DESTROY THE HIERARCHY

January to July 1991

With my son safely on his way to nursery with my wife, I took the opportunity to flop back into bed for an hour or so. I had been up with him since just after five a.m. and I had been working until after midnight the night before so I didn't feel guilty. I was just nodding off when the doorbell rang. The postman. He delivered a video-shaped parcel. In it was a video ? and a note: ?These gigs take me back,' it read. ?I wish the Manics were still like that.' What did that mean? What were the Manics like almost two decades ago? I put the tape in the machine and wandered off to get some cereal. The year 1991 was a year of musical hand-over. It saw the death of 'baggy' and the birth of grunge. In critical terms, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Nirvana's Nevermind and Primal Scream's Screamadelica were the musical leaders of the year. R.E.M. went acoustic with Out of Time and Bryan Adams managed to keep '(Everything I Do) I Do it for You' at number one for an astonishing sixteen weeks. The Gulf War was the big news during the early months, but in this dress rehearsal for the 'real' Gulf War, Saddam was left in power.

By early 1991, the Manics had written to enough journalists and pestered enough PR agencies to have their name known in various circles. Richey Edwards would write to anyone and everyone, from the most famous rock journalist to a humble fanzine editor. In fact, fanzines would prove to be one of the best ways for the band to generate a buzz. At one point the running joke was that the band had more fanzine titles than fans. Even when a ?zine was specifically about the band, there were some that used the Manics? cut-and-paste, stecilled styling as their ?look?. One of the professional writers who had picked on their early vibe and was on their side ? was John Robb. Punk hadn?t exactly been de rigeur during the late 1980s; in fact, it was probably at its lowest ever ebb. It wasn?t considered ?cool? to be punk in any way, or even influenced by it, as the manics and their Clash sensibilitied obviously were. Lancashire lad Robb had started ot playing bass in he Membranes[9] before becoming their lead singer. During the 1980s, he started freelancing for the likes of Melody Maker, ZigZag and Sounds.[10]

Robb was a prime target in Richey Edwards? letter-writing campaign. ?One day I got sent a demo with a letter,? explains Robb. ?The letter was very polite except it aid something about not liking The Wonderstuff and The Wedding present. It also mentioned my band The Membranes positively ? he had obviously done his research. Thinking about it now, they must have done some work to get my address! This was in the pre-internet, pre-Facebook era and it wasn?t that easy to get people?s addresses. The music papers didn?t give them out to anyone. I remember getting it and being surprised by how polite and how naïve, in a good way, that is sounded. It was very charming and made out that the band selected me specially but I?m sure they said that to the other handful of journalists who were into that kind of music at the time.?

Robb was impressed with the demo and interested in meeting the band, so he wrote back to Edwards saying just that. Being complete unknowns it was difficult to break the band in any of the music weeklies, but Robbspent the next few months dropping their name here and there. His persistence matched that of Edwards and eventually he was ablr to give the band its first big media coverage in Sounds. ?Intermittently Sounds would have space available for upcoming bands,? recalls Robb. ?It was the best music paper by a mile and the only one genuinely interested in bands if they were interesting musically on the outside of what was going on. In the late eighties, playing lipstick-mascara-glammy-punk-rock was totally out of fashion, so the Manics were very much swimming upstream ? that's one of the reasons that I loved them straight away.? Indeed, 'swimming upstream' is a phrase that summed up the band in early 1991. Many people took one look at a photo of them and instantly dismissed their mixture of old-school punk and anti-fashionable tight clothes. When people could be persuaded to listen to them, there was a danger that the Manics seemed so far from the mainstream that they would similarly be dismissed out of hand. Robb, however, kept talking them up and his editors gave him a little bit of leverage. Richey Edwards could still barely play his guitar, but that was an irrelevance to him: conveying his message was more important than being able to strum his instrument.

Sounds heard that the band was about to release 'Motown Junk' on Heavenly and thought that the time was right to introduce them to a wider audience. An interview was arranged at Jeff Barrett's office, although this eventually took place in the Manics' van parked outside. 'They were very eager to do an interview, which was rare in those days as most bands were not that arsed about doing press,? says Robb. 'The band was a weird mixture of very quiet and very vociferous. Richey seemed quite shy but very clever. He did most of the interview. The rest of the band would join in now and then and embellish what he said. The interview was a fantastic tirade against modern culture; it's still one of the best interviews I've ever done. Richey was fantastic ? he spoke clearly and made loads of sense. The van was cramped and we sat on all the gear. Richey was hunched down as I was sat on an amp. He had mascara on and black spiky hair that was spiked with soap, and he still had teenage skin ? kinda not acne but rough skin! The band were broke at the time and their glam-punk look was very homemade-looking, which made it look even better. Richey said the most outrageous things in this quiet, softly spoken, polite voice, which made it even more intriguing.'

When Robb submitted the piece, his editors were suitably impressed by what Edwards had to say and the band was given the cover and a two-page spread inside. This was an unusually large amount of coverage for a new band. 'Sex, Style and Subversion From MANIC STREET PREACHERS' blared the cover in late January. Underneath the headline was a Steve Double portrait of the band under the graffitied slogan 'Generation Terrorists'. Richey was wearing his white, long-sleeved 'Kill Yourself? T-shirt. This introduction to a wider audience proved Edwards' importance to the band. He'd tagged a journalist, worked on him, and now had two pages to put across his manifestos, and he achieved all thise in a polite, quiet, understated way. The blaring headlines about sex and subversion were very different from the actual Richey that journalists sat down and talked with, often over a cup of tea. The Sounds cover was the first real victory of his media assault. While Edwards was only 25 per cent of the band, 60 per cent of the article's quotes were by him. Even at this stage, Robb had deduced that this band was different as Edwards talked about the Manics' plans and ambitions, what they wanted to achieve and what they stood for. A good chunk of the other new music coming through either didn't want to change anything or was just interested in having a good time. Richey, on the other hand, was talking about being the best band in the world, about changing homophobic attitudes and disrupting the social hierarchy.

'People say why don't you try and write a love song, you should reflect people's feelings,' Edwards told Robb. 'But everyone I know has been pissed off at least once and we reflect those feelings.'

The Sounds issue hit the shops within days of 'Motown Junk', helping the single edge just inside the Top 100. It was a start. Richey and Paul Cannell[11] had come up with the idea of the picture sleeve featuring an image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono with a gun to their beads, referencing the line in the song which said 'I laughed when Lennon got shot.' This was the overt 'Generational Terrorism?, a systematic rejection of the previous generation's heroes. With Edwards again showing his grasp of pop-culture history he was very aware of which figures and movements he wanted to be aligned with and which he wanted to quash. In his mind, the Stones were cool; The Beatles were not. Keef was still shooting up. Lennon got shot. Good.

Heaveniy had paid for 'Motown Junk' as one of the ten songs recorded back in October at the Power Plant studios in Willesden. The band used the same room where Rod Stewart had recorded ?Maggie May', much to Richey Edwards' pleasure. The 'Motown Junk' 'revolution' intro sampled Public Enemy, while the outro sampled The Skids ? from one extreme to the other in the space of a couple of hectic minutes. Rather than trash the memory of the great Detroit bit-factory of the title, the song spat at its imitators that were slithering all over the charts ? the likes of Simply Red and Wet Wet Wet. It was also a loud two-fingered salute to the current rages of 'Madchester? and 'aciiiiiid', despite the former being all over their own record label.

As it transpired, Jeff Barrett vetoed the single's Lennon cover and Cannell had to quickly come up with an alternative. He settled on a burned watch, scorched into a permanent six teen-minutes past eight by the Hiroshima bomb, denoting the time of detonation. The picture sleeve wasn't the only change inflicted on the band: one of the B-sides had originally been called 'Ceremonial R??? Machine', as anti-monarchy rant that the pressing-plant employees had refused to work on. It was changed to 'We Her Majesty's Prisoners', which was evidently more palatable to the workforce.

During the busy week of the Sounds cover and the single release, the band also got its first real TV coverage when the BBC?s Snub TV programme aired.[12] The band also used footage from this show to make up a promotional video for 'Motown Junk?. The clip featured the live footage with studio music dubbed over the top, Richey was in his ubiquitous 'Kill Yourself? shirt with, as usual, tight white jeans. Sean Moore sported a very Madchester-esque pudding-bowl haircut. Edwards took the opportunity at one point during the song to step forward in front of James Dean Bradfeild and strum away right into the cameraman's lens. No wonder people assumed he could play.

***

Philip and Terri Hall were married in 1990 and moved into a house on Askew Road in Shepherd?s Bush. In January 1991, they took an unususal step and invited the Manics to move in with them. Driving back and forth between London and South Wales was becoming a drain on their energies, especially with the increasing frequency of their London appointments. They weren't earning any real money yet so the option of renting somewhere wasn't very attractive. Neither was the prospect of spending up to a year sleeping on floors, couches and in shared beds, but at least it was free. This gesture was a measure of both how much Philip Hall liked the band and how much confidence he had in them making it big. They turned out to be perfect house guests. They would clean the house from top to bottom and cook the evening meals. Richey Edwards generally shared a room, and bed, with Nicky Wire. The bassist would therefore bear the brunt of Edwards' complaints, rants, theories and bad jokes. He also had to deal with the morning after a boozy night: not just his own hangover but also the stench coming from the other side of the bed. ?I woke up with the vodka seeping out of Richey's skin,? he complained. Despite the occasional boozy nights out, Edwards was very polite around the Halls, and for much of the time you'd have hardly noticed that he was even there. But when you did, it could be disconcerting.

Terri Hall soon got used to seeing a row of Babysham bottles in her fridge, rows of stencilled white shirts hanging in her bathroom and four pairs of white Levi's in her laundry basket. What she didn't get used to was seeing Edwards nonchalantly cutting his arm while everyone was sitting around watching TV. If one of the band spotted him doing it they quietly hinted that he should stop, until one day he was stubbing cigarettes out on his arm and Philip Hall had a word with him. He said that it had to stop while he was living in someone else's house, and it did.

Living with the Halls eased the transition from South Wales, but getting used to life in London was a culture shock to Richey Edwards. He regularly phoned his mother and would always keep in close touch with her when he was away on tour. A decade later, Edwards would have been a prime candidate for a reality-TV Osbournes-type show and his exploits could have been a real eye-opener. ?Up here people seem to put a lot of work into things we never thought about when we were growing up,? he told Top magazine. "Like being seen to wear Calvin Klein underwear, to be seen to be doing the right thing. I'd never even heard of bottled water before I came to London. Back home you've got to really search for your Evian!' Having only really experienced Swansea and Blackwood, London could have presented itself as a mire of dubious nightclubs and excruciating temptations, but having five people around him who he trusted implicitly ? smoothed over any potential problems. This wasn't like being holed-up in a tower block of students that he hated, and Philip Hall became a pseudo-older-brother who could dispense advice about anything and everything.

Edwards wasn't shy about enjoying the nightlife with his bandmates, however. '[I remember] sleeping in the same bed as him for six months when the Manics moved in with Philip Hall in Shepherd's Bush,? Nicky Wire later told the NME. 'I'd sleep on one side of the bed, him on the other. He'd say stuff like, "I think I have an orange growing in my stomach, Nicky! I can feel it!" because he used to drink so much vodka and orange.?

With the new single out in the shops, the band started the hard work of playing small shows to try and promote it, and themselves. Often the gigs were in unusual and unlikely places. In January 1 hey played at the Royal Holloway College, which Richey Edwards mistakenly thought was a public school. Journalists and music business types took a strange delight in watching the Manics' early London shows, often treating them as circus sideshow or a laboratory experiment. Was this strange-looking gang of Welsh oddballs just another Sigue Sigue Sputnik? Was this cartoon-Clash a parody or joke? Most shows split the audience down the middle. Richey didn't mind this at all: a negative reaction wasn't a problem to him so long as they got a reaction of some kind. He was adamant that rock had gone too soft and someone needed to stir things up. It was a job that he was only too willing to appoint himself to. With press and TV coverage behind him, Edwards was quickly growing in self-confidence with the media. He was truly averse to much of the music around at the time and felt that the Manics really were going to be the best band in the world, to be the only band that really mattered and to be a band that could change things. If he couldn't be part of the beet, he'd rather not be part of a band at all. As usual, it was all or nothing for Richey Edwards and he was going to make sure it was all.

'Richey looked you right in the eye when he sp?k?,? says John Robb. 'Somehow, he wil really in your face. It was almost like he?d worked out the interview beforehand. He'd rehearsed it. It was like he had a blueprint on how to be the ultimate rock'n?roll band. He wasn?t a massive extrovert, but he was obsessed with rock?n?roll, He was a shy guy and it was almost as if rock'n'roll made him reach out and talk to people. The way he talked was half positive and half with a complete disgust of the music industry.?

The band was like a tight-knit gang. They went out together, they stayed in together. Bradfield and Moore were more than happy to let Wire and Edwards do all the talking, but they were all serious about how they wanted to go about things and the two spokesmen accurately conveyed the feelings of all four of them when it came to interview. Moore barely said a word during interviews and would make his excuses and leave whenever he could. Bradfield seemed as shy off the stage as he seemed confident and confrontational on it, despite looking like he'd pick a fight with anyone. Wire was more openly antagonistic towards other bands, while Edwards always had a point to put across, even if he did tend to drift into nefarious tangents. During the year, Edwards and Wire would start making ever-more outrageous claims about the plans and hopes they had for the band. These sometimes changed but the general line was that they were going to record a double album, sell sixteen million copies, headline Wembley stadium, and then break-up. 'No one has ever sacrificed themselves,' said Edwards, ever-mindful of getting a reaction. 'If we become huge and just throw it away, that is a big statement.? Big statements were important to Edwards. Anyone could make small statement, but big ones took balls. Big statements really meant something, and that was everything.

So out they went, Edwards had decorated the interior of their pale blue mini-van with a collage of icons, actors, models, rock stars and literary figures. He was also doing the driving. Looking back at the list of venues you can easily see that this was a band prepared to start at the bottom and work their way up. The work ethic instilled by their families was there for all to see. They weren't afraid of paying their dues, but they wanted to get it over with quickly and move on up. They had worlds to conquer. The Stoke Wheatsheaf witnessed the start of the tour proper, followed by shows at the Duchess of York in Leeds, the Adelphi in Hull and the Charlotte in Leicester. Then they played the Zodiac in Oxford on 7 February, which is where my grainy old VHS tape kicked in as I settled down for some breakfast. The nth-generation copy isn't very easy on the eye but the band are visible enough, giving it their absolute all to a pretty nonplussed crowd. Even the front rows were fairly static and hardly a head was nodding as the band ripped out 'You Love Us'. Thirty minutes later, the set was over in a hail of feedback. All the posturing, sweat, jumps and kicks had done little to win over the crowd. But obviously someone had had the foresight to think it would be worth filming for future reference. Zigzagging back and forth across the country, gigs were played at the Coventry Stoker, Brighton Basement, Aldershot Buzz Club and Taunton Priory ? among other venues ? before the band's first overseas trip, to Paris.

Richey Edwards had never left the British Isles before and consequently didn't own a passport. The day before departing, he had to buy a temporary visitor's passport and the band set off for a Heavenly showcase at La Locomotive, alongside Saint Etienne and Flowered Up. Things were moving quickly for Richey Edwards. He'd hardly left Wales for the first twenty or so years of his life, but now he was living in a city of ten million, had travelled up and down the country and was venturing overseas, all the while with the spotlight increasingly picking him out, waiting for his next polemic. The Paris show saw the Manics trash the stage at the end of their set, smashing the club's neon sign in the process. Edwards showed little interest in exploring the French capital and didn?t venture far from the bus. For someone so bright, he?d never taken to languages and was unwilling to experiment.

Back home, the band literally went the length and breadth of the country to whip up some enthusiasm. Grey days spent on the motorway didn't matter to Edwards. They were heading towards something better and this was just a temporary means to an end. This was the start of the rock star life he'd wanted, his ticket out of Blackwood, his way of making a difference in an otherwise horrible world. The tour visited the home turf of Swansea and led up to Glasgow in the north and Southampton in the south. In between, they were filmed again at the legendary Marquee club in London on 13 March. Here, they got a much better reception, with Richey resplendent in white jeans, boots and a flimsy blouse with Marilyn Monroe prints all over it. With his dark hair and make-up, he almost looked like Liz Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Edwards' looks and dress sense were now starting to get him singled out from the rest of the band. He was gaining a growing number of admirers in the press and amongst fans. The Manics' biographer Simon Price described him as 'the most beautiful man I had ever seen' and Caitlin Moran described his brown Bambi-eyes as 'beauty beyond lust'. As the group toured more extensively, it became common knowledge that Edwards and Wire weren't averse to inviting groupies and fans back to their shared hotel rooms. Interviews the morning after the night before would sometimes start with a discussion of the previous night?s after-show events. Simon Price reported seeing Edwards take two girls back to his room and commented that he was ? quick learner, having lost his virginity only recently. It was also reported that Wire would be shagging in one bed while Edwards was across the room shagging in his. Sometimes they'd swap partners. Sometimes Edwards would just read a book. Wire was drinking and sleeping around more than Edwards in the early days. In an early morning hotel room interview with James Brown, Edwards said, ?I?m never embarrassed by his [Wire?s] behavior, because it?s never long enough to get embarrassed about it!? Wire?s wild excesses could not continue indefinitely, however, as he was later diagnosed with Gilbert?s Syndrome[13] and had to give up drinking. He also later reunited with his girlfriend Rachel and his touring shenanigans came to a halt, leaving Edwards to sometimes party alone. Edwards had never had a steady girlfriend and he wasn?t about to start now. He preferred the quick attentions of groupies to avoid any emotional attachment, and this would continue through Manics? tours. After a while, Edwards grew tired of this: it was reported by Stuart Bailie towards tin end of Edwards' time with the band that younger fans would get the 'slumber party treatment', with Edwards talking about make-up tips. Hugging was just about out of the question.

Edwards could be almost naive in his openness to interviewers. His polite, considered responses were sometimes more shocking because of the calm with which he delivered them. He would often agree to questions about his sex life, but appeared to take a perverse pleasure by saying how bad it was. He also played with the facts about losing his virginity. He told Holland's Vill? 65 Radio, 'When I lost my virginity it was a definite act, I was twenty-one, everybody for years and years had been fucking around me saying how brilliant it was, and I felt like, "I'm not happy, maybe it is this glorious event that's gonna change your life." And so I just deliberately went out and sat in a pub, drank until somebody came up and said, "Do you want to come back to my house?", and we went back and we fucked. It was very clinical and the next day I felt really bad. I didn't like it, and that kind of shook my perspective on things.? Edwards, ever the historian, was never shy about rewriting his own past, whether it be the naming of the band or when he'd lost his virginity. Self-image was everything to him ? not just physically, but emotionally as well. He had to be seen to be doing the right thing, the cool thing, even if the reality was a little bit different. At the same time, his complex personality was exposed by his self-deprecating interviews about his sex life and manhood. When many others would have simply laughed off certain lines of questioning, Edwards would do the opposite and be brutally honest.

When For Women magazine asked him to be their centre spread he commented, 'Public nudity is repugnant, private nudity isn't much better. The human form is ugly compared to, say, a leopard or a seal.? On another occasion he said, ?I have no desire to expose my genitalia. Too small.? For a 1993 questionnaire in Select magazine, he answered:

Most intense erotic experience ? never had one

How do you rate yourself sexually ? poor

Most regrettable sexual experience ? every one

Edwards had serious issues about the human form and especially his own looks. This went beyond simple vanity and as his own body shape became an issue he would start excessive exercise regimes, but it was never enough. He also told another interviewer that his ideal body shape for a woman was extremely skinny, 'so you can see the ribs'. It wasn't s particularly healthy view to express.

Richey was sceptical about relationships and this bled into his view of mankind as a whole, 'Men and women just aren't compatible. Men are too selfish,? he told Sylvia Patterson. 'But it doesn't really matter because it won't be long before we're all wiped off the face of the earth anyway. In three generations' time seventy-five per cent of the animal species of the world will be wiped out! And it's all our fault! We've only got five generations of man left if you ask me and maybe it's just as well ? mankind is the worst thing that's ever happened to this planet!'

***

Next up, was a whistle-stop tour of Ireland. The hundred or so kids that crammed into a 'fucking skittle alley-cum-smack house' (according to Nicky Wire) to see them in Limerick saw a great little show, but then in Coleraine only a handful were present so the band trashed all of their equipment. In Belfast, they got a tour of the Falls Road to see the political murals. Wire summed up the time to Hot Press: '[It was] frightening but at the same time amazing to see first-hand. Our tour manager nearly got swept away at the Giants' Causeway. It didn't matter 'cause back then we were bulletproof.? The Irish fans were quite receptive, but in England the shows could quite often be confrontational. Bottles and cans would rain down onto the stage and verbal sparring would go hack and forth between band and audience. There was more trouble at the Manchester Boardwalk, where the opening act actually turned on the group; the quickly forgotten band First Offence called the Manics a 'bunch of faggots' and left the stage to a tape of 'Motown Junk? with chicken noises played over the top. After a couple of ?gay' comments were snouted at the stage, Edwards and Wire decided to antagonise the hecklers by really camping it up. 'Our first offence is to be beautiful!' shouted Wire, before Edwards lay down on his back and allowed Wire to straddle him in simulated sex.

At the start of May 1991, Heavenly issued 'You Love Us' as the next single while the band continued to tour. They weren't afraid to go back to venues they'd played earlier in the year and were gradually building up a larger and larger following. The thinking behind 'You Love Us' was that the fans would love them eventually, even if it wasn't love at first sight. 'Camus said that, "If God does not exist, then I am God",? said Richey Edwards. 'That was our philosophy.? The band, and by default Edwards as the unofficial spokesman, were in danger of being seen purely as a bunch of loud-mouthed yobs with nothing tangible to say. A few neat slogans weren't going to go very far if the music wasn't worth hearing. Edwards, who had been revelling is his new-found freedom to create and lambaste, was aware that things could take a turn for the worse if they didn't keep a high public profile.

Simon Dudfield made 'You Love Us' the single of the week in the NME, writing, 'I'm sure everyone wants to be in this band, living out their sordid rock'n'roll fantasies. They just won't admit it.' Indeed, very few did admit to wanting to be like the Manics. Richey Edwards created the sleeve for the single with another of his collages.[14] Unfortunately, he hadn't cleared permission for any of the iconic images he'd chosen ? Bob Marley, DeNiro in Taxi Driver, Robert Johnson, Marilyn Monroe, The Who, Beatrice Dalle in Betty Blue, and more. Minor threats of lawsuits soon followed, but Heavenly tidied up the mess.

These legal issues were just the first problems in a mini-avalanche of bad press and controversy that Edwards would be at the centre of over the next couple of months. Still very much a rookie to this game, Edwards was not always sure where the boundaries were. In the next incident, he stepped closer to a rumpus with Steve Lamscq, 'By the time of the follow-up, "You Love Us", we'd started to fall out in public,? recalled Steve Lamacq in his autobiography, Going Deaf for a Living. 'They had a dig at some bands I liked; I had a dig back, making some rather unkind comments about them in a review of another band called Bleach. In retort, they dedicated "Starlover" to me at their next gig. It was all a bit petty, but I guess it must have been serious stuff at the time.?

On Wednesday, 15 May the Manics' tour reached the Norwich Arts Centre. On paper it wasn't likely to be any more than a run-of-the-mill show. The only slightly unusual thing was that the NME were sending along ? guess who? ? Steve Lamacq and photographer Ed Sirrs to cover the show for the next issue. Unless you follow the career or life of a public figure quite closely, there will usually be one thing that person did or said that is always brought up in relation to them. It's the one thing that they never shrug off; for many people, it?s the first thing that they think of when the person's name is mentioned. For Richey Edwards, his life-defining moment was about to happen.

There have been lots of rumours about what really went on that night and why. It was reported that the band were watching a Nottingham Forest game on TV in the hotel bar before the show, but in fact Forest never played on that date. It was said that Steve Lamacq phoned for the ambulance, but he was just standing there stunned and shocked. It all started when Lamacq agreed to travel to Norwich and review the show because he thought the band had been getting sycophantic reviews and wanted to give, in his opinion, a more balanced assessment of where the band were at. James Dean Bradfield kept away from Lamacq from the start ? a mixture of shyness and distrust.

The show itself was uneventful, even disappointing. The hall, a converted church with tombstones forming part of the floor, half empty and the crowd were not especially excited by what they were seeing. Edwards didn't want a big negative write-up about the show, so he took matters into his own hands.

?The difference between me and Richey,? said Nicky Wire, ?is he always wanted to be understood and I prefer to be misunderstood. I don?t really feel the need for people to love and respect me. Richey did. He couldn't the strength from the fact people didn?t like him.? It was this need to be understood and believed that led to a lengthy conversation with Steve Lamacq after the show. Edwards most likely knew that the gig wasn-t going to be that great. He caught Lamacq?s attention afterwards and asked if he could have a word. Towards the end of their chat, Edwards gave an impassioned statement of what he thought the band was about. While doing so, keeping steady eye contact with Lamacq, he produced a razor blade. After pulling up the shirtsleeve on his left forearm, he began cutting into his own flesh. As he continued talking, he carved the slogan ?4REAL? into his arm to back up his words about not being a fake. Lamacq later said that the first, deepest cut nust have really hurt, but Edwards showed no signs of pain and remained calm throughout. Lamacq kept glancing down at the unfolding drama but Edwards? voice and general demeanor ??? mesmeric. The points he was making to Lamacq, let's face it, were pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things. They were just a rock band. It wasn't more important than life or death, was it? Richey Edwards seemed to think it was. It was the most important thing in the world.

When Richey had finished cutting, the pair continued chatting for a couple of minutes as Lamacq became increasingly concerned about the mess of blood and open wounds. Eventually Lamacq suggested that that Edwards do something about his arm before he damaged the carpet. When Lamacq moved away and spotted Philip Hall be told the manager that he should check on Edwards. ?oments later, Hall dashed past on his way to phone for an ambulance. Lamacq headed outside for some air and a cigarette.

Richard Lowe interviewed Richey about the incident for Select magazine. ?It never occurred to me he may be fucked up,? said Lowe. ?He seemed really level-headed. But running through the Manics was this 'life is futile, life is cr??'' idea. He really believes that. Everything for him is sad, he?s not a happy-go-lucky person. He takes everything seriously, not just music. That?s his problem. He feels personally burdened by everything horrible in the world. It upsets him and it hurts him. That?s the sort of person he is.?

Photographer Ed Sirrs was on the scene and took the now-famous blood-soaked photos. ?I have children myself, so I felt sorry for him, and went a bit fatherly, but he seemed completely unconcerned,? said Sirrs. ?I?ve been criticized for taking advantage of his distress but, in fact, ne volunteered to have the pictures taken. In effect, he hijacked the situation and salvaged something from a lousy gig to give his band some credibility. They knew they?d never get another major NME review after such a dire performance, so he had to do something. And a week later they?d signed a deal with Sony.?

To some degree, the incident must have been a premeditated act by Edwards. He might well have had a razor blade with him on tour ? he was always having a little cut of his arms, here and there ? but he would have been unlikely to carry it around with him at all times. It may be that he'd collected it before meeting Lamacq, 'just in case'. Edwards had seen a situation that might have gone out of his control, so he'd wrestled it back and taken control so that the poor-quality gig was overshadowed by his show of 'authenticity'. It was a price that he was more than willing to pay.

Nicky Wire accompanied Richey to Norwich General Hospital, where seventeen stitches were needed to close Edwards' wounds Feeling that his self-inflicted cuts shouldn't cause pain to anyone else, Edwards insisted that all the other patients went before him. Then the next day, ever sensitive to others' feelings, he phoned the NME to apologise to Steve Lamacq. The writer was out but Edwards left him a taped message saying sorry for upsetting him in any way.

The next issue of the NME ran a news piece about the cutting with the soon-to-be infamous shot of Richey's arm reproduced in black and white, the gig review followed in the 'Live' section.[15] The photographs had been turned over to the IPC (owners of the NME) legal department before a decision on usage was made Lamacq ended his piece by saying, 'What wouldn't we give tor a new political pop band back in the charts? Someone who'd go further than just being worthy. But the fact is I'm not sure the Manics have everything under control at the moment.? He was partly right. Did the Manics have things under control? Or more pointedly, did Richey have things under control? He would later argue that his cutting was exactly his way of keeping control over things, but It wouldn't always be that way.

In 1994, Nicky Wire was more subdued about the incident and said: 'None of us realised quite how symptomatic it was of the shit that was going on in his head. We've been friends since childhood, so I knew he wasn't doing it for the attention, but I never appreciated the extent of his despair or how far he was prepared to go in trying to relieve it.? But fourteen years later it was almost as though Wire was trying to backtrack over the reality of the incident when he spoke to the NME about it. 'I still think it's an absolutely brilliant artistic statement. I did at the time and I do now,? he said. 'I don't think you can equate that with self-harm or disappearing or whatever. It was a statement. There was a point to it. And it showed how much the band meant to him. When we were sat in the hospital with the nurse treating him, we both actually felt a little bit guilty at wasting NHS time. Thing is, I still can't believe it wasn't the cover of the NME that week! I remember talking to Richey afterwards and him saying, "I did all that and it wasn't the cover?'"

***

The following night's show in Birmingham was understandably cancelled, but the tour soon continued amidst a deluge of articles, features and graphic colour images. All of this was a great boost of publicity for the band and their new label, and Richey Edwards had provided it. Instead of being on the verge of drifting out of sight before they'd even made it, they were now big news and big business.

Philip Hall had masterminded a big money move to Columbia, which was part of the Sony empire. The official signing was on 21 May and reports suggested that a massive ten-album deal had been agreed for £250,000. Tim Bowen was the key figure at Sony and had been the man that had signed The Clash back in 1977 ? something that connected with the band. Heavenly were disappointed to be losing the Manics so quickly, but must have been expecting it. The photo that appeared in the music press showed the Manics seated in the Sony boardroom while Paul Russell, the Sony UK chairman, and Tim Bowen, Sony MD, used both hands to shake with the four band members. Richey was using his left hand to shake with Bowen and so his fresh bandages were in full view. There was nothing hypocritical about signing to a major label; in fact, Richey had made their aims clear right from the start. They wanted to be the biggest band in the world, and ? with all due respect ? they sure weren't going to achieve that by staying on at Heavenly.

The new deal meant the severing of the Manic Street Preachers' links to Heavenly. The label website states that the arrangement bad been beneficial for all concerned: ?Although only at the label for a short period, it was long enough to provide a shot in the arm for both parties ? the band achieved the notoriety they craved and the label put itself well and truly on the map.? The Manics did right by the label and paid back to Heavenly the £6,000 that the label had lost on the band.[16] That night the band played a triumphant gig back at the Marquee to celebrate.

Although they'd never considered themselves to be an 'indie band, the fact that they had signed to a major 'corporate' label before their first album had even been recorded did make the band prime targets. As soon as the ink was drying on the Sony contract the 'sell out' accusations started flying. Indeed, at the Marquee show they broke one of their own rules and came back to play an encore. Strike one.

?The whole indie mentality that grew from punk onwards just seemed so bullshit to us,? said Richey, 'because the most subversive, really important group in the world were Public Enemy, and they were on Columbia. The level of corruption on an indie label is just on a smaller scale.?

The national press also started to take an interest in this major-labd band, after these yobs from Wales had landed a quarter of a million. The Daily Mail asked ?Is Rock Music Destroying our Children?' alongside a picture of the ?4REAL? incident. But rather than being a danger to society, Richey Edwards enjoyed his first pay cheque by embarking on a spending spree for designer punk T-shirts and a portable CD player. This was the first time in his life that he really had any amount of disposable income.

The combination of Fleet Street outrage and Sony-related hype led to a heightened sense of anticipation and danger in advance of the band's next one-off gig, one which they had agreed to play before signing to the major label. This was the May Ball (even though it took place on 22 June) at Cambridge University's Downing College. It's hard to think of any event less likely to be on the Manics' radar, but again, money talked. Back in 1991, the £150-a-ticket fee was a steep price to pay for a Manics gig (it still would be now) and the students had obviously been reading the band's press cuttings in the lead-up to the show. The college rugby team was brought in to act as security in case the group decided to smash up the house equipment. The Hall brothers and other guests were resplendent in their tuxedos, but the evening's entertainment didn't last long. With the band playing in a large tent, the crowd were almost willing something outrageous to happen. When Richey Edwards dared to rest his foot on one of the stage monitors the stage crew wildly overacted by pulling the plugs and declaring the show over, even though they'd only been playing for a few minutes. The band members couldn't believe what was happening. One 'security guard' appeared, brandishing a tent pole, while another guard arrived with a vicious-looking dog. The band was 'escorted out', but not before James Dean Bradfield had floored a member of the rugby team with a punch. The police were called and it made the pages of the Daily Star. The NME called it the 'Cambridge F**k Festival'.

Proving that the band were a mix of extremes if nothing else, their next press coverage was in the pages of Smash Hits. An August issue had Dannii Minogue on the cover and featured posters of Extreme, Seal and Cathy Dennis. The cover mentioned 'Manic Street Preachers' right next to 'Vanilla Ice'. Inside, Richey discussed the Cambridge fiasco: ?We started playing our set and before we knew it there was blokes on stage pulling the plugs and wielding sticks.'

Before the summer was out, another new song, 'Stay Beautiful', was released as a single and was officially listed as a Heavenly/Sony single. Steve Brown was a trusted producer who had worked with such varied artists as Elton John, ABC and The Cult, and was brought in by Sony to work with the Manics on the song. They met up for the introductory sessions at Manor Studios in Oxfordshire. If all went well, then Brown would work with the band on their debut album that autumn. 'Stay Beautiful' became the band's first single to break into the Top 40. The Walter Stern video was inspired by Twin Peaks. The band was filmed performing in a red room with silhouettes moving around behind red curtains, with red-lined corridors and zebra-print floors. As coloured paint starts dripping into the room, the band are splattered like a moving Jackson Pollock work ? an imitation of the famous Stone Roses picture.

The occasional shows they played here and there through the autumn were hit and miss. Sometimes, they had been playing gigs to as few as two hundred people. They didn't get a lot of radio play for their singles, either. They might have bitten off more than they could chew, the £250,000 being invested by Sony would need some instant return. All they had to do was get around to writing that legendary double album that would sell sixteen million copies. It was all too easy, wasn't it? As Richey told Smash Hits, 'We play rock?n?roll and we live rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is our lives.?

VII

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 222