Withdrawn Traces

by Sara Hawys Roberts

  ‘Richard was back from university for the week, but didn’t seem particularly interested in going,’ says Rachel. ‘I went along myself and left him at home watching TV. I don’t think the boys in the band really figured in his life closely until his time in university.’

  James Dean Bradfield and Nicky ‘Wire’ Jones joined Crosskeys College as Richey entered his second year in September 1987. The two quickly gained a reputation as an inseparable duo, impenetrable to the world around them.

  ‘James and Nick went through this phase where they decided that they didn’t like anybody else,’ recalls Adrian. ‘People would try and talk to them and they’d blank them. They were building up their own little aura, trying to create an image for themselves. They were very dismissive of everybody around them, but I guess that’s a phase some teenagers go through.

  ‘Richard was always quite playful when he was interacting with people, never aloof. He may have had his reservations about people but he was always outwardly very polite, and always very engaging. He was good at bringing you out of your shell and making you feel considered and appreciated.’

  Towards the end of his time at Crosskeys, Richey was encouraging those around to him, specifically Mark, to pick up a guitar and channel their written poetry through music.

  ‘He’d talk about creating an ultimate band,’ remembers Mark. ‘But at the time I never took him seriously because he was more studious and academic than suited to the world of rock and roll. He’d always buy the NME and write letters to them about the gigs he’d been to and his opinion on upcoming music. I don’t think it was until university he started to entertain the notion seriously about becoming a rock star. He’d try encouraging others to take the stage, and I think that was because of that shyness he had, and because he was so self-conscious when it came to his skin.’

  Yet the adolescent Richey was eager to find a vehicle to channel his maturing frustrations. Growing up, he would speak of the apathy surrounding him following the miners’ defeat – pointing out in letters how life for those around him could be vastly different if only there was a way to ‘inject passion into the sick wrists of youth’. His voracious reading habits led those around Richey to think he would become writer, as he constantly cited the Beat Generation of authors whose writing explored and influenced American culture and politics in 1950s America. He also began reading the works of the Situationists, a group of French avant-garde intellectuals whose ideas led to the social and political revolution of Paris 1968. He would frequently lend friends the works of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem.

  ‘He was desperate to find something to believe in, to find a vehicle for his voice, and the group of us imagined he’d discover this in the world of writing,’ says Adrian. ‘He always had a pen and paper with him and was forever scribbling things down.

  ‘He had the point of view that the community was a collective, it was class warfare, and he supported the ideology behind the miners’ strikes. He didn’t see politics as a side issue to discuss over a pint, he saw it everywhere, he saw it as a world view. I think when he went on to join the band he applied more political theory to the music, and elevated it to an academic form, rather than an art form, so it made more sense to him.’

  Like the Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who applied critical theory and the discussion of socio-economic issues to the birth of punk, Richey would state in an early interview that he’d always wanted to be part of a band that ‘sang about politics, a culture that said nothing, a culture that made him feel like a nobody and treated him like shit’.

  Richey’s final report from Crosskeys College included a comment from one of his lecturers suggesting that his mind may already have been on other things. ‘Richard often appears not to be paying too much attention this final year, but his exam result clearly shows that he is an able and perceptive student.’

  It was also during this time that the public attack on the industrial communities reached its zenith, with the final miners’ strike of 1984–5. Coinciding with these momentous events, Richey edged into adulthood, leaving college and taking his much prized three A grades with him.

  Chapter 4

  Student Body

  ‘Born. School. Work. Die.

  Born. School. Work. Die … but to live?

  I don’t want a life of what ifs.’

  Richey’s archive, 1987

  Days before Richey Edwards vanished in 1995, he acted out what many now believe was a practice run for his later disappearance. He went missing from his Cardiff home, only to turn up two days later, maintaining that he’d simply needed some time alone. It later emerged in a brief diary entry that he had driven down to Swansea on the South Wales coast. This seaside city where he lived and studied for three years, and where his career with the Manic Street Preachers had begun, was obviously at the forefront of his mind in those last known days.

  Richey arrived at Swansea University in 1986 to study Political History. With his older cousin, Nick Edwards, having already passed through its doors, it seemed like the ideal choice for Richey at the time. Yet in a 1993 NME article (‘Manic Sheep Teachers’) that focused on musicians and education, Richey looked back on his time at university, and berated his fellow students’ obvious disinterest in academia and learning.

  ‘I thought it would be full of people who wanted to sit around and talk about books and it wasn’t like that at all,’ he said. ‘It was full of people who wanted to sit around and do as little as possible other than have as much fun as they could. I never equated university with fun. I thought it was about reading and learning but, for most people, it was about getting laid. Big fucking deal!’

  Rock and roll cliché has traditionally tended tacitly to promote turning off one’s brain, to mentally drop out, in order to muddy the perception of life’s harsh realities. Richey’s sensibility turned this equation on its head; only the misguided took learning for a joke, and wasted further education as mere rites-of-passage. James Dean Bradfield recalled Richey saying, ‘My mam and dad worked really hard to get me here, and I’m not going to piss it up in the Uni bar.’

  There is no doubt that Richey’s time at Swansea University is of particular interest – a crucial turning-point, in which he explored and was exposed to material that influenced his thinking, lyrics and vision for the Manic Street Preachers.

  In early October 1986, fresher Simon Cross arrived at the ten-storey Mary Williams Halls of Residence in Swansea. He entered his room on the fourth floor, to hear a favourite tune blaring from room 207 next door. He decided to knock on the door to meet his new neighbour.

  ‘I didn’t know a soul there at the time, so I was really excited when I heard The Smiths coming through the walls,’ he says. ‘Growing up, I was utterly obsessed with Morrissey. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door not knowing what to expect. When his door opened, this big haired, big brown-eyed head popped out with a little smile. I complimented him on his music taste and he invited me in to show me his room. He’d only been there a few weeks, but there were posters and fantastic collages all over the walls – Ian Curtis and Debbie Harry, and films like Taxi Driver and Rumble Fish.

  ‘I thought I was shy, but he was really shy in every sense. I remember seeing him going to the shared bathroom, which about twenty of us used, with his toilet paper wrapped in a Sainsbury’s carrier bag. The rest of us would just carry it outright, but it seemed he had this really girly embarrassment about his body, which I thought was quite sweet.’

  Simon had spent his first fortnight living in a B&B in the town centre due to a lack of accommodation on campus. However, the room next to Richey became available when its first inhabitant left after two weeks, citing acute homesickness. Richey often mentioned him and wondered what became of him. Simon recalls that homesickness was less of a problem for those higher up the social ladder. Describing his own background as ‘very middle class’, he had attended a boarding school in Kent. Privately educated youths like him we
re well-acquainted with life away from home, and fending for themselves.

  During his first few weeks at Swansea, Simon noted a marked variety in the social backgrounds of students. He perceived Richey as coming from a ‘very working-class background’. If Richey had expected Swansea to be a wholly meritocratic environment, he would be disappointed. Many of his fellow students, including some Richey considered close friends, came from what Simon Cross himself calls ‘privileged upbringings’ but were far from sharing Richey’s commitment to ‘working first, and partying later’.

  Class consciousness famously permeates the Manic Street Preachers’ and Richey’s lyrics and interviews. Throughout his private papers, viewed for this book, he refers to things as working class or middle class often enough to abbreviate them to ‘wc’ or ‘mc’.

  By the mid-eighties the Edwards family, despite being descended from generations of coalminers, may have felt that their lives differed somewhat from the experiences of many in their small town, particularly during a time of growing poverty, and the closure of traditional industries. Graham and Sherry Edwards had run not one but two successful businesses, as well as renting out property as private landlords. Although Richey’s parents could never be described as seriously wealthy, the perception among those back in Blackwood is that Richey Edwards stood out, even from the other Manic Street Preachers, as being from a relatively bourgeois background.

  ‘I remember when Richard used to come back from university and you’d have some of the boys around here, including James, Nick and Sean, saying Graham Edwards was in the Freemasons,’ remembers Mark Hambridge. ‘It was totally untrue, Graham had a really strong work ethic and nothing was handed to him on a plate. They weren’t flash at all, and Richard never perceived himself as better than anybody else because his parents ran a business. His friends never changed, his attitude never changed, and he was the same Valleys boy right up until the end.’

  Yet while their home-town peers may have perceived Richey as relatively socially rarefied, some of the students around him in Swansea University came from the Home Counties, were privately educated, and were properly and unmistakably posh. In comparison he appeared very working class.

  Simon Cross recalls how significant this whole issue was to Richey. ‘I think he was perhaps a bit self-conscious about where he came from, because of the whole Welsh bashing that was popular in the media at the time, thanks to people like Neil Kinnock. I don’t think it was the class thing he was ashamed of, but a certain shyness that he may be judged for being a bit of a Taffy by other people.’

  ‘At the start we never went around wearing Welsh credentials. Richey was really paranoid about ever coming across as Welsh. He always called it the Neil Kinnock factor.’

  Nicky Wire, 1997

  One group of friends were close to Richey throughout university, and stayed in touch long after graduation. Hampton-born Dan Roland and Nigel Bethune had known each other since childhood and arrived at Swansea together. Richey was also close to Simon Cross’s girlfriend, Sorelle White, who lived on the floor below. The three would often pass the time in each other’s rooms drinking and listening to music.

  At the end of 1986, Richey and Simon went to their first gig together as friends – or rather attempted to. The Smiths were scheduled to play in London, and the plan was to drive there. By now Richey had a driving licence, but the family car he shared with his parents and Rachel was back at home in Blackwood. Simon went on to introduce Richey to a fellow student called Melissa, who volunteered to drive the three of them to the gig.

  The trio turned up to find that the show had been cancelled due to Morrissey’s sore throat. To Simon the whole episode is memorable for its chastening mix of social classes.

  ‘We ended up going back to Melissa’s parents in Surrey for the night,’ he says. ‘When we pulled up outside her house, Rich’s eyes popped out of his head because she lived in a real mansion. I don’t think he’d ever really seen how the other half lived. He went into the house and was pointing out all the chandeliers and gasping at the size of the bathroom. I’m not sure if he was impressed or disgusted by it.

  ‘I always saw that trip as a sign that music could transcend those barriers. A working-class, middle-class and upper-class trio on a road trip bonding over The Smiths.’

  Music brought out another side to Richey, and as a member of the Entertainment Society he indulged his passion by organising trips to venues away from Swansea. He travelled with fellow students to see the Psychedelic Furs at Newport Leisure Centre and ex-Clash guitarist Mick Jones’s latest group, Big Audio Dynamite, in Bristol.

  ‘At the gigs, Rich really let loose,’ recalls Simon. ‘He jumped up and down; which was a nice change as he was normally very self-conscious and quite reserved in how he came across. In his final year I have a memory of him and Nicky Wire on the dance floor in Cinders on the end of Mumbles Pier. The DJ was playing The Clash and they were pogo-ing up and down, and Rich banged his head on Nicky’s face. There was blood everywhere and Rich thought this was amazing. He was saying, “Blood on the dancefloor – what an image! That’s what we need!”

  With Richey studying Political History and Simon doing joint honours in English Literature and Politics, the two had some classes in common. Simon recalls the specific times the pair sat next to each other in Philosophy.

  ‘At Swansea there was a very famous philosophy lecturer, D.Z. Phillips, who had written many well-regarded books. In the lecture theatre, where we sat, carved into the wood on the bench in front, someone had written, “Ian Curtis R.I.P. He Died For Us.” Rich thought that was really cool. We sat there every time because he was such a big Joy Division fan. In the lectures, Richey, like the rest of us, was taking notes, but he’d always add a line of his own questions at the bottom of the page, or be doodling away in the margins.’

  When Rachel passes us Richey’s lecture notes and essays, their volume and content are at the level of postgraduate research. There are lever-arch files bursting with captivating content, including lecture notes, submitted essays, and un-submitted work which would approach an essay’s title question from every conceivable point of view.

  When we start opening the pages, we sense most haven’t seen the light of day since the late eighties. Some are yellowed with age, particularly those covered with sellotape. Other pages open crisply and appear brand new. There are also the personal touches: a thumb-print; a hair from Richey’s head stuck in the margin; splashes of coffee, and what might be blood? There are no typed scripts. All Richey’s work is handwritten in his instantly recognisable scrawl.

  He was taught History modules by Welsh historian Prys Morgan, brother of Rhodri Morgan, the former First Minister of Wales. One of the topics covered was the Rebecca Riots of the 1840s, where Welsh agricultural labourers, incensed by rises in tollgate taxation, stormed rural tollgates dressed in women’s clothing to hide their identities.

  For those familiar with the Manic Street Preachers’ lyrical output, it’s easy to spot historical figures and moments later name-checked in lyrics and interviews. Essay titles such as ‘From Marxism to Leninism’, ‘Stalin: Ally & Victor’, ‘Mussolini and the ‘Development of Italian Nationalism’, ‘Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis’ and other references which permeated Richey’s later writing with the band.

  Richey took advantage of any opportunity in his essay work to doodle references to his favourite bands. The heading ‘Irish Nationalists’ saw him scribble ‘Alternative Ulster – Stiff Little Fingers.’ Nazi Germany’s invasions of its neighbours were a trigger for The Ramone’s ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. Work on Wat Tyler’s Peasants’ Revolt is dotted with the words ‘fascist regime’ courtesy of the Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy In the UK’, while work on US foreign policy was accompanied by lines from the The Clash’s ‘I’m So Bored with the USA’.

  When they weren’t in lectures, Richey and Simon could be spotted in the campus refectory, where they would eat their daily lunch and dinner. ‘We’d have the same Mon
day to Friday – pie, chips and beans for 62p,’ recalls Simon. ‘It was really cheap, greasy horrible stuff, but we couldn’t be bothered cooking.’

  Richey would also call in favours from his friend Richard Fry, who was working at the Pot Noodle factory in Crumlin, near Blackwood. He would take the family car, pick up hundreds of discarded Pot Noodles that couldn’t be sold due to being over or under the official weight specification, and drive them back to Swansea.

  ‘I had paternal feelings for him,’ says Simon, ‘and remember quizzing him about how he was going to eat in his second year if he was sharing a house, and away from the main campus canteen. He told me, “There’s a microwave there, so I can eat baked potato and baked beans every day.” I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what he did.’

  Richey developed a signature dish that he would cook for others. He called it ‘WHITE NOISE’ or ‘WHITE TRASH’ and wrote the recipe in the margins of 1987 lecture notes. The name of the dish itself may have derived from Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise, which Richey was reading at the time. The book critiques modern society’s rampant consumerism and the shortcomings within latterday academia. Life for students in the 1980s tended to be a hand-to-mouth existence, and Richey’s signature dish highlighted this. Sparse and frugal, it contained three basic ingredients – potatoes, rice and sweetcorn.

  University was when Richey began fending for himself. It was also the time he ventured into the world of girls and dating.

  ‘He was a bit of a late developer,’ says Mark Hambridge. ‘Throughout college, girls came secondary to academia and music, but was that down to choice? Before university he was so painfully shy around the opposite sex, and really believed nobody would accept him because of how he perceived himself to look. He had a very old-fashioned view of dating, almost like courtship. I remember when he liked girls he’d start buying them flowers and cuddly toys even though all the other boys took the mick.