THE GREEN, GREEN GRASS OF HOME 1 page

1967 to 1979

On my second day of researching in South Wales, I set out from my Cardiff hotel to drive north under virtually cloudless blue skies. Despite this being a capital city, it didn't take long for me to escape from the grid-locked traffic and I was soon zooming along the green and leafy M4. In the car's CD player was the Manics' best-of, Forever Delayed. Now, listening to 'A Design For Life' while driving along hillside roads gives the song more meaning, and perhaps a little more insight, just because this is where the song comes from. You could almost feel the music echoing around the valley. It was the same when I'd previously driven around Memphis listening to Big Star, around northern California listening to Pavement, or rural Georgia with any of R.E.M.'s first three albums playing, although I doubt I'd have felt the same while driving around Liverpool with Yellow Submarine on the stereo. On this beautiful day it all seemed so positive and I found it difficult to relate to all I'd absorbed about the place before I arrived.

Down through the years, South Wales has had some unofficial titles bestowed on it that it probably didn't want. 'The divorce capital of the UK', 'the alcohol poisoning capital of the UK', it had some of the country's highest unemployment after mines closed and now - just down the road in Bridgend - the national press was hunting out the reasons why the local youth population all seemed to be killing themselves. All these negative connotations seemed a light year away as I wended through green valley after green valley. This was really pleasant.

Up the valley off the motorway you reach Risca, which seems to have more well-tended cricket pitches than I ever see back in England. I passed the Crosskeys college with its wooden façade. The large wall of high-ceilinged windows was where Richey Edwards would sit looking out at the traffic on the main road while doing his A-Levels here in the 1980s. The next sign said, 'Blackwood 7 Miles'. The thought occurred to me that I was tracing Edwards' life in reverse during this sunny morning. From Cardiff and his flat, which was the end of his documented life in 1995, past his sixth-form college, heading to Blackwood where he spent his teenage years and eventually to the other side of the valley known as Woodfieldside where his family lived when he was born in the 1960s. In all, I travelled his twenty-seven known years in less than ninety minutes.

Graham Edwards was thirty-one when he married Sherry Davies in 1966 at St Margaret's Parish Church in Blackwood. Sherry, who was eight years Graham's junior, lived with her parents at the tint while Graham shared a house on Church View with his mother. The house had been in the family for generations. At the end of 1965, their first child was born ? a boy they called Richard, commonly known as Richey. At least one book places Richey Edwards' birth as being in 1966, The Times said it was in 1969, while other source claim it was on 27 December 1967. It's no wonder that his later life seemed almost mythical when simple things such as a date of birth couldn't be accurately pinned down.

In fact, Richard James Edwards made his first live appearance on 22 December 1967. If you believed him in later interviews, life was all downhill from there. 'The only perfect circle on a human body is the eye,? he explained. 'When a baby is born, it's so perfect, but when it opens its eyes, it's just blinded by the corruption and everything else is a downward spiral.' Despite this, Edwards' childhood was a happy one; in fact, it was pretty much the happiest time of his life. He initially lived in a terraced house on Church View, just a short walk from open fields he could play in. Also living there was his paternal grandmother. Shortly before his second birthday he was joined by a sister, Rachel. She was born in the same year that Neil Kinnock became Blackwood's MP. Richey?s earliest memory was watching his father Graham put coal on the open fire. Graham's father had been a miner but rather than follow in his footsteps, Graham had served four years in the parachute regiment before setting up a hairdressing business with Sherry on Blackwood High Street. The family unit was close and spent Sunday mornings at the local Methodist church, somewhere that the family had attended for as long as anyone could remember. Richey also started going to Sunday school as soon as he was old enough. Being around his grandmother and organised religion was something that he was presented with from his earliest childhood. The long days that his parents spent at work meant that Richey would spend many hours in the care of his grandmother, which was just fine by him. ?All I remember is green fields,? said Edwards, 'blue skies and Carks shoes with the compass in the bottom.'

***

In the late 1970s, it wasn't quite jumpers for goal-posts on the Gossard factory playing held. This was a scene replicated on thousands of fields across the country every evening after school. Small groups of boys would gather at different ends and sides of the held to have a kickabout, and they'd gradually meld into one or two matches depending on age and size, lines would be drawn up with everyone dreading being picked last. The matches would usually last until just before dark on a school night, but this was a Friday ? no school and a licence to stay out until dark. On this late spring evening, that meant games running from just after tea time until after eight p.m. At dusk on this night the game was evenly balanced at 12-all, and someone called out that 'Next goal wins!' Defending wasn't really an issue and young legs chased the ball up and down the pitch with endless enthusiasm. Despite this being South Wales, the players being emulated were the stars of Liverpool and Nottingham forest, with the occasional Leeds United fan pretending to be Peter Lorimer. Just as with their heroes, there was a trophy up for grabs. This one was a battered old crown green bowling trophy that the father of one of the kids had found tossed into a skip, but it was prized nonetheless and the victors would inevitably parade down the road home with it after the match. With the last rays of the sun disappearing behind the factory, a final hurst of energy gripped the players as they knew the end of the game was fast approaching. One of the tallest players, a gangly lad called Jones, skipped ?ast an attempted tackle from a bespectacled kid called Bradfield, and I then another from Bradfield's cousin, before slipping a pass to his on-rushing winger. 'There you go Teddy!' called Jones as the winger collected the ball in his stride and slipped it under the on-rushing goalkeeper, before wheeling away in a mock celebration that would have graced the luscious striped turf of Wembley ?r even the Arms Park. The losing side looked on dejectedly as the winners took turns passing around the knackered old silverware before the winning goal scorer - beaming from ear to ear ? hoisted it above his head.

Richey 'Teddy' Edwards was so-named by his friend because of his 'cuddly' nature and the fact that his surname matched that of the Teddy Edwards children's television character. At school, he was also known as 'Titch' because of his small size. The Jones that towered above him was Nicholas Allen Jones; he was just over a year younger than Edwards, having been born on 20 January 1969. The pair had known each other since junior-school age, as both lived on the Woodfieldside estate side of the valley. 'I first met him playing football when we were little,? recalled Jones in 2008. ?I lived on the different side of the street and we'd go on the field and play for this little crappy trophy my dad had found in a skip. He was a decent right-winger. That's my first memory of him.'

Jones' father, Alan, had also served in the army, then worked down the mine before becoming a builder. Nick had a brother, Patrick, who was four years older. In his teenage years Nick Jones would become almost universally known as Nicky Wire due to his tall, gangly, wiry frame. He had a wide, cheesy grin and a quick mouth if he saw something he didn?t like.

Other regular players on the Gossard pitch mxt the pair of cousins from a mile down the road in Pontllanfraith. James Dean Bradfield was almost christened either Clint Eastwood Bradfield or John Wayne Bradfield by his carpenter father, Monty, but his mother, Sue, intervened and they settled on a third-favourite film star: James Dean. He was just a month younger than Jones (born 21 February 1969) and suffered a number of school-yard nicknames due to an early eye injury which necessitated a pair of thick glasses ? ?Radar', 'Crossfire', 'Beaker', and so on, were the usual taunts.

'We played football together and did all the things friends do,? said Nicky Wire. 'I've known James Dean Bradneld since I was five and I think that's why we've stood the test of time. It's very rare that a group of very close friends form a band together.? Bradfield's cousin, Sean Moore, rounded out the quartet.

To this day, Bradfield has the geography of his childhood etched into his mind's eye. ?A long terraced street,? he told Q magazine in 1996. 'Steps down into the valley. Football field. Swimming pool. Then to the left was a big disused slag heap with trees growing on it. We played there, everything happened there ? Bonfire Night, Halloween, a lot of people lost their virginity there. If there was a fight between Pontllanfraith and Springfield it happened on that slag heap. It's gone now, levelled. When I go back what strikes me is there's less places for people to hide. Hide and just be innocent. Lose their innocence too.'

The mid-1970s were probably the last generation of kids that could really be kids without the all-permeating fear and suffocating protection of their parents against drugs, knives, abductions and guns. All four of the boys have since recalled how their childhoods were almost too perfect. They spent long, hot summers building dams, playing games, watching films, reading and playing football. The closest thing they experienced to trouble was when an aunt of James Dean Bradfield had her pony stolen from a local field. Bradneld cried his eyes out when he heard the news and although local suspicion hinted that gypsies had taken it, this couldn't be proved. Even here, the inference was that outsiders must have perpetrated the crime: locals just didn't do that kind of thing.

Richey Edwards started attending Pontllanfraith Junior School not far from the massed allotments at the back of Woodfieldside in the early 1970s. As did Wire, Bradfield and Moore. Just a short walk from home, the junior and infant schools were imposing, Victorian brick monuments that still loom over the main road. Nowadays the school's side gates are all securely padlocked, a simple sign of the difference between Edwards' school days and the present-day precautions that are written in statute. Exactly how Richey enjoys junior school was relayed by his classmate Maria Gibbs. She recalls that he was a quiet, intelligent boy who kept himself to himself. He enjoyed a third-year project about Concorde and a trip to Bristol Zoo, but otherwise the minutiae of these years might as well have been eaten by locusts. The imposing facade of the school is still impenetrable today, with nary an acknowledgement to repeated phonecalls, emails and letters. Most of the teachers from back then are likely to be retired or dead anyway.

This is all quite different to Oakdale Comprehensive, which they all moved to at the end of the decade. The secondary school is situated just up the leafy Penmaen Road past the funeral directors in Oakdale. It's a modern-looking school, which now has I boundary of high chicken-wire fences all around its perimeter These wouldn't have been in place when Richey Edwards first walked through the doors in September 1979. 'Endeavour' is displayed proudly on the large school crest above the entrance building. A group of girls were playing hockey when I popped by to take a look and so I didn't think it was a good idea to start taking photos of the buildings. Both schools are on the far side of the valley from the Blackwood High Street so any trip over there would have to be worthwhile, especially for the kids. One such trip in 1978 allowed Richey to buy his first record, ?It's Only Make Believe' by Child. In a funny way, that was an apt choice for young Richey. He was a deep thinker from an early age; it was a problem that would plague him throughout his life ? he could be overly sensitive and prone to thinking about things too much. Even before junior school age, this was affecting him. 'Maybe I think about things too much, but everything that happens to me I do feel is deliberate,? he said. 'And that's been the same since I was a child. If something happened in Infants' School I'd be convinced everybody was against me. Which is self-obsession, because the world does not revolve around you. People don't give a fuck. People don?t do things because it?s you. When I?m driving in my car and traffic lights turn red, I think it?s because I?m in the car. I feel persecuted. I feel that if anybody else had been in the car they?d have gone through.? Edwards would always have a different view of the world and his place in it. He would struggle with finding any value in himself and would despair at how he perceived the rest of humanity to be acting. He would think about things so intently that the knots his brain tied him up in became more like a noose. He also had off-kilter views of the world around him, which he seemed to get from books, and would refuse to explore new places for himself. In later years, he spoke to one interviewer about the imagery in his lyrics. ?If I tried to write a Springsteen-esque lyric about Wales, I?d be, "I went to the Pontypool factory/Then drove up Caerphilly mountain/ And drank tea from a plastic cup." You can't do it.? In this statement Edwards revealed his lack of insight both into Springsteen?s lyrics and the similarities between the working stock of his home and New Jersey. Both were blue-collar areas with iron works and oil refineries. Springsteen would often invoke the common man and his exit from the factory or road gang on a Friday night. Perhaps Edwards just needed to get out more.

***

Through the 1970s, South Wales has been a Labour stronghold. By the spring of 1979 the United Kingdom as a whole was ripe for change, but the idea that you should ?be careful what you wish for? was never more true than when the area backed the Tory revolution. James Callaghan? dying Labour government was casting around to find something that might allow them to cling onto power, but the Scottish and the Welsh referendums of late winter 1979 did little to help, in Scotland a slight majority voted in favour but the Welsh shouldn?t have made their thoughts more clear as only 12 per cent voted in support of a Welsh Assembly, despite the economic decline that had gathered pace through the decade. The years between 1973 and 1983 would see the number of working Welsh miners drop from 66,000 to fewer than 20,000. Things would get worse still during the 1980s under successive Tory governments.

A couple of months after the Welsh referendum, all of Labour?s ideas were swept aside with Margaret Thatcher leading the Conservative march to Downing Street. 'Where there is despair may we bring hope,? she said on her first day in office. The Tories had won eleven seats in Wales ? their highest total since 1874. In the north of the country, Anglesey returned its first Tory member since 1784. While the majority were obviously pinning their hopes on the Tories, ? minority set about putting their more extreme views into practice. The WAWR (Welsh for 'Dawn'), or 'Workers' Army of the Welsh Republic', were on the offensive against English holiday homes in Wales. The end of 1979 and early 1980 saw thirty houses go up in flames. There was also talk of a bombing campaign. It was a time of political violence in the UK. The IRA troubles were arguably at their height and an aide of Mrs Thatcher, Airey Neave, was murdered in a car bomb as he drove away from the House of Commons. Gwynfor Evans, leader of Plaid Cymru, said he would hunger-strike to death if no Welsh-language TV channel was broadcast. S4C finally debuted in November 1982.

In 1979, Welsh unemployment stood at 8 per cent but by 1982 it had more than doubled to 17 per cent. So much for Mrs Thatcher's speech about bringing hope. Richey Edwards completed his primary school education in the summer of 1979, just as the unrest of anew decade was about to begin. At the time, he was still more interested in playing with his mates than he was in British politics. What would become apparent over the next few years, however, was how his parents and their friends would be affected by the changing political and social environments that the new leadership created in South Wales. Years later, Edwards would say that 'Blackwood is scarred industrially, economically and politically. Everything about Blackwood stands as a reminder of fifteen years of decay. That affects your world-view for the rest of your life wherever go.? Nicky Wire explained in a Q magazine 'Cash for Questions? feature that 'Our angst springs from coming from South Wales. It?s a longing encapsulated in the Welsh word "hireath". The Irish can usually see the better side of things, they have a sense of wonder. The Welsh don't. We think everything is going to turn out shit.? For a while during the 1980s this was something that a lot of people in Blackwood and its surrounds would agree with and relate to.

?o say that Richey Edwards? teenage mind was like a sponge absorbing everything around it would be an understatement. It was more akin to a machine or super-computer sucking in influences, digesting them and then quickly moving on to the next book, film, album or philosophy. The Parisian uprising of 1968 became one of his touchstones. At its centre had been Guy Debord, who came close to proving that art can change the world ? something Edwards acutely admired. Debord's 1967 book Society of the Spectacle was at the heart of Situationist International, a group with the view that if art was not revolutionary then it was worthless. Debord, who like Edwards had lived with his grandmother as a child, said that 'The remains of religion and of the family and the moral repression they assure, merge whenever the enjoyment of this world is affirmed ? this world being nothing other than repressive pseudo-enjoyment.' Edwards couldn't have said it better himself, especially not in French.

Debord, like Edwards, would polarise views; some thought him a genius and others ? motormouth who deliberately made simple theories more complicated than they needed to be with the use of overly complex language. Situationist International's views on art struck a chord with Edwards just as they had with punk in the 1970s. Revolution and sloganeering would be central to his thinking, Edwards would also attempt to use some of Debord?s ideas more literally when he strove to have the Mastics' debut album sleeved in sandpaper so that it would slowly destroy the albums stored either side of it. Debord's debut book, Mémoires, had been bound in sandpaper to do the same with books placed next to it.[4]

Once Situationist International was disbanded, Debord withdrew, Salinger-iike, to write in obscure isolation. Salinger's withdrawal was often mentioned by Edwards in interviews. Debord's chosen hideaway was in the tiny Bellevue-la-Montagne, a winding street no miles from my own hideaway in Saint-Jean-du-Gard. There, he was free from his past and could drink and write away from the public glare. He rarely left the ancient farmhouse. His alcoholism caused polyneuritis, a painful inflammation of nerve endings, and on 30 November 1994, aged sixty-two, he shot himself through the heart. After Debord's death, Edwards wrote about him for the NME: ?True force. No copyright. No rights reserved. No motorcycle emptiness. No modern life is rubbish. No time. No history. The time of life is short and if we live, we tread on kings.?

III

SCULPTURE OF A MAN

1979 to 1986

Bobby Sands had already served three years for the possession of firearms before he was found guilty for a second time in September 1977. This time he was sentenced for fourteen years and sent to HM Prison Maze, nine miles outside of Belfast. Sands was imprisoned in the infamous H-Block and became the leader of the numerous provisional IRA members incarcerated with him, IRA prisoners had previously been given Special Category Status, which meant they didn't have to wear prison uniforms or do prison work; they were allowed extra visits and food parcels, much like a Prisoner of War. When these privileges were gradually removed, the prisoners rebelled. First, they instigated the Blanket Protests In which they refused to wear prison uniforms and wore only blankets. Next, came the Dirt? Protests. After the beating of a fellow prisoner, many others refused to leave their cells even to use the bathroom and began rubbing shit over their cell walls. By late 1980, the first hunger strikes had begun. This seemed to have an effect and they were initially called off, but when it became apparent that the prisoners hadn?t won the concessions they had hoped for, these were started again ? this time with Bobby Sands as their figurehead.

Sands stopped eating on 1 March 1981, asking for several demands to be met; ultimately these equated to all IRA prisoners being treated as political prisoners. Not long after his fast had started, Sands was given the opportunity of standing for election in the South Tyrone by-election. On 9 April, Sands was elected but of course never had the chance to actually take his seat. On 5 May he died of starvationafter sixty-six days of his protest. He was twenty-seven years old.

Richey Edwards, aged fourteen, had watched the unfolding every evening on the BBC news, sitting with his parents and sister. He viewed the story with a mixture of fascination and admiration. It was a protest that would resonate with him throughout his life, seeing that a person could take such severe action against their own body. He saw it as a method of self-control and to him that was an exquisite thing. 'My idea of purity is completely split down the middle,' he said. 'It's in denial with its own logic. The idea of not eating food, the idea of a political prisoner, say the Maze Block going on hunger strike, when I was young, I thought it was so beautiful, the best thing anyone could do. It's all about injuring yourself to a certain extent. But for a reason, for an absolute reason. That's why I liked Bobby Sands. That's why I thought he was a better statement than anything else that was going on at the time, because it was against himself.' This was the first indication of what would become a growing obsession through his adult life. Weight management equalled control to the extent that he would only allow himself enough food to survive as he became intent on keeping a 'perfect' body shape. But that was later in life ? as a child and young teenager he had other things to worry about.

***

When Richey Edwards walked through the gates of Oakdale comprehensive school as one of its eight hundred or so pupils for the first time in September 1979, he probably glanced up at the school crest. He did so alone as Rachel was still at primary school. Edwards was a voracious reader and hard worker. His only misdemeanor occurred when he jumped off a wall and was hit by a car, breaking his leg in three places and putting him in hospital. As Richey Edwards came to the end of his first year of comprehensive school, Joy Division's Ian Curtis hanged himself, it didn't make an immediate impact on Edwards, although Curtis would later become one of his musical heroes. Edwards would buy the odd single here and there, but music wasn't yet a massive part of his life. The other future Manics were also just making their first tentative steps into the world of 7" singles. James Dean Bradfield was famously ridiculed for making the Diana Ross single 'My Old Piano? his first record purchase. ?Everybody was into metal and Whitesnake, but I was into the Nolan Sisters and ELO,? he admitted. 'I just remember bying that single and I remember walking to Blackwood, which is about a mile away, and I saw this bloke walking towards me called Dids, and he was a really cruel bastard. As he got closer he seemed to get bigger and bigger. At soon as I got close to him he just ripped the bag out of my hand and was like, "What have you bought? Ahh, you poof!??

Around this time, Sean Moore's parents went through a divorce and his mother Jenny decided it was best for Sean to move in with her sister Sue Bradfield. Sean moved into James' room and the two would share a bunk bed until they moved out years later. Moore's father disappeared and only made contact with his son after seeing the Manics on Top of the Pops, which prompted Sean to smash up a dressing room with a snooker cue. BradfieId and Moore grew close and remain more like brothers than cousins.

At the end of 1980, Edwards became a teenager and was a typical one in many ways. He suffered from bad skin until his late teens and was shy around girls, although he did have one girlfriend at Oakdale for just a couple of weeks. In fact, apart from a crush on Altered Images singer Clare Grogan he showed little interest in the opposite sex. On one occasion he and a group of friends found a stash of porn magazines under the bed of one of the boys' older brothers. After the gang spent a couple of minutes scanning the pages in stunned silence, Edwards ran from the room and was physically sick outside ? an event that resonated through his life. He was always dismissive when asked about public nudity, saying that the human body was an ugly sight, and he mentioned the porn incident in a later song. 'It was one great bloody shock,' he admitted. 'It wasn't the nudity, as such, it was the depravation. They were the saddest pictures I ever saw. It wasn't the girls who were sad? I felt sad for the men. The fact that an appetite existed, out there and, I can't deny, I was part of that appetite? it was the violence of those pictures that upset me. It affected me profoundly and will always haunt me.'

Well before his O-Levels, Edwards wat showing signs of being a conscientious student and insatiable reader. He had little time for many of his timetabled subjects, but English Literature interested him and his favourite early books were 1984 and Brave New World. 'When I was thirteen, I did a Shakespeare project that was 859 pages long,? he said. 'Everyone else just did sex. I just had fuck all else to do but sit in and write.?

?s he turned thirteen, his life changed in many ways outside of the usual rites of passage. Graham, Sherry, Richey and Rachel moved across town; leaving his grandmother in her own house, he rebelled against going to church and Sunday School and gained the responsibility of a pet dog he called Snoopy. This was a lot for any thirteen-year-old to take in, especially if that thirteen-year-old wasbecoming more withdrawn and shy as the years passed. Looking back on his life from an adult perspective, he would often claim that his life had been happy until the age of thirteen and that it had all started to turn bad from there on. Was this because he had rose-tinted glasses for the days of no responsibilities? Fond memories of living with his grandmother? Or a later feeling of being lost after the close guidance of church? Even now with the advent of' global warming, the summers of our youth seem to be always sunny in the mind's eye ? the summer holidays were always bathed in sunshine. 'Most people look back on their childhoods with more fondness than their early twenties or their teenage years which are pretty horrendous,? said Edwards. 'As a child, you put your head on the pillow and fall asleep with no worries. From being a teenager onwards it's pretty rare that you don't end up staying awake half the night thinking about bullshit.'

Richey's parents decided to move from the house that been the family home to a modern bungalow across the valley in a cul-de-sac off a steep hill that runs up from Blackwood Street. It was on the High Street that Graham and Sherry Edwards ran their hairdressing business. Richey didn't change school ? it just meant he had further to travel to and from school ? but suddenly had the library within walking distance and bustle of the High Street just under his nose. I know this because I cruised around the area. It was early afternoon on a weekday when I found myself sitting in my car outside the Edwards' family home. The descriptions were right. Up a steep hill from the centre of town then down a steep cul-de-sac to the modest ? but not too modest ? bungalow at the bottom. A car was parked outside; I surmised that Richey's parents would probably have both retired by now. Should I go and knock on the door? No, I'd promised myself all along that I would try and act with integrity on this project, just as I tried to do on all of my other ones. After all, what would I say if I found myself staring his mother in the eyes? 'Hello, I'm just here to quiz you about your long-time missing son, don't mind if I come in do you?' No, I'd had the feedback from the family already so why try it on and do nothing but cause them distress? Via the band's management I'd been told that they would never talk to anyone for a book about their son. They did send their best wishes, however, thanking me for my interest. My initial view had been that they would have welcomed any publicity. Surely any chance to keep his name in the public eye would be an extremely thin shaft of hope? But I guess that people have to move on with their lives, no matter how painful the loss. So I sat there trying to take in my surroundings. It would have been a lung-busting hike to the top of the road before a more leisurely stroll down the steep hill into town. As my mind drifted I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. Someone was at the window. Making sure I avoided eye-contact, I self-consciously put the car into gear and broke the enveloping silence with a hill-start to facilitate my escape.

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 204