  Chapter 9

  The Holy Bible – the Powers of Horror

  ‘Greetings from a dead man. Don’t get off the boat. I will not be sacrificed to barbarians. Imitate February, then. This is February. I take a purge.’

  Richey’s archive, autumn 1994

  On 30 August 1994 – nine days before Richey’s discharge from the Priory – The Holy Bible was released. The band had been talking about the album since its inception, promising an uncompromising, raw, unflinching record. As they told Melody Maker at the start of the year, ‘On the next album, there will be nothing left out. Whether we get crucified or not.’

  Considered the band’s Guernica, The Holy Bible is the album by which the Manic Street Preachers are still to this day defined, and a testament to Richey’s raging war against the world, history and himself. NME called it a ‘vile record’. Halfway through the album, it samples J.G. Ballard talking about his 1973 novel, Crash, a fiction that explores the perverse world of car-crash fetishism. ‘I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror.’

  ‘But there are more words than sacrifice and responsibility. Try Fucking. Try Prostitution. Try Suicide. Try Sodomy. Try Charity Work. Try Murder. Try Infection. Try History. Yes, Try History. It leaves you worse than nothing. Anyone who reads History and still has self-respect has not read History properly. FACT.’

  Richey, letter to Jo, 1993

  Despite failing to chart in mainland Europe or North America, The Holy Bible reached number 6 in the UK and remained in the top 40 for 11 weeks. Its content blatantly and unashamedly confronted modern morals and ethics. It threw up questions about everything from sex workers to desire, Nazi death camps to British imperialism, anorexia to mass consumption.

  Before this album, the Manic Street Preachers had largely immersed themselves in pop aesthetics based on their favourite films, music, poetry, theory, clothing, artworks, slogans, and a general interest in style as a positive refuge from the mundanity of everyday living. In 1994, however, their focus was on a new, joyless austerity.

  When writing The Holy Bible, Richey was inspired by the ideas of the philosopher Michel Foucault and the novelist Octave Mirbeau; and as a result the album was an ethical protest against inhumanity and barbarism, littered with lists of serial killers, public servants and political leaders, in whose crimes, Richey suggested, we are all complicit.

  The album’s imagery was deliberately confrontational and aimed to shock. The front cover was the painting Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face) by 23-year-old artist Jenny Saville. A triptych image, it depicts an unhealthily obese woman, seemingly staring down upon society. Her demeanour appears to be portraying pity, disgust and judgement, alongside compassion, self-consciousness and sadness. Here was the whole un-pretty truth that we as human beings should consider when confronting life’s harsh realities.

  Similarly, The Holy Bible represented the Manic Street Preachers’ transformation into an appalling and gruelling spectacle; the life-affirming redemption of previous years was gone, and the record represented encroaching disaster.

  While penning the previous two albums, Richey and Nicky would usually write together, or split the lyrical output 50/50. This time around Richey took 85 per cent of the writing credit. In light of his disappearance, the obvious temptation is to dig into and dissect his lyrics; to find hidden context and new layers of meaning.

  Over the years, the band encouraged this sort of approach from their audience. They were influenced by the cultural critic Greil Marcus, taking the name of his seminal work Lipstick Traces as the title of their 2003 B-sides album. The theory running throughout Marcus’s book was that threads can be found subconsciously and consciously throughout history – in culture and the arts – and can possess much greater significance if thought of in terms of cross-referencing and historical lineage.

  ‘There’s a secret history out there,’ Nicky Wire told BBC Wales in 2017. ‘That things lead you on a path to a different reality, that was our fight really. That there was such a glorious world of music, culture and connections if you know where to look for them.’

  In his 1979 picture book Masquerade, British author Kit Williams set out ‘to do what nobody had ever done before’ and create a new genre: armchair treasure hunts. His work concealed visual clues to the location of a jewelled ornamental golden hare, which he’d hidden somewhere in the British Isles. Readers had to decipher the images and solve the clues to find the prized hare. Williams created a tapestry full of meaning and coded messages, requiring readers to study the artwork carefully rather than idly flipping through the book.

  Could Richey have had the same in mind, when laying out an album that still to this day baffles critics, fans and his bandmates alike?

  ‘We thought we could resist record-company pressures. All we wanted to do was go under the corporate wing, but you do get affected, and we lost the plot a bit before. Now, we’re back to speaking in tongues.’

  James Dean Bradfield, Select, 1994

  The previous summer’s Gold Against the Soul had been mercilessly panned by the music press. One Q magazine reviewer described it as ‘superficially competent, of course, but scratch below the surface and you’ll find few signs of life, just a vaguely expressed, bemused and bored dissatisfaction.’ The band even appeared in one music publication depicted in cartoon form, dressed as bakers shovelling pages of the album’s lyrics into a giant furnace, while shouting to each other that the lyrics and concepts on the record were ‘only half baked’.

  The Manics were (and still are) famed for quoting back their own reviews to nonplussed journalists. It’s no great stretch to imagine Richey could have been feeling a great responsibility to step up and create the all-encapsulating album the band had been promising since day one.

  ‘I think he put a lot of work into condensing things he’d learned as far back as college, and making the band’s third album a statement that couldn’t be faulted in any way,’ says Rachel. ‘He was putting himself under a lot of pressure to create this ultimate masterpiece.’

  Interviewed for Raw magazine in 1994, James would talk about the stress Richey had been feeling: ‘Don’
t forget you’re talking about a guy here who wanted to call the album The Holy Bible, because everything has to be perfection.’

  Nicky Wire confessed that The Holy Bible was a welcome shift from the ‘hollowness’ of Gold Against the Soul: ‘This is an album for us, where Gold was pretty much an album for MTV, the album company, the radio.’

  In 1994, the band decided to regain creative control, by producing an album that would remain largely untouched by their record label. Richey had an increased role. As he explained it, ‘The record company originally asked us if we wanted to go to Barbados to make the album and we said, “Fuck off! No way!”’

  Feeling stifled by their experiences in high-budget locations, the band felt the need to break away in a show of authenticity. James said they chose their Cardiff recording studio for a specific reason, ‘We gotta get away, it’s gotta be boot camp, it’s gotta be nasty, like Michael-Caine-in-Mona Lisa naasty! And it was a touch of method, recording it in the red-light area in Wales.’

  As soon as the recording began, James was enthused by the return to their roots, ‘I felt there was tension and there was pressure, but it just felt good straight away. I felt alive with something again, whereas before that I was just fearing things – the end of the band …’

  Years later the Manics revealed that before and after the release of The Holy Bible, they had been on the brink of having their contract terminated by Sony. Speaking in 2014, Nicky Wire said, ‘Rob Stringer recently told us that we were quite close to being dropped; he was the one who kept us. One of the chiefs said, “They’ll never have the X factor.” But Rob insisted on keeping us. Even through something as dense and grim as “Archives of Pain” he could tell that there was something important as well as commercial.’