Withdrawn Traces

by Sara Hawys Roberts

  Was this possible evidence that Richey was re-aligning his priorities? Could he, just a short time later, have concluded that those several gruelling months of touring America were just not worth it after all? It’s no surprise to learn that in later years, many with Asperger’s syndrome become overwhelmed by life’s situations and shut out the outside world as a means of coping, resulting in increased social isolation, and even reclusiveness over the long term.

  Rachel reflects, ‘I think about my Great Aunt Bessie, who gravitated towards a life of isolation, and how these diagnoses are now being researched as limbic and hereditary, so there’s potential “form” there, so to speak. I don’t see something like Asperger’s as simplifying Richard at all; it just adds another layer of complexity to him altogether.’

  With crises in both his personal and professional relationships now forcing his hand, was Richey now at a point where he felt he’d exhausted most of the options for his future?

  By marrying Jo, Richey might have thought he had a valid excuse for removing himself from the public eye. Alternatively, marrying and remaining in the band, the pressure of creating a success of a life in music would not be so burdensome, as he would have an existence apart from it; the stigma of failure would not hang so heavily.

  ‘Yet one thing he never let go of was that he was obsessed with creating something perfect,’ says Rachel. ‘Something that couldn’t be faulted by him or anyone else in any way – a band, a relationship, a work of art that was all-encapsulating, timeless and enduring. He was overly idealistic and found compromise very hard and there was a lot of that to deal with in the month before his disappearance.’

  ‘I have a dream of writing a lyric that I think is, flawless really, with no broken edges. That makes sense to me, not anybody else. In fifteen, twenty lines that I’ve written a lyric that sums up exactly how I feel about everything. Not just how I feel today but how I’ve felt all my life. Everything I’ve read, everything I’ve seen, you know in a few lines, say it all.’

  Richey Edwards, last television interview, 1994

  By the New Year, the band had hastily regrouped at Surrey’s House in the Woods Studios. The place once decried by the Manics as the scene of their previous ‘selling out’ when recording Gold Against the Soul was now firmly back on the agenda, undoubtedly leaving the four with mixed feelings and an unmistakable sense of déjà vu.

  Following the commercial disaster of The Holy Bible, the stakes were high, with the band later admitting there was a pressure to deliver the goods – and pronto. ‘I think possibly the reason we went into the studio so quickly was to carry on with the demos,’ conceded Sean. ‘[It] was probably so we could come away with something fast.’

  They spent five days at the studio. While there, Richey handed the band a wedge of lyrics he’d been working on over the festive season. ‘They were pretty heavy going,’ said Sean. ‘There wasn’t a lot to put out, to be honest. Most of it was pretty fragmental rambling.’

  In the studio they demoed two of Nicky’s softer sounding lyrics – ‘Further Away’ and ‘No Surface All Feeling’ – along with one of Richey’s mellower efforts, ‘Small Black Flowers that Grow in the Sky’.

  ‘Also, written [of Richey’s] but not demoed, because we ran out of time to do demos, were “Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier” and part of “Kevin Carter”,’ James told The Quietus in 2016. ‘I’d played those two to Richey on the acoustic. But it was, you know, “It’s a bit like this, I’m not sure yet …”

  James got as far as proposing an initial melody for ‘Kevin Carter’ and strumming the tune acoustically, but Richey was unimpressed. He said it sounded too much like the bossa nova song ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ for his liking, telling James, ‘I don’t want my words to sound like that.’ James would later describe this moment as ‘an impasse in the band for the first time, born out of taste’.

  When asked by Q in 1998, ‘What would Manic Street Preachers records sound like if Richey had stuck around?’ the band replied: ‘We’d have reached a compromise situation where we’d do a track for Richey here and there.’ Was it possible that, by early 1995, Richey was already feeling that compromise? He had often publicly declared his writing as the core of his abilities, and the bedrock of his self-esteem. Might he have deduced that any future contributions to the Manics would be token gestures of appeasement offered up by his fellow band members?

  ‘When Nicky started writing by himself that autumn, there was a major shift in the band and their principles,’ remembers their former roadie. ‘The band and Martin suddenly became very career-focused, very fast. After The Holy Bible flopped they seemed much more content to be guided by Sony if it meant guaranteeing them a long-term career in music.

  ‘Rich was never in it for that, and I do wonder how that change of direction would have affected somebody who was very much a man of principle – especially with everything he’d said in the press following Gold Against the Soul, and the kind of messages he was communicating on The Holy Bible.

  ‘I remember thinking at the time what I’d have done if I was in his situation; and how I’d have felt if my friends wanted to change the direction of the band I loved. If it was me who’d worked so hard to bring them to the attention of the media, and got them signed to a major label in the first place, then I’d be pretty pissed that my presence was going to be considered a compromise.’

  ‘I can’t help feeling that the band got what they wanted out of Rich when he was around. After the Holy Bible the only thing they could do was change, and it’s understandable sometimes in the world of music. I don’t hold that against them, but how could they not see how it affected him? To be so utterly demoted like that. They may have let him take control of the fourth album if the Holy Bible sold, but when it didn’t … What happened to truth instead of platitudes? The message first and the music second?’

  Jo, letter to Rachel Edwards, 1998

  Before the band had even signed to a label, they had always had an impassioned contempt for those who chose a lifelong career in the world of rock and roll. How was Richey to feel now that the band were seemingly content to slog ever onwards up the treadmill to the pyrrhic victory of unit-shifting chart success? Might he have imagined that all that would be left for him and the rest of the Manics to do on the world stage was to become hardened career soldiers, enlisting again and again for seemingly never-ending tours of duty until well past middle age?

  ‘He just wanted to go out like a soldier. Standing up. Not even like some poor, wasted rag-assed renegade.’

  Willard on Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now

  Yet creative impasses aside, Nicky claimed that the time spent at The House in the Woods that January was the most tranquil he’d experienced with Richey since the band’s earlier years.

  ‘I can honestly say that the five days at The House in the Woods was the only time when I thought he was back to being Iggy/Keith Richards, as opposed to Ian Curtis. But that could have been because he was going.

  ‘I don’t think it’s been tainted for me. I know it has for James, but I’m glad a phase ended like that instead of the ongoing shit that we’d be going through as a band. In his own way, I think it was Richey making some sort of peace with us. For those two weeks something had clicked in him. Whether he knew what he was going to do or he felt the freedom from it, I don’t know, but he was just bang on form, just like he always was.’

  Years later, however, Jo was puzzled to hear the band recalling that Richey appeared on a more even keel during their stay in Surrey. ‘He seemed so much worse at the start of the year, even [than] before we broke up,’ she told Rachel in a 1997 letter. ‘But the band says he was on top form in the studio, which confuses me all these years on. Does this mean he was trying to control and manipulate me and everyone else by claiming he was powerless? How much control did he have left at that point with the image he was putting out there? I wonder if sometimes he wanted different people to see different things.’

  D
ays before Richey gave his last ever interview to the world press, video producer Tony Van Den Ende recalls how Richey paid him a surprise visit at a studio just off London’s Oxford Street. There, Van Den Ende was editing the rushes for the American release of the ‘Faster’ single, in the presence of Sony’s Rob Stringer and the band’s manager, Martin Hall. The producer had worked with the Manics before.

  ‘I met the band when I did their first “You Love Us” video in 1991,’ Tony recalls. ‘Richey was this amazing piece of eye candy, an almost walking Warhol piece like the old studio stars. I’d seen them play a few times after that, and was really excited by their music and message, so I was desperate to work with them again.’

  In October 1994, Tony was invited to the band’s Cardiff gig, where he was introduced to a group of representatives from Sony USA. By the end of the night it was agreed that he’d film the video for ‘Faster’, live from the Astoria, two months later.

  ‘As well as recording at the gig, we had to do some filming in the day for close-ups,’ remembers Tony. ‘It wasn’t a very positive shoot; Nick got really fed up quite soon into the process, wanted to “move things along”, whilst Richey was just milling around by himself. He stayed away from the band and crew, and just came onto the set when he was called. The other three hung around between takes, doing the usual things you do on a shoot – chatting, drinking, eating – but what struck me the most was that all their passion and energy had totally dissipated. It just seemed joyless, like a job they didn’t want to do any more.’

  Now, in January 1995, Van Den Ende witnessed consternation on the part of the record company about their investment in the band. ‘Martin Hall and Rob Stringer were already there in the editing suite when Richey suddenly pitched up with his shaved head, and what I can only describe as Belsen-style pyjamas. It was the middle of winter. I remember looking down at his feet to see he was wearing slippers. He must have been absolutely freezing! It reminded me of that story about Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, and how after leaving the band, he went to see them in the studio – but because Syd had shaved his head, and changed his look so drastically, it took a while for them to recognise him.’

  Richey stayed at the London studio for 45 minutes, viewing the video twice and complimenting Tony on his efforts. However, before he departed, Rob Stringer asked him to step outside for a chat.

  ‘I don’t know what was said out there, but once Richey left, questions were raised,’ recalls Tony.

  ‘It went off quite heavily for about five minutes after that. I think back to the argument, and it was like witnessing one at a bar – there’s stuff in the past, there’s stuff entangled in there and you’re just getting small parts of a bigger picture. It wasn’t Martin or Rob’s style but it erupted because of one person – Richey. When you put yourself in Rob’s position and all the money Sony were losing, it was business. To me it was like Warhol all over again, amazing people and the odder the better, but to him as a professional maybe it was too out there.

  ‘I think someone mentioned the way Richey looked in the end, otherwise it’s the elephant in the room. It was undeniably a concentration camp vibe, and he must have still had it in him to know the shock he’d cause looking like that. Was he doing it to wind people up? Would Rob have found that almost confrontational, for Richey to be depicting a Holocaust victim, especially if Rob has Jewish family members himself?’

  ‘I am a man of peace, but when I speak, they are for war.’

  Psalm 120, ‘A Song for Ascents’, 120: 7

  Richey Edwards set list quote, Cologne, 3 December 1994

  Days later, on 23 January, London-based rock journalist Midori Tsukagoshi of Japan’s Music Life magazine received an unexpected phone call from Richey, actively seeking a last-minute interview shortly before the band’s American departure. ‘Can you get a train to Cardiff right now?’ he asked. When Tsukagoshi’s train pulled into Cardiff Central Station, she spotted the instantly recognisable yet markedly changed Richey waiting on the platform, still in Belsen-style pyjamas. If Rob Stringer or the band’s management had let it be known to Richey that his new uniform was not conducive to sales, he was not toeing the line.

  During the interview, Richey reaffirmed his long-held views on the music industry, and seemed eager to get them off his chest in the bluntest way possible, freely condemning professionals in the record industry and their treatment of artists. ‘Most people in this business are totally insensitive. Most are downright evil. I personally don’t know anyone who is in a band that I respect. And no one at the record companies really cares about the bands.’

  Midway through the interview he took off on another familiar tangent, keen to discuss one of his favoured topics, love and relationships. Perhaps desiring to control a particular image of himself until the very end, he played down the notion of his past interpersonal relationships. ‘The longest one was a girlfriend I had when I was younger, and that lasted about four days, I think? Since starting the band only one girl. I can talk to her easier than with anyone else. That’s really important to me. But even to her I’ve never said, “I love you” or anything. I’ve known her for a few years, but I’ve kissed her once, no, twice, that’s all. Really, that’s it. When you’re in love, I think there’s a feeling of being trapped.’

  Given his relationships with both Claire Forward and Jo, was Richey shying away from reality – or was he trying to maintain control of his narrative arc, right up until the end?

  Apart from his interview for the Japanese publication, Richey’s last documented week before disappearing consisted of both ordinary behaviours and some that have since been scrutinised as to their significance. Unusually he made four separate visits to Cardiff’s Queen Street, where he withdrew £200 from cashpoints on 20, 21, 23 and 25 January. Some of his acquisitions are itemised in his receipts – morning breakfasts in Marks and Spencer, comics and books from Forbidden Planet, and films (including duplicate VHSs of Mike Leigh’s Naked) from Virgin Megastores. It would also be the final time he paid a visit to his Blackwood family home.

  ‘The last time I saw him, he seemed flat, but with that, he was calm,’ says Rachel. ‘He’d brought flowers up for Mam like he often would, and had his camera with him. He was taking photos of me just sitting on the sofa and of Mam doing the ironing, which I thought was odd at the time.

  ‘When I got up to leave, he made a point of looking me up and down, like he was taking me in for whatever reason. So I said to him, “What’s the matter? Is there something wrong with my belt?” and he just said, “Nothing.” But it was obviously something, and by then I think he’d definitely made some kind of decision in his head.’

  Before James and Richey’s scheduled departure for America on 1 February, the band reconvened for two days’ rehearsal at The House in the Woods. During that time, Rob Stringer visited and reported on Richey’s apparent new enthusiasm for the upcoming trip – something at odds with what Richey had been telling those closest to him.

  On the evening of 31 January, as the band were leaving the studio, Richey gave them each a gift – a magazine for Sean, a CD for James and a Daily Telegraph and a Mars bar for Nicky.

  ‘I just saw it as an act of kindness for the fact that he’d been pretty difficult,’ Nicky told the Guardian in 2009. ‘So the Daily Telegraph and the Mars bar, I just saw it as a little “Things are going to be OK”. Which maybe, in his mind, that’s what it was.’ He sighed. ‘But different meanings of OK, I guess.’

  While Nicky and Sean headed to Blackwood and Bristol respectively, James and Richey made their way to the Embassy Hotel, in London’s Bayswater.

  ‘We’d just bought a band car, the Vauxhall Cavalier,’ said Nicky Wire later, ‘and the ashtray in it was like the mountain in Close Encounters … It was terrible. Sean hated it and I hated it because we’re anti-smokers. And it was only three months old. So James and Richey drove the Cavalier to the Embassy Hotel and that was it. I remember them leaving, and it was one of those dark, dark nights. And t
hat was the end, really.’

  Chapter 11

  The Vanishing

  Richey Edwards was dreading going to America. Shortly before ringing his mother to tell her of his trepidation, he and James hung back in the underground car park of the Embassy Hotel to listen to some of the demos recorded at The House in the Woods.

  ‘I said, “Which one’s your favourite?”’ James told Q magazine in 2016. ‘And he said, “The others are OK but Small Black Flowers is the one I really like.” With a shrug of the shoulders, he was a bit ambivalent about the rest.’

  The pair checked into adjoining rooms and Richey made his way to room 561. They arranged to meet later and venture out to explore the local cafés, pubs and eateries along nearby Queensway.

  ‘He rang my mam that evening, and told her he didn’t want to go to America,’ Rachel recalls. ‘It was the last conversation she had with Richard, but she never picked up on anything being seriously wrong.’

  By the time that James Dean Bradfield knocked again, Richey had changed his mind and told him he’d prefer to stay in and have a quiet night instead.

  In the version of events presented to the public, James Dean Bradfield was the last person to see Richey alive. However, between the time James went out and came back, Richey had received a guest at the hotel. Much of what the Edwards family learned of the subsequent hours came from the band themselves. That evening, as confirmed to Rachel by the band, Richey was in his room with a female named Vivian.

  With only a passing mention of her by the band, Rachel has been unable to ascertain Vivian’s relationship to Richey. She was not mentioned in any of the official police files Rachel accessed in the nineties. She is believed to have been a fan turned friend, yet all of Rachel’s subsequent attempts to track her down have proved fruitless. As well as the mysterious Vivian, the Edwards family are still unsure exactly who – from either the management or the record company – was at the Embassy that fateful night, preparing to travel to the States.