STRAIGHT OUTTA BLACKWOOD

September 1989 to December 1990

Shortly after lunchtime on Friday, 22 September 1989, Richey Edwards climbed in behind the wheel of a hired van and started a trip around Blackwood. He collected Nicky Wire, James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore and all of their equipment, except for Moore's drum kit, which didn't fit in the van, especially as they had a bunch of friends crammed into the back for moral support. Then he set course along the motorway to the Severn Bridge, over into England and along the M4 to London. Edwards had never been to London before. In fact, he'd hardly ever been to England and wasn't sure how to get across the Severn Bridge. He made it across and the journey became one that would be familiar to him over the next few years.

On this trip the destination was a Victorian pub on Portland Street called the Horse & Groom, where they would be supporting along-forgotten band called The Claim as a result of their concerted letter-writing campaign. The slot had been booked by writer Kevin Pearce, who Richey Edwards had been writing to for some months. His persistence had finally paid off. Ian Ballard was one of the few who paid £2 to get into the upstairs room and see the nine-song Manics set, 'There was no stage,? says Ballard. 'They were just playing through their little amps. It was a bloody row, to be honest, but they were all jumping up and down in white gear with slogans painted on them. It was one of those gigs you went to where you thought, "God, this is really good."' Afterwards, Ballard asked if they wanted to do a single with him. They said they'd think about it. Another curious bystander at the gig was Saint Etienne keyboardist and then Melody Maker writer Bob Stanley. Stanley, who would write the first live review of the band in the national music press, remembers the show well. 'We were laughing,? he says, 'but only because It was so unexpected. There was obviously something there, because the tunes were so good. After the first number, they said something to the effect of, thanks, that's the most applause we've ever had. We were totally won over.' Stanley?s live review ended with the words, 'Given enough rope they could become champions' ? a cheeky Clash reference.

A few weeks before, the NME had finally got around to reviewing the 'Suicide Alley' single. 'Retrogressive, exciting and inspired. You'll probably hate it,? wrote Steven Wells. Only a few ???ies of the single were up for sale, with most being sent to writers. Steve Lamacq was sent one and immediately recognised the Clash-inspired sleeve picture of Wire, Bradfield and Moore in their leather jackets ? a photo taken by Richey Edwards. The three hundred copies of the single were stored under the Moore-Bradfield bunk bed and placed into flat-packed sleeves and sent out when required. A few were sold locally at Dorothy's Cafe on the Blackwood High Street, without the shop taking any commission. ?They were really supportive of the band at the start,? said James Dean Bradfield. 'They made us feel like members of the Beat Generation.? A small ad was also placed in the back of NME, which was how Ballard had got a copy.

?At the end of his studying days, when he looked as if the band could actually make a go of it, Richard asked our opinion: what should he do ? train to teach history, or go for it with the band?? recalls Rebecca Williams. ?We advised the band, simply because we thought if it didn?t work out he could always still train to be a history teacher. We kept in touch, on and off. We would go on sort of dates, very occasionally, but we never had a proper relationship. I think he simply felt comfortable with girls he knew. We are talking one extremely sweet-natured bloke, basically.? Many Welsh bands seemed to think that a rep from Warners or Sony would spot them playing a show in the valleys and that the only cultural advantage of being based in London was being able to get the NME a day early. Richey Edwards was strongly of the view that you had to play shows in London if you wanted any chance of success, It wasn't just label reps that you had to impress, but it was important to make friends with writers and promoters to get a little buzz going and your name known. God knows what he'd have done if MySpace had been available in the 1980s. Prior to the Horse & Groom gig, Richey Edwards had been working hard to make some connections in the English capital. Radio 1 DJ John Peel, John Robb at Sounds and Steve Lamacq of the NME were just some of those who received Edwards' missives and a copy of the band's debut single. The initial letter to Lamacq had ended with the question, 'If we do some London dates, would you come?'

They played in London several more times before the end of the year, including poorly attended gigs at the Rock Garden and Shepherd's Bush Opera on the Green. By the time Steve Lamacq got to see them play live at the Bull & Gate in London, they'd already had some favourable write-ups. But, in an almost empty pub, he wasn't impressed: 'They sounded spindly and looked like they'd come out of a box marked "punk rock action figures".?

Edwards continued his mail-outs, writing to journalists, editors, record labels and other bands he admired. One of his favourites was the Aberdeen band Jasmine Minks and their singer Jim Shepherd. One of Edwards' letters to Shepherd explained how the Manics had taken inspiration for their name from the Jasmine Minks' album One Two Three Four Five Six Seven, All Good Preachers Go to Heaven, which was obviously a large stretching of the truth because the band had been named before Edwards was really involved, but this didn't detract from the correspondence they struck up. 'He was just like this mad agitator,' recalled Shepherd. ?The way he put things across to me, the music didn't actually live up to it. I always thought it was like Stiff Little Fingers, it was old hat. But the way he spoke about South Wales and the mentality there, it really spurred me on, and lots of other people, I'm sure. He'd just stop in the middle of a letter and there'd be two pages of poetry before he came back to the point. Obviously his brain was buzzin?.?

Other recipients of his long, sometimes rambling letters included Kevin Pearce of the Hungry Beat fanzine, to whom he wrote of the loneliness and desperation he'd experienced in Swansea and the rush of excitement he felt from certain bands, prompting him to say ?He had enough energy to fuel the nation. The exchange of such letters was the catalyst that helped evolve Edwards from being a shy teenager into the mouthpiece of the band that would be any publicist waking dream.

Since his teenage years, when he'd really become an avid NME reader he was aware of which writers favoured which types of music and were influenced by which bands. He used these years of reading to good effect and knew which writers would be open to the band and his style of letters, but it didn't prevent him from going after everybody 'I'd put in endless literary quotes,? he said. ?It was incredibly pretentious really, really dumb. But, as time passed, the letters became more and more surreal. We knew that most people would just hurl the whole package in the bin. So we actually sat down and had a discussion and decided that there was only one way around it. Everybody?and I mean everybody in the London music business, would be approached. We simply reasoned that somewhere, somehow, it would land on the right desk at the right time.'

At a Manics show at the Square Club in Cardiff, a visiting Londoner said afterwards that the skinny, beautiful roadie should be on stage. By December, he was. Edwards became the band?s second guitarist, adding a bit of noise behind the accomplished playing of James Dean Bradfield. Now he was ?officially? a member of the band and not just its press officer, spokesman, minister of information, roadie, lyricist and chauffeur. Edwards was mainly as onstage presence, rather than a musician, because he was throwing Clash shapes and the poses of all the classic rock guitarists even though he could barely play the instrument himself.

With the quartet now finalized, they were ready to really press forward. A few ground rules were set, there and then: no taking drugs, no writing love songs and no getting married. As well as their own rules, they had unwritten ones to fight against the wider world. Being a rock band from Wales was definitely not cool.

'We were a Welsh rock band, and in the eyes of some people then that was the very worst thing in the whole world,? said James Dean Bradfield. 'We were totally a product of our environment but we had to prove we weren't The Alarm.? They had ideas well above anything The Alarm had accomplished. Bradfield admitted that they started on the basis of delusions of grandeur. They were perhaps the first band in history to make a round of the major banks, asking for a loan to get started. They trooped in with a copy of the NME, which they held up to explain why all of the current bands were rubbish and why they would blow them all away with a little bit of financial backing. Not surprisingly, they were turned down every time. But this summed up the band completely. They were unlike your 'average' group: their logic was different to a lot of people's and their self-belief bordered on the manic (pardon the pun). While the decade-ending charts were full of hedonistic dance-rock crossovers and acid house, the Manics' idea of hedonism was to have a few cans of beer and some fish and chips. Ian Ballard would witness this difference first-hand when they followed up on his invitation to visit him in London.

Ballard had started up Damaged Goods in 1988 as a punk reissue label, run from his East London home. Before Christmas, the Manics kept their promise of getting in touch with him and paid him a visit. Rather than go to the pub, they discussed things over games on the Sega Megadrive. The two parties agreed to release a single and take it from there. 'Basically, I was being auditioned to see if I could do their single,? recalls Ballard. 'James and Richey did most of the talking ? they were very straightforward and down to earth.?

'He [Richey] must have read books from day one while the rest of us were watching telly. He's very intelligent; I think he finds It difficult talking to people who aren't similarly educated. He'd sit there quoting things and I'd be nodding, thinking, I don't know what you're talking about.? Although they were eager to get a 'proper' single released, they didn't want to rush it just for the sake of it. They also realised that Damaged Goods was only a stepping stone, and Richey continued writing letters and trying to secure the band support slots. ?o an extent, this worked: the band gained slots supporting the likes of Mega Cit? Four and Cranes. The trade-off to playing these shows was that they were losing money every night. They wanted to accelerate their 'career', so they started thinking about getting themselves a manager. They started asking their music business contacts for any suggestions. Steve Lamacq mentioned that ??-Record Mirror writer Philip Hall had set up a PR company called Hall or Nothing in 1986 and had experience of working at Stiff Records. Hall Or Nothing were already starting to make a name for themselves, handling the affairs of The Stone Roses, Beautiful South and The Sundays. Hall was willing to give the Manics a chance and said he'd make sure he made it to their next London gig. When they told him that they didn't have one, he agreed to travel to Wales and see them there ? quite an unusual thing to do.

In the meantime, Ian Ballard paid for the band to have two days at the off-the-radar Workshop studio in Redditch. It was enough time for them to record four songs total cost: £186. The Workshop was chosen because it was cheap and it was one of the only studios that Ballard knew. These were the first sessions that Richey Edwards had participated in. His main contribution was to ask producer Robin Wynn Evans to dub into the mix the sound of a guitar being smashed. Evans replied that if that's what Edwards wanted he should smash his own guitar, which he did.

Ian Ballard was enjoying the Manics' punk sensibilities at a time when punk was the most unfashionable genre anyone could think of. 'They had basically slagged off most of the big bands around at the time, which was great; things were pretty safe at the time,? says Ballard. ?A lot of people really hated them, people were asking me why I was doing a single with that bunch of arseholes. I just said they were a great band, I liked them.?

The New Art Riot EP was not realised until 22 June 1990, but it furthered the bands reputation. The title track attacked British culture and the aristocracy, covered the NHS, terrorism, and suicide, and invited listeners to ?Kill, Kill, Kill?. And all in a little over three minutes. The whole EP was over in eleven minutes ? full of slogans and rhetoric. Loud, fast, energetic. Made you want to hear more. The first thousand copies were each stamped 'Made in Wales'. Ian Ballard sent 29-year-old Philip Hall an advance copy of the EP and re-ignited his interest in the band. Hall and his brother Martin drove over to Wales. The band had set up for a practice at the Newbridge school and were feeling the pressure of having someone drive over from London just to see them in a sterile, empty room. Nicky Wire somehow managed to give himself a smack in the nose with his own bass while they warmed up and by the time the Halls walked in, his white shirt was covered in blood. James Dean Bradfield was so shy he initially walked out. Despite this dodgy opening, the Halls decided to stay anyway and were impressed enough to take their interest further.

Soon afterwards, Richey wangled a show back at the Rock Garden in London. Among the sparse crowd were Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley, who had convinced Heavenly Records bosses Martin Kelly and Jeff Barrett to go along with him, and the Hall brothers. When Nicky Wire had finished smashing up his bass and the gig was over, the band was approached by the Heavenly brass about signing a deal. Initially, Richey thought they were taking the mickey and told them to fuck off. But when their credentials were established, the band said yes. Richey had written to Jeff Barrett and sent them a demo tape. ?It was passionate, it was on fire, it wanted to change the world and it really excited me,? said Barrett of the letter. 'Unfortunately their demo tape didn't do as much for me.'

'There were about fifteen people there,? says Martin Kelly when recalling the Rock Garden show. 'They played the most amazing set ever. We were completely blown away.' Heavenly and the Halls then had a meeting and agreed that they should all work with the Manics together. Hall would become a passionate champion of the band, by all accounts a true gentlemen in a usually ungentlemanly industry.

Richey continued his one-man press offensive. To Steven Wells: 'You can't expect anyone who comes from where we come from to like The House Of Love. It's so boring that everybody just stays in and gets drunk and you don't want to bear Guy Chadwck droning on about love and stuff. We look like nothing else on Earth. A car bomb kiss-off to The Face. Politics and adolescent cheap sex. Fuck the rotten edifice of Manchester. Too safe in dressing like bricklayer. Too boring. Too macho, males afraid of themselves. That's why we look up to the images of Kylie and the Supremes and not bald-fat-ugly-glutton-filth Inspiral Carpets. They make us vomit.'

'Richey was the one who came out with the best quotes; he was the most lucid,? says Bob Stanley. ?I got the feeling that he was the driving force. He was very intense, very inspiring. Plus, he looked like a star. He was very quiet and seemed very intelligent. You know that thing when you can't tell whether something was really funny or really brilliant? That's what the Manics were like when I first saw them live. Richey first got in touch with me. He wrote, "Dear Bob, inspire me, Richey.??

Edwards and Stanley struck up an eighteen-month correspondence that led to Stanley writing up their first interview in Melody ?aker. The interview took place in a pub and he noted that none of them were drinking, Afterwards, he offered them a floor to sleep on but they preferred to sleep in their van. Richey joined the Saint Etienne fan dub and made a T-shirt for Stanley that read 'REVOLUTION FLOWER?. When the Manics later toured with Saint Etienne, Stanley and Pete Wiggs wore homemade T-shirts with 'Ballroom Blitz? and '48 Crash' stencilled on them, but the Manics thought they were taking the mickey.

The Manic Street Preachers finally signed up with Heavenly Records at the end of August As well as being a label, they handled the press campaigns for bands such as the Happy Mondays and Primal Scream ? both targets tor the Manics at the time, 'I'll never forget the look on their faces when they walked into the office and saw all the Mondays memorabilia on the walls,? smiles Jeff Barrett. The Manics were not ashamed to regale anyone who would listen with their opinions, but would go directly against these so-called beliefs when it suited them. The Heavenly connection allowed the band to play more London gigs, but they were still often playing for less than thirty minutes a night and then driving back to Wales.

Heavenly booked the bend into the Power Plant studio in London in 1 re 'in ii ten new songs in four days at the end of October. The label then planned to pick out the best tracks for use as future singles. They then sent the Manics out to play some more dates before Christmas. On 1 November, they opened for the Levellers ? a band that Richey Edwards had despised for a while. He liked their followers even less. Here was another in a long list of Manics, and Edwards, contradictions. Edwards was more than happy to speak out about how much he hated a band, but then the Manics would go end play a show with them anyway. For all the protestations and worthy Interview snippets, a few pound notes helped to smooth over any objections. Edwards' main point of contention with the Levellers was that their 'crusty' fan base was mainly populated by middle class types who wanted to play at being dread locked Caucasians with a dog-on-a-rope. 'You could go to any Levellers concert and stand in the middle and shout "Jeremy!", and seventy-five percent of the audience would turn round,' he ranted. 'You can tell they're middle-class poseurs because they wanna dress down like scummy people. The working-class tradition has always been to want to be clean. All my Dad's friends want to do when they come home from the pit or whatever is have a wash, have a shave, dress up and go out.?

Two weeks later, in Manchester, they opened for a baggy Heavenly band, Flowered Up, and want down like the proverbial lead balloon. These support slots were getting the Manics out and about but the fans of the main acts they were supporting didn't know what to make of them. Sometimes they'd walk out to a taped reading of Allen Ginsberg's 3,000-word poem 'Howl'. What a happied-up crowd made of an intro tape from the Beat Generation that talked about being fucked up the ass and blown by sailors is anyone's guess. The Manics didn't care if they were labelled as pretentious; in fact, they were happy to admit that they ware. Their main objective was to do things that other bands didn't.

Bitter support slots were found in the form of Saint Etienne and Scottish Big Star wannabes Teenage Fanclub. Richey Edwards' lack of guitar-playing expertise was generally hidden by the fact that the band played fast and loose ? his frantic background strumming didn?t spoil any exquisite musical moments. The Manics spent most of November on the road before the Heavenly Christmas party showcase at the Camden Underworld on 13 December. Saint Etienne and Flowered Up were also on the bill. It was a triumphantly drunken end to the year. Richey Edwards was bladdered and when an unnamed, thirty-something press officer dragged him away to a toilet cubicle he didn?t resist. Unlike his claims to have lost his virginity at twenty-one, he was two weeks shy of his twenty-third birthday. When word got out about what had happened, James Dean Bradfield was livid. He tracked down the unnamed woman and confronted her, saying, ?Do you realise what you?ve done?? The last shred of Edwards? innocence was gone.

In the 1970s, it was the Glimmer Twins: Jagger and Richards hanging all over each other. Inseparable. In the 1980s, it was Morrissey and Marr. In 1984, a Record Mirror cover presented a well-coiffured Johnny Marr with a pink-and-white-polka-dot-shirted Morrissey draped over him. In 1988, Morrissey got it all off his chest on the front of the NME. These music covers became iconic to the constant readers of the 'inkies'. When the Manics started to give regular cover appearances in the 1990s, they knew both the importance of them and their history. Wire and Edwards became the Glamour Twins because of their semi-outrageous dress sense and heavy reliance on the latest beauty products.

Of the six times that the Manics were featured on the front of the NME up to October 1994, the entire band was included only three times. Once it was Richey with two other bands, once was Richey and Nicky, and once it was Richey alone. It was very clear who the music press thought the real star was ? the pin-up boy
for the 1990s.

***

In their first NME feature, the band was photographed outside Buckingham Palace to give another nod to the Sex Pistols.[8] Richey used the session to parade about in a home-made shirt with 'London Death Sentence Heritage' stencilled across the front. He also used red tape to attach a page from a London A-to-Z street map to the shirt. The stencilling was haphazard, with ink splattered across his chest. It all looked like a bloody mess from ten yards away. The May 1991 NME cover of Nicky and Richey was photographed by Kevin Cummins. 'This was their first NME cover,? he says. ?I bought the gold sari cloth to give it a trashy glam look ?

athough it's since drawn comparisons to the paintings of Egon Schiele, with the gold backdrop and the slightly twisted bodies.? The cover image showed the two band members on their backs, gazing up at the camera. Wire has his right arm around Edwards' shoulder and Edwards is pressing it to his chest. Both have panda-eyed make-up. Wire is in a leopard print shirt, open to below his nipple while Edwards has a black crocheted top. Before the shoot, they'd decided that they should both have a collection of love-bites on display and so the night before they had gone nightclubbing to try and get some. Wire succeeded but Edwards didn't, much to his own disgust. In the photo studio, Kevin Cummins wrote 'Culture Slut' across Nicky Wire's upper chest in lipstick. Edwards, upset about losing the love-bite competition, was determined not to be upstaged. He produced a school geometry compass and wandered over to a mirror, where he scratched 'HIV? in to his upper chest. But he forgot he was looking at his reflection so what he actually wrote was 'VIH?. It still made the cover.

He'd already done the writing-on-himself routine for a very early session with Joe Dilworth, where he'd used a more conventional writing implement ? a pen rather than a sharp spike ? to write ?RIOT' across his chest. He knew exactly how he could reach and influence young minds through the music press, just as he himself had been influenced. But it was dangerous as well. For Smash Hits, he wore an ?I?m Too Dead' T-shirt and told the readers, 'Our manifesto is: "Don't do it kids." Never get past the age of thirteen.'

?Sometimes you get caught up in the mythology that there's nothing but darkens surrounding the Manic Street Preachers,? said Nicky Wire, ?[but] what struck me about the early days is that we usually had smiles on our faces. Having been friends from the age of five, we were incredibly confident and comfortable together. We also had an evangelical spirit that made those first six month to a year better than anything that's come since. Not that we weren?t nihilistic.?

VI

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 198