(no subject)
A Welsh Childhood
People always ask, 'Were you outsiders at school, were you really weird?'. No, we just stayed in our bedrooms and watched TV. We never had anything else to do. We made no effort to make other friends because we felt so happy with each other.
Richey (1992)
We were never particularly victimised for being weird, because nobody ever saw us.
Nicky (1994)
If you built a museum to represent Blackwood, all you could put in it would be shit. We used to meet by this opening called Pen-Y-Fan. It was built when the mines closed but now the water has turned green and slimy. They put 2,000 fish in it, but they died. There's a whirlpool in the middle where about two people die every year.
Nicky (1994)
A long terraced street. 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, Hallowe'en, a lot of people lost their virginity there. If there was a fight, it happened on that slag heap. It's gone now, leveled. 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.
James (1996)
Me and Richey used to play football for a cup my dad found on a rubbish tip. It was a crown-green bowls cup, but we ran down the street with it when we won anyway. Richey was on my team (Woodfield Side) and one day James brought Sean along to play for Pont.
Nicky (1996)
We're the sad victims of 20th-century culture. The cinema in our town, which is the poorest and most boring town in the country, closed down when we were eight, so what do you do? You go out and get pissed and have fights, or you stay in and get on with your boredom. We were happier to go along with the boredom.
Richey (1992)
The most exciting thing was sitting around reading the rock press. When New Musical Express said things like Eddie Cochran is an anarchist, we went ‘yeah'. We fell for all that because our lives were really boring.
Richey (1992)
Nick tried joyriding once. He stole a car when he was 17. He didn't drive it into a shop. He just sort of rolled down the street, didn't get very far. He was a stunted joyrider. I think he fell asleep, drunk, at the wheel.
Richey (1991)
Maybe that's what fucked us up, not that we had bad childhoods, but that our childhoods were too good. That sense of freedom - we weren't just reading books or watching films, experiencing second- hand culture, we were building a dam, messing around in dirt, things like that which, looking back, seem much more worthwhile.
Nicky (1994)
Depression is just our natural mood. Where we come from, there's a natural melancholy in the air. Everybody, ever since you could comprehend it, felt pretty much defeated. You've got the ruins of heavy industry all around you, you see your parents' generation all out of work, nothing to do, being forced into the indignity of going on courses of relevance'.
Richey (1994)
Up to the age of 13, I was ecstatically happy. People treated me very well, my dog was beautiful, I lived with my Nan, and she was beautiful. School's nothing - you go there, come back, and just play football in the fields. Then I moved from my Nan's and started a comprehensive school and everything started going wrong. In my 20s, there's nothing that's been that spectacular since.
Richey (1994)
We grew up very early. By the time I was 16 I'd read and studied the complete works of Philip Larkin, Shakespeare, all the Beat generation, every film. I find it unbelievable, the intensity of us as people and as a band.
Nicky (1994)
I don't think we could have done this if we hadn't grown up in a shithole where the only way to escape was to create your own reality.
Nicky (1992)
When we were growing up, Richey's nickname was Teddy Edwards, after the cartoon character, because he was so cuddly. We just generally had a blissful childhood, in the sense of being free. Especially Richey, up until he was about 16, when he just hit the wall.
Nicky (1996)
I wanted to be someone like Napoleon. Then I discovered music -or the Clash to be more precise, and that was it. My destiny was determined.
James (1991)
Comprehensive school was the most depressing time for all of us. They either write you off or fit you in. If you're not academically gifted, it's 'fuck you'. If you are, it's, 'the banks are coming next week for a talk, and we think you should go.'
Richey (1992)
I enjoyed A Levels because you had a certain freedom to write what you liked, and also you had teachers who wanted to teach you, whereas at university all the lecturers really want to do is write books. They haven't the first idea how to teach and they don't care about making the subject interesting. They just indulge themselves.
Nicky (1994)
Most people look back on their childhoods with more fondness than their early twenties or their teenage years, which are pretty horrendous. 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
A lot of going to university was three more years of not having to decide what to do with my life. I've literally never done a day's work in my life, not even a paper round, so I couldn't handle going to work in an office.
Nicky (1994)
I was much more outwardly nervous then. I always had a kind of quiet arrogance, and slight bitterness against the world, but I didn't have the guts to do anything about it.
Nicky (1994)
Early/Indie Years
We came together around Nick. I was Baldrick to his Blackadder. More than anything he talked about being great, being legends. Nick reckoned he would be a great sportsman, a great politician. We started on the basis of those delusions of grandeur.
James (1996)
A big moment was on the tenth anniversary of punk. The Clash were on a compilation of that Tony Wilson programme So It Goes, doing 'Garageland' and 'What's My Name'. That was the catalyst to us forming a band. We thought we could look like that, walk it like that. Although we couldn't play...
Nicky (1996)
We started at a time when rock'n'roll was dead over here. The U K was in the grip of dance, rap, and the acid house thing. All that Manchester sound stuff that sounded so contrived... The only real rock'n'roll was coming out of America. We were consciously reacting against all that. Our friends laughed at us because they said there was no audience for us. But we felt we had to do something to bring back rock'n'roll, so that's how the Manic Street Preachers came about.
Richey (1992)
Nick's first lyric was called 'Aftermath'- a real doggerel diatribe against Margaret Thatcher. The (miners') strike was all around us and it was on TV every day for a year. When the Yorkshire miners started turncoating, I'd find myself shouting at the telly: 'scab, scab'. But when it was over we didn't want to be these Welsh, working-class gangsters singing, 'We lost, we lost, but we're still standing'. We didn't believe in glorious losers.
James (1996)
We looked down on anyone outside the circle of the four of us. We didn't feel a generation gap with people who were older than us, we felt one with people of the same age. I think that's why we used sloganeering language a lot. We thought that was all they understood and deserved.
James (1996)
It was absolutely everything to me. My idea was about true, natural talent. Something you're born with. We always knew the band was going to work, and that it was just down to us to make it happen.
Sean (1996)
We had this evangelical desire to start the revolution and be absolutely fucking massive. It didn't just mean getting a record deal. It was all-conquering, psycho, egotistical.
Nicky (1996)
At the start, I was personally on a mission to separate ourselves from everyone, even music that I liked. It's my bad trait.
Nicky (1996)
I used to commute in on the train. Regular work. Drum until six and then go home. It was like a little office job.
Sean(1996)
When we started, we used to go into NatWest, all the banks, and try to get a loan. We'd tell them, 'this country is dead musically, there's got to be room for an exciting rock band. 'We'd show them the New Musical Express; 'look at that, anything good in there? Now look at us, we're really exciting'. We told them we were going to be this really massive rock'n'roll band. They couldn't see it.
Richey (1991)
Once we got set our minds what we were doing, we didn't play a single gig in Blackwood. It was straight to London and scrounging money to get on the pay-to-play circuit. You know, £50 for 15 minutes. Next thing was getting the press out to the shows. This is extremely difficult in England because the music press wields the power to make or destroy taste and they don't like anything they don't discover themselves.
Richey
We're very cynical people. We saw bands do all the pubs where we lived, do 200 gigs a year, get really big local followings, and they're all under the illusion that somebody from Sony Music will be driving through the middle of South Wales and go, 'Hey what a good band, let's sign here'. And of course, we knew they never would. We knew we had to move to London.
Richey (1992)
At university, I did politics and Richey did political history. That's where we've nicked all our lyrics from, really. We discovered the Sex Pistols and the Rolling Stones at the same time as we discovered literature. They seemed the same thing to us - both really exciting.
Nicky (1991)
While we were at University, James was on the dole and Sean worked at the civil service. He funded us, basically -when we were traveling about in Transit vans and paying to play at the Rock Garden. James was learning guitar - he's more
dedicated than any of us.
Richey (1991)
When we started, we did want to conquer the world, but that was just a young boy's dream. The myth of complete arrogance, of thinking that you are the greatest band in the world. Which you only get one time in your life, usually when you're young, before you realise what it takes.
Nicky (1996)
We felt that we would change things. We called ourselves the Blue Generation for a while because we felt we were destined for collective greatness.
James (1996)
The only positive thing we could do was to be nihilistic. It was a good avenue to take, initially, but it didn't get us very far, did it?
James (1996)
We were a band before we even picked up guitars. And we didn't even know how, but we knew Richey had to be a part of it.
Nicky (1994)
We set out to be truly despised and hated.
Richey (1993)
We realised that as individuals we were very limited as people, so we had to fabricate ourselves and took a very academic approach at being a band. We were quite clinical. We were like magpies, collecting information, keeping dossiers on journalists and learning how to manipulate them.
Nicky
In the beginning, when we formed, we wanted to sign to the biggest record label in the world, put out a debut album that would sell 20 million and then break up. Get massive and then just throw it all away. By the time we were giving interviews and saying that to the press, though, we didn't believe it. We knew we couldn't quite do that. But if we had aimed any lower in the beginning, I don't think anyone would've paid as much attention to us.
Richey (1992)
We went down to (the) Underworld (club) one night. It was unbelievable. There were like five bands and loads of journalists, all drinking at the same tables. We were naive, but we never thought there would be that really close level of friendship. With most of the cool bands, you know the same people are going to write about them all the time... We just get people who really detest us.
Richey (1992)
Boys In The Band
We're a pretty moody band. One of us is always brooding...
James (1994)
From the age of ten I was very much isolated as an individual, entirely self- sufficient. I live from day to day.
Sean(1996)
It's very working class to want to better yourself. Me and Richey especially were attracted to being clever to prove that we were better than the other... plebs.
Nicky (1996)
I never needed people to love me. I revel in being hated. I just do. Well, not so much any more, but if people dislike me it gives me strength, whereas perhaps for Richey it didn't. There hasn't been anyone like
Richey for the last ten years, with those intellectual demons inside him.
Nicky (1996)
I never consider James or Sean as musicians. They're friends. We're not a band chucked together from the back pages of Melody Maker. First and foremost we're friends.
Nicky (1996)
If you'd have gone into our houses when we were 20, you would have found the same books, the same records, the same videos. We were all attracted to the glamour of suicides and alcohol and beauty. That Rumblefish thing of self-destruction. It's just Richey took it a lot further than us. Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain were the two Richey icons. The Hendrixes and the rest were just decadent. But Kurt and Ian had meant to do it - took control. That was more fascinating to Richey.
Nicky (1996)
Let's face it, you don't need any clues for Richey. Ever since he carved '4 Real' on his arm, nothing would surprise you. Alcoholic, anorexic, drugs, self-mutilator ... all your favourite things rolled into one.
Nicky (1996)
There's a difference in Nick and Richey's lyrics. Richey could be quite nasty and classically nihilistic in that there was rage but no answers. But Nick's anger is translated into optimism.
James (1996)
One of the biggest things we needed when we were young was excitement. Music was the most important things in our lives. We probably are the loneliest people ... I think we're the loneliest people I've ever met. Music and videos were everything.
Richey (1991)
We can be pretty stupid. We've always done dumbfuck things - Richey's arm, for instance. We give people more enjoyment than any other band going. The very fact we were from Wales meant there was no point trying to be cool ...
Nicky (1991)
We've always got a kick out of goading people into thinking we were complete tossers.
James (1994)
I felt Richey was the oldest and yet the youngest of us all. He'd only experience things by forcing himself into situations. He was quite immature in terms of what he'd experienced in life: never been in a relationship, things like that.
James (1994)
We always open our mouths before we think. But that's part of where we come from, part of having fuck all to do all day and saying things to each other simply to create arguments. It was a way of getting through the day.
Richey (1993)
Things get taken to stupid proportions every time we talk; we come out with Mark E Smithisms. We're so comfortable in each other's company - we're talking about 15 years of friendship - that the whole politically correct mentality, avoiding saying certain things when we meet someone new, really doesn't apply.
Richey (1993)
People have still got this stupid idea that I'm a loud, aggressive person. That by the things I've done I'd be hyperactive, talking all the time, running around going 'rrarrarrarr', smashing people in the face, kicking down doors. Which is not the case. I've never destroyed anything in my life, apart from a few guitars.
Richey (1994)
I am not stupid. I might come across as stupid. That's nothing to do with academic qualifications. I think there's a difference between intelligence and knowledge. There are plenty of people with letters after their names who only know figures and dates. It's possible to know a lot of facts but not know anything at all.
Richey (1994)
I think everybody's first love is themselves. Some more than others. Some can divide themselves and give something of themselves to another person, which I've never been able to do because I've never trusted another person enough.
Richey (1994)
There's always something to be angry about. I think we've all tried to deny it at some point or another, but being unhappy and dissatisfied is part of our make-up. I look at my video collection or book collection and I realise they're all about fucked-up loners.
Nicky (1994)
If I was in a pub and someone attacked me, and I knew I'd done nothing wrong, I would happily take a beating without doing anything, and feel really superior. I would never hit somebody back. If I'd done something wrong it's different. But if I was minding my own business, I could easily take a kicking. I'd think, 'I don't give a fuck 'cos you are scum. You're way down there and I'm above you 'cos I can take it'. It's a bit Biblical, 'turn the other cheek' and all that.
Richey (1994)
I find the idea of Kurt Cobain taking his own life frighteningly powerful. I've always been a sucker for that.
Nicky (1994)
Nicky and Sean are still true to the spirit of the Manics, whereas Richey and I are tending to lose the plot a bit.
James (1994)
I have a very child-like rage and a very child-like loneliness.
Richey (1994)
Nick has deliberately made his life simple. The way he conducts his life is almost monastic.
James (1996)
Nick doesn't feel he has to experience anything directly in order to write about it. It's what I call 'homestead lyricism'. It's about admitting that you still feel wonder at the very basic things in life. When I used to get pissed out of my mind every night, I lost that wonder. I began to realise that perhaps Nicky had it right after all.
James (1996)
There's a poem by Tennessee Williams called 'Lament For Moths', one of the first poems we ever read, which is about how the moths, the sensitive people, will always be stamped on and crushed by the mammoths - that really hit us, the sudden realisation that we were the moths of the world.
Nicky (1994)
Richey feels things so fucking intensely. He always had this vision of purity, of Perfection, a kind of childlike vision, that became completely obliterated. A misprint on a lyric sheet, or whatever, would just upset him so much, and he got to a stage where he just couldn't stop himself from doing anything.
Nicky (1994)
Richey never had as many setbacks as a kid as me, he's more acutely intelligent than me, he's more beautiful than me - and yet he has more problems. Problems that I'd just snip off with the fucking scissors in two seconds flat really get to Richey.
James (1994)
When we're not working, we phone each other up at least once a day. We're just big yappers.
James (1994)
I am a melodramatic drama queen, I can't help that. Everything I've ever liked in literature has been along those lines. I guess I identify with victims.
Richey (1994)
The band have never called me Richey. They've always called me Android, or something like that.
Richey (1994)
Richey has always been in love with rose-tinted perfection. So he was always in danger of being let down.
James (1994)
I've always found it hard to express how I feel, even from when I was a little child. It's a very British emotion - they keep things bottled up inside them. Some more than others.
Richey (1994)
I do consider myself to be something of a pretentious wanker.
Nicky (1993)
The difference between me and Richey is he always wanted to be understood, and I prefer being misunderstood. I don't feel the need for people to love or respect me, whereas Richey did.
Nicky (1994)
Everybody's got a corner of their heart and mind you can't get into. Richey was always more into books and films than rock 'n' roll, and I think those art forms are much more idealized. I think they influenced the way he viewed his life, and the way he thought it would be. I think of that quote in Rumblefish, y'know? 'He's merely miscast to play; he was born on the wrong side of the river'. He has the ability to do anything but he can't find anything he wants to do.
James (1994)
Richey was half Ian Curtis, half Iggy Pop.
Nicky (1995)
Richey: 4 Real
At the edge of eternity is torture, in our mind's never-ending ambition to damage itself.
Nicky (1993)
What made Richey the way he was? There is no dramatic thing, that's the scariest thing of all. To be honest, I think that, if anything, it's because his childhood was so happy that when he reached the age of responsibility, he couldn't handle it. He genuinely loved being young, but when you leave school, that's when the real world hits you. That's the most traumatic thing, having to grow up and realising - as he would put it - that everything was shit. Richey used to say 'you're born unmarked', then he'd look at himself and go, 'now I'm scarred'. They do say that 27 is the optimum time for males to commit suicide or break down, usually because of a longing for a disappearing youth.
Nicky (1996)
Living in a tower block with hundreds of other students was a really bad experience. I think if I'd been able to have a flat of my own, my memory would've been very different because I've never been good with very many people. I've always surrounded myself with just a few.
Richey (1994)
When I'm driving my car and the traffic lights turn red I think it's because I'm in the car. I feel persecuted...
Richey
Richey just reached a point where something clicked. His self-abuse has just escalated so fucking badly - he's drinking, he's mutilating himself, he's on the verge of anorexia ... there's a line in 'Yes'; 'hurt myself to let the pain out'. Richey just found it so hard to say no to anybody, and that really was his way of letting out pain.
Nicky (1994)
When I cut myself I feel so much better. All the little things that might have been annoying me suddenly seem so trivial because I'm concentrating on the pain... I'm not a person who can scream and shout so this is my only outlet. It's all done very logically.
Richey (1994)
The only people who are disturbed by Richey cutting himself are those who don't know him. They don't understand... We do know him, we do understand.
Sean (1994)
When it came for me to do my finals, I suddenly realised that I can't go in to do my finals pissed. So the way for me to gain control was cutting myself a little bit. Only with a compass - you know, vague little cuts - and not eating very much. That way I found I was really good during the day. I slept, I felt good about myself, I could do all my exams. I got a 2:1 so I wasn't a 100 per cent success, but I got through it. I did it.
Richey (1994)
You just get to a point where if you don't do it to yourself, you get a feeling that something really terrible is going to happen, and when that moment comes, it's the logical thing to do. It doesn't hurt. You're not screaming and shouting. A couple of days later you feel like a sad fuck, but that's part of the healing process: after that you feel really good. People that harm themselves, be it through anorexia or razors, know what they're doing.
Richey (1994)
The Infamous 4 Real Incident
The first time I ever saw Richey cutting himself was at university, revising for his finals. And he just got a compass and went like that (draws invisible blade across arm). But I knew a lot of people at university who did that, so when he did '4 Real', obviously I was really shocked.
Nicky (1994)
I was really fucked off with (journalist) Steve Lamacq. I didn't know what I could possibly say to make him understand. How easy and cheap is it for me to just hit him? I would never want to do that. I could rather cut myself, because I feel I can justify that. Whereas I can't justify hitting him.
Richey (1994)
Self mutilation in pop - you can trace it though from Iggy Pop to Julian Cope, but they just wanted to be seen as mad fucks. Richey is the least violent person I've ever met in my life and what he did just showed that as soon as a person is prepared to turn violence on themselves as a statement, people become totally shocked.
James (1992)
I tried talking to Steve (Lamacq) for an hour to explain ourselves. He saw us as four hero-worshipping kids trying to replicate our favourite bands. There was no way I could change his mind. I didn't abuse him or insult him, I just cut myself. To show that we are no gimmick, that we are pissed off, that we are for real.
Richey (1991)
The journalist was trying to say we were manufactured and just hero-worshipping past bands. We play rock 'n' roll and we live rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is our lives.
Richey (1991)
We're completely happy that people despise us - but when you get a writer who should be in fanzines saying that he doesn't believe we meant it and that we're just a manager's invention, then I got so pissed off that I had to do it. That guy couldn't conceive that people can be so frustrated and pissed off that they're prepared to hurt themselves.
Richey (1991)
It was the only way to get through to a 24-year old who thinks like a 45-year-old.
Richey (1991)
It shook us all up. We stood in disbelief, I think that was the beginning. Richey had always been very straight and normal through school and university. He was no-one you'd point a finger at and say 'he's strange'.
Sean (1996)
People should realise what the level of violence is like in most people's lives. It's sad that working-class resentment is always turned on itself. Nobody seems to realise that.
Richey (1992)
Breakdown
The reality of Richey's life is blurred by the way he disappeared. He might've known what was going on deep down, but what he gave out...you'd just wonder why small things would bother him immensely. When we were rehearsing he'd phone me 50 times to check the time.
Nicky (1996)
I don't think (Richey's breakdown) was a natural extension of being in a group. It might have accelerated it, that's all. In some ways, Richey's a very Richard Briers person, very cardigan, pipe and slippers. But I think if he'd gone on to become a lecturer - which he might well have done - the same thing could have very easily happened., perhaps in a more private way.
James (1994)
I'm weak, all my life I've felt weak compared to other people, if they want to crush me they can. But I know I can do things that other people can't.
Richey
In Portugal Richey and I were in the hotel watching dreadful European TV and we weren't on until four in the morning and I have never felt so bleak in my life. Richey was having a few crying sessions. He burst into tears after the gig and then, three months later, he had his first breakdown when he chopped himself up.
Nicky (1996)
I wasn’t coping very well and I though my body was probably stronger than it actually was. My mind was quite strong. I pushed my body further than it was meant to go. And then I went to hospital in Cardiff. That wasn't much good. The band came to see me and it was pretty obvious that there wasn't much point in me staying there.
Richey (1994)
It was obvious he had to go to hospital. He realised it, we realised it, his parents realised it. He's just really ill in a lot of ways at the moment. Something's gone a bit awry, and I think he feels deep down it would have come to this whether he'd been a teacher or a bank clerk. I personally think being in a band has accelerated it.
Nicky (1994)
The way we see it is that he'll be back as soon as possible and if it comes to the point where he's not coming back, we won't continue.
Nicky (1994, on Richey's hospitalisation following a breakdown)
It's very romantic to think 'I'm a tortured writer', but mental institutions are not full of people in bands. They're full of people with so-called normal jobs. Or were full. 68,000 beds have been closed down in the last couple of years, which I wouldn't have been aware of unless I was actually in one.
Richey (1994)
The Priory (the private clinic where Richey was taken after his first breakdown) ripped out the man and left a shell. These people say they've got a cure, but that cure is to totally change your personality. You could see him struggling with this, wondering if this was the only way.
Nicky (1996)
I think it would make me angry if Richey's songwriting just became therapy.
James (1994)
We have to watch how we govern ourselves now. Without being corny, Richey and I were, if not quite birding and boozing buddies, something like that. We'd go out or stay up after the gigs. We can't do that now. I wouldn't want it for him. As far as his treatment is concerned, it's just not on the agenda. We don't want to be unfeeling dickheads.
James (1994)
A lot of groups would have got in another guitarist, but that wouldn't have been right for us. We were all quite numb to any sort of discussion about the group's future because we were all too concerned about Richey. We never entertained any discussion about the group until he brought it up himself.
James (1994, on playing five gigs while Richey was recovering from his breakdown)
Anorexia
It's a well known fact that anorexics try to cover up their condition with baggy clothes all the time. On the first day of the British tour, Richey walks in and he's wearing the tightest pair of girls' leggings that I've ever seen in my life. He still wanted the rest of the world to know he was completely fucked up.
Nicky (1996)
The best thing is knowing that no one can do a fucking thing about it. People can't actually hold you down and force food into your mouth. And someone can't be near you 24 hours a day to stop you doing something to your body. And ultimately they've got no right to, because it is your body.
Richey (1994)
We had so much poetry off anorexics and a lot of it was so shit even Richey was getting fed up - not another pile of this again. I said, 'look I'm gonna have to write a song taking the piss out of their poetry', and he was laughing. Even though he was one - or at least half anorexic - he could still see what I meant. He'd go, 'Oh no, not another fucking poem about eating an apple in the morning'.
Nicky (1996)
There's a trigger in Richey that he can't control. He doesn't have a second skin. He has a mental illness ... You can do all you can, but you can't Put someone in a strait-jacket. It's a cliché, but you can only be there for the fall.
James (1994)
The worst thing I did was to keep trying to be normal, which is how I ended up in hospital. Now I wake up in the morning and I know what I want to do - I want to write, it makes me feel better in myself... I value writing songs, I do regard myself as a good poet. I work hard. Songwriting is an art and I really try my best at it. The band is getting better and better, the lyrics are too. I've found better ways to express myself... I don't think I've changed what I say but maybe I'm saying it in a different way.
Richey (1995)
Richey was too vain to admire people like himself. He got so sick of anorexics coming up and offering him peaches.
Nicky (1996)
We had to put (Richey) to bed one night cos he just burst out crying in the car. And then he phoned me up at about half-three in the morning and you know those terrible commercial presentations you get? Some American twat showing you how to flatten your stomach or summat - he phoned me up, and we were watching that together, and it seemed so bleak and nondescript. We didn't have a row or anything, but he kept yapping and I was really tired. The next morning, he comes up to me and he says, 'Here you are, Wire.' And he gave me a fucking Mars bar, as a little present.
Nicky
Early evening I walk around Soho on my own as I have so few friends. It starts to rain. And even cheap dreams don't stop the rain.
Richey (1992)
I'd love to love someone seriously, but considering what I'd expect and what would be expected of me it seems quite difficult. I feel nobody would want to live with me. To love somebody involves being trapped by jealousy. It's really hard. I never wanted to love somebody insincerely - and I don't mean sexually, but intellectually and mentally too... Seriously, if I was in love with a woman, she'd have to be more attractive than Bette Davis, more than anyone else. I'd peel every picture off my walls.
Richey (1995)
Tony Hancock's suicide note ('things just went wrong too many times') is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
Richey (1992)
The last thing I wanted to do was end up a fucking junkie alcoholic mess like Shane McGowan [sic]. The thing about self- harm is that you are aware of what you're doing. That's how you justify it... It's the arbitrary factors that determine your life.
Richey (1994)
In terms of the 'S' word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has done. In terms of An Attempt. Because I am stronger than that. I might be a weak person, but I can take pain.
Richey (1994)
On the Suede tour in 1994, I was aware that, for the first time ever in my life, I was starting to grow away from Richey. He came out of the Priory, full of this 12-point recovery programme and all that shit, and he just wasn't the same person any more as far as I was concerned.
Nicky (1995)
If I can't sleep I tend to have destructive ideas and I have to do something to root them out. I couldn't sleep and all I could think of was shaving my head, so I did. I can sleep now. I was almost in love with my hairstyle. But in the end I just felt like abandoning things like that.
Richey (1995)
People always ask, 'Were you outsiders at school, were you really weird?'. No, we just stayed in our bedrooms and watched TV. We never had anything else to do. We made no effort to make other friends because we felt so happy with each other.
Richey (1992)
We were never particularly victimised for being weird, because nobody ever saw us.
Nicky (1994)
If you built a museum to represent Blackwood, all you could put in it would be shit. We used to meet by this opening called Pen-Y-Fan. It was built when the mines closed but now the water has turned green and slimy. They put 2,000 fish in it, but they died. There's a whirlpool in the middle where about two people die every year.
Nicky (1994)
A long terraced street. 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, Hallowe'en, a lot of people lost their virginity there. If there was a fight, it happened on that slag heap. It's gone now, leveled. 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.
James (1996)
Me and Richey used to play football for a cup my dad found on a rubbish tip. It was a crown-green bowls cup, but we ran down the street with it when we won anyway. Richey was on my team (Woodfield Side) and one day James brought Sean along to play for Pont.
Nicky (1996)
We're the sad victims of 20th-century culture. The cinema in our town, which is the poorest and most boring town in the country, closed down when we were eight, so what do you do? You go out and get pissed and have fights, or you stay in and get on with your boredom. We were happier to go along with the boredom.
Richey (1992)
The most exciting thing was sitting around reading the rock press. When New Musical Express said things like Eddie Cochran is an anarchist, we went ‘yeah'. We fell for all that because our lives were really boring.
Richey (1992)
Nick tried joyriding once. He stole a car when he was 17. He didn't drive it into a shop. He just sort of rolled down the street, didn't get very far. He was a stunted joyrider. I think he fell asleep, drunk, at the wheel.
Richey (1991)
Maybe that's what fucked us up, not that we had bad childhoods, but that our childhoods were too good. That sense of freedom - we weren't just reading books or watching films, experiencing second- hand culture, we were building a dam, messing around in dirt, things like that which, looking back, seem much more worthwhile.
Nicky (1994)
Depression is just our natural mood. Where we come from, there's a natural melancholy in the air. Everybody, ever since you could comprehend it, felt pretty much defeated. You've got the ruins of heavy industry all around you, you see your parents' generation all out of work, nothing to do, being forced into the indignity of going on courses of relevance'.
Richey (1994)
Up to the age of 13, I was ecstatically happy. People treated me very well, my dog was beautiful, I lived with my Nan, and she was beautiful. School's nothing - you go there, come back, and just play football in the fields. Then I moved from my Nan's and started a comprehensive school and everything started going wrong. In my 20s, there's nothing that's been that spectacular since.
Richey (1994)
We grew up very early. By the time I was 16 I'd read and studied the complete works of Philip Larkin, Shakespeare, all the Beat generation, every film. I find it unbelievable, the intensity of us as people and as a band.
Nicky (1994)
I don't think we could have done this if we hadn't grown up in a shithole where the only way to escape was to create your own reality.
Nicky (1992)
When we were growing up, Richey's nickname was Teddy Edwards, after the cartoon character, because he was so cuddly. We just generally had a blissful childhood, in the sense of being free. Especially Richey, up until he was about 16, when he just hit the wall.
Nicky (1996)
I wanted to be someone like Napoleon. Then I discovered music -or the Clash to be more precise, and that was it. My destiny was determined.
James (1991)
Comprehensive school was the most depressing time for all of us. They either write you off or fit you in. If you're not academically gifted, it's 'fuck you'. If you are, it's, 'the banks are coming next week for a talk, and we think you should go.'
Richey (1992)
I enjoyed A Levels because you had a certain freedom to write what you liked, and also you had teachers who wanted to teach you, whereas at university all the lecturers really want to do is write books. They haven't the first idea how to teach and they don't care about making the subject interesting. They just indulge themselves.
Nicky (1994)
Most people look back on their childhoods with more fondness than their early twenties or their teenage years, which are pretty horrendous. 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
A lot of going to university was three more years of not having to decide what to do with my life. I've literally never done a day's work in my life, not even a paper round, so I couldn't handle going to work in an office.
Nicky (1994)
I was much more outwardly nervous then. I always had a kind of quiet arrogance, and slight bitterness against the world, but I didn't have the guts to do anything about it.
Nicky (1994)
Early/Indie Years
We came together around Nick. I was Baldrick to his Blackadder. More than anything he talked about being great, being legends. Nick reckoned he would be a great sportsman, a great politician. We started on the basis of those delusions of grandeur.
James (1996)
A big moment was on the tenth anniversary of punk. The Clash were on a compilation of that Tony Wilson programme So It Goes, doing 'Garageland' and 'What's My Name'. That was the catalyst to us forming a band. We thought we could look like that, walk it like that. Although we couldn't play...
Nicky (1996)
We started at a time when rock'n'roll was dead over here. The U K was in the grip of dance, rap, and the acid house thing. All that Manchester sound stuff that sounded so contrived... The only real rock'n'roll was coming out of America. We were consciously reacting against all that. Our friends laughed at us because they said there was no audience for us. But we felt we had to do something to bring back rock'n'roll, so that's how the Manic Street Preachers came about.
Richey (1992)
Nick's first lyric was called 'Aftermath'- a real doggerel diatribe against Margaret Thatcher. The (miners') strike was all around us and it was on TV every day for a year. When the Yorkshire miners started turncoating, I'd find myself shouting at the telly: 'scab, scab'. But when it was over we didn't want to be these Welsh, working-class gangsters singing, 'We lost, we lost, but we're still standing'. We didn't believe in glorious losers.
James (1996)
We looked down on anyone outside the circle of the four of us. We didn't feel a generation gap with people who were older than us, we felt one with people of the same age. I think that's why we used sloganeering language a lot. We thought that was all they understood and deserved.
James (1996)
It was absolutely everything to me. My idea was about true, natural talent. Something you're born with. We always knew the band was going to work, and that it was just down to us to make it happen.
Sean (1996)
We had this evangelical desire to start the revolution and be absolutely fucking massive. It didn't just mean getting a record deal. It was all-conquering, psycho, egotistical.
Nicky (1996)
At the start, I was personally on a mission to separate ourselves from everyone, even music that I liked. It's my bad trait.
Nicky (1996)
I used to commute in on the train. Regular work. Drum until six and then go home. It was like a little office job.
Sean(1996)
When we started, we used to go into NatWest, all the banks, and try to get a loan. We'd tell them, 'this country is dead musically, there's got to be room for an exciting rock band. 'We'd show them the New Musical Express; 'look at that, anything good in there? Now look at us, we're really exciting'. We told them we were going to be this really massive rock'n'roll band. They couldn't see it.
Richey (1991)
Once we got set our minds what we were doing, we didn't play a single gig in Blackwood. It was straight to London and scrounging money to get on the pay-to-play circuit. You know, £50 for 15 minutes. Next thing was getting the press out to the shows. This is extremely difficult in England because the music press wields the power to make or destroy taste and they don't like anything they don't discover themselves.
Richey
We're very cynical people. We saw bands do all the pubs where we lived, do 200 gigs a year, get really big local followings, and they're all under the illusion that somebody from Sony Music will be driving through the middle of South Wales and go, 'Hey what a good band, let's sign here'. And of course, we knew they never would. We knew we had to move to London.
Richey (1992)
At university, I did politics and Richey did political history. That's where we've nicked all our lyrics from, really. We discovered the Sex Pistols and the Rolling Stones at the same time as we discovered literature. They seemed the same thing to us - both really exciting.
Nicky (1991)
While we were at University, James was on the dole and Sean worked at the civil service. He funded us, basically -when we were traveling about in Transit vans and paying to play at the Rock Garden. James was learning guitar - he's more
dedicated than any of us.
Richey (1991)
When we started, we did want to conquer the world, but that was just a young boy's dream. The myth of complete arrogance, of thinking that you are the greatest band in the world. Which you only get one time in your life, usually when you're young, before you realise what it takes.
Nicky (1996)
We felt that we would change things. We called ourselves the Blue Generation for a while because we felt we were destined for collective greatness.
James (1996)
The only positive thing we could do was to be nihilistic. It was a good avenue to take, initially, but it didn't get us very far, did it?
James (1996)
We were a band before we even picked up guitars. And we didn't even know how, but we knew Richey had to be a part of it.
Nicky (1994)
We set out to be truly despised and hated.
Richey (1993)
We realised that as individuals we were very limited as people, so we had to fabricate ourselves and took a very academic approach at being a band. We were quite clinical. We were like magpies, collecting information, keeping dossiers on journalists and learning how to manipulate them.
Nicky
In the beginning, when we formed, we wanted to sign to the biggest record label in the world, put out a debut album that would sell 20 million and then break up. Get massive and then just throw it all away. By the time we were giving interviews and saying that to the press, though, we didn't believe it. We knew we couldn't quite do that. But if we had aimed any lower in the beginning, I don't think anyone would've paid as much attention to us.
Richey (1992)
We went down to (the) Underworld (club) one night. It was unbelievable. There were like five bands and loads of journalists, all drinking at the same tables. We were naive, but we never thought there would be that really close level of friendship. With most of the cool bands, you know the same people are going to write about them all the time... We just get people who really detest us.
Richey (1992)
Boys In The Band
We're a pretty moody band. One of us is always brooding...
James (1994)
From the age of ten I was very much isolated as an individual, entirely self- sufficient. I live from day to day.
Sean(1996)
It's very working class to want to better yourself. Me and Richey especially were attracted to being clever to prove that we were better than the other... plebs.
Nicky (1996)
I never needed people to love me. I revel in being hated. I just do. Well, not so much any more, but if people dislike me it gives me strength, whereas perhaps for Richey it didn't. There hasn't been anyone like
Richey for the last ten years, with those intellectual demons inside him.
Nicky (1996)
I never consider James or Sean as musicians. They're friends. We're not a band chucked together from the back pages of Melody Maker. First and foremost we're friends.
Nicky (1996)
If you'd have gone into our houses when we were 20, you would have found the same books, the same records, the same videos. We were all attracted to the glamour of suicides and alcohol and beauty. That Rumblefish thing of self-destruction. It's just Richey took it a lot further than us. Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain were the two Richey icons. The Hendrixes and the rest were just decadent. But Kurt and Ian had meant to do it - took control. That was more fascinating to Richey.
Nicky (1996)
Let's face it, you don't need any clues for Richey. Ever since he carved '4 Real' on his arm, nothing would surprise you. Alcoholic, anorexic, drugs, self-mutilator ... all your favourite things rolled into one.
Nicky (1996)
There's a difference in Nick and Richey's lyrics. Richey could be quite nasty and classically nihilistic in that there was rage but no answers. But Nick's anger is translated into optimism.
James (1996)
One of the biggest things we needed when we were young was excitement. Music was the most important things in our lives. We probably are the loneliest people ... I think we're the loneliest people I've ever met. Music and videos were everything.
Richey (1991)
We can be pretty stupid. We've always done dumbfuck things - Richey's arm, for instance. We give people more enjoyment than any other band going. The very fact we were from Wales meant there was no point trying to be cool ...
Nicky (1991)
We've always got a kick out of goading people into thinking we were complete tossers.
James (1994)
I felt Richey was the oldest and yet the youngest of us all. He'd only experience things by forcing himself into situations. He was quite immature in terms of what he'd experienced in life: never been in a relationship, things like that.
James (1994)
We always open our mouths before we think. But that's part of where we come from, part of having fuck all to do all day and saying things to each other simply to create arguments. It was a way of getting through the day.
Richey (1993)
Things get taken to stupid proportions every time we talk; we come out with Mark E Smithisms. We're so comfortable in each other's company - we're talking about 15 years of friendship - that the whole politically correct mentality, avoiding saying certain things when we meet someone new, really doesn't apply.
Richey (1993)
People have still got this stupid idea that I'm a loud, aggressive person. That by the things I've done I'd be hyperactive, talking all the time, running around going 'rrarrarrarr', smashing people in the face, kicking down doors. Which is not the case. I've never destroyed anything in my life, apart from a few guitars.
Richey (1994)
I am not stupid. I might come across as stupid. That's nothing to do with academic qualifications. I think there's a difference between intelligence and knowledge. There are plenty of people with letters after their names who only know figures and dates. It's possible to know a lot of facts but not know anything at all.
Richey (1994)
I think everybody's first love is themselves. Some more than others. Some can divide themselves and give something of themselves to another person, which I've never been able to do because I've never trusted another person enough.
Richey (1994)
There's always something to be angry about. I think we've all tried to deny it at some point or another, but being unhappy and dissatisfied is part of our make-up. I look at my video collection or book collection and I realise they're all about fucked-up loners.
Nicky (1994)
If I was in a pub and someone attacked me, and I knew I'd done nothing wrong, I would happily take a beating without doing anything, and feel really superior. I would never hit somebody back. If I'd done something wrong it's different. But if I was minding my own business, I could easily take a kicking. I'd think, 'I don't give a fuck 'cos you are scum. You're way down there and I'm above you 'cos I can take it'. It's a bit Biblical, 'turn the other cheek' and all that.
Richey (1994)
I find the idea of Kurt Cobain taking his own life frighteningly powerful. I've always been a sucker for that.
Nicky (1994)
Nicky and Sean are still true to the spirit of the Manics, whereas Richey and I are tending to lose the plot a bit.
James (1994)
I have a very child-like rage and a very child-like loneliness.
Richey (1994)
Nick has deliberately made his life simple. The way he conducts his life is almost monastic.
James (1996)
Nick doesn't feel he has to experience anything directly in order to write about it. It's what I call 'homestead lyricism'. It's about admitting that you still feel wonder at the very basic things in life. When I used to get pissed out of my mind every night, I lost that wonder. I began to realise that perhaps Nicky had it right after all.
James (1996)
There's a poem by Tennessee Williams called 'Lament For Moths', one of the first poems we ever read, which is about how the moths, the sensitive people, will always be stamped on and crushed by the mammoths - that really hit us, the sudden realisation that we were the moths of the world.
Nicky (1994)
Richey feels things so fucking intensely. He always had this vision of purity, of Perfection, a kind of childlike vision, that became completely obliterated. A misprint on a lyric sheet, or whatever, would just upset him so much, and he got to a stage where he just couldn't stop himself from doing anything.
Nicky (1994)
Richey never had as many setbacks as a kid as me, he's more acutely intelligent than me, he's more beautiful than me - and yet he has more problems. Problems that I'd just snip off with the fucking scissors in two seconds flat really get to Richey.
James (1994)
When we're not working, we phone each other up at least once a day. We're just big yappers.
James (1994)
I am a melodramatic drama queen, I can't help that. Everything I've ever liked in literature has been along those lines. I guess I identify with victims.
Richey (1994)
The band have never called me Richey. They've always called me Android, or something like that.
Richey (1994)
Richey has always been in love with rose-tinted perfection. So he was always in danger of being let down.
James (1994)
I've always found it hard to express how I feel, even from when I was a little child. It's a very British emotion - they keep things bottled up inside them. Some more than others.
Richey (1994)
I do consider myself to be something of a pretentious wanker.
Nicky (1993)
The difference between me and Richey is he always wanted to be understood, and I prefer being misunderstood. I don't feel the need for people to love or respect me, whereas Richey did.
Nicky (1994)
Everybody's got a corner of their heart and mind you can't get into. Richey was always more into books and films than rock 'n' roll, and I think those art forms are much more idealized. I think they influenced the way he viewed his life, and the way he thought it would be. I think of that quote in Rumblefish, y'know? 'He's merely miscast to play; he was born on the wrong side of the river'. He has the ability to do anything but he can't find anything he wants to do.
James (1994)
Richey was half Ian Curtis, half Iggy Pop.
Nicky (1995)
Richey: 4 Real
At the edge of eternity is torture, in our mind's never-ending ambition to damage itself.
Nicky (1993)
What made Richey the way he was? There is no dramatic thing, that's the scariest thing of all. To be honest, I think that, if anything, it's because his childhood was so happy that when he reached the age of responsibility, he couldn't handle it. He genuinely loved being young, but when you leave school, that's when the real world hits you. That's the most traumatic thing, having to grow up and realising - as he would put it - that everything was shit. Richey used to say 'you're born unmarked', then he'd look at himself and go, 'now I'm scarred'. They do say that 27 is the optimum time for males to commit suicide or break down, usually because of a longing for a disappearing youth.
Nicky (1996)
Living in a tower block with hundreds of other students was a really bad experience. I think if I'd been able to have a flat of my own, my memory would've been very different because I've never been good with very many people. I've always surrounded myself with just a few.
Richey (1994)
When I'm driving my car and the traffic lights turn red I think it's because I'm in the car. I feel persecuted...
Richey
Richey just reached a point where something clicked. His self-abuse has just escalated so fucking badly - he's drinking, he's mutilating himself, he's on the verge of anorexia ... there's a line in 'Yes'; 'hurt myself to let the pain out'. Richey just found it so hard to say no to anybody, and that really was his way of letting out pain.
Nicky (1994)
When I cut myself I feel so much better. All the little things that might have been annoying me suddenly seem so trivial because I'm concentrating on the pain... I'm not a person who can scream and shout so this is my only outlet. It's all done very logically.
Richey (1994)
The only people who are disturbed by Richey cutting himself are those who don't know him. They don't understand... We do know him, we do understand.
Sean (1994)
When it came for me to do my finals, I suddenly realised that I can't go in to do my finals pissed. So the way for me to gain control was cutting myself a little bit. Only with a compass - you know, vague little cuts - and not eating very much. That way I found I was really good during the day. I slept, I felt good about myself, I could do all my exams. I got a 2:1 so I wasn't a 100 per cent success, but I got through it. I did it.
Richey (1994)
You just get to a point where if you don't do it to yourself, you get a feeling that something really terrible is going to happen, and when that moment comes, it's the logical thing to do. It doesn't hurt. You're not screaming and shouting. A couple of days later you feel like a sad fuck, but that's part of the healing process: after that you feel really good. People that harm themselves, be it through anorexia or razors, know what they're doing.
Richey (1994)
The Infamous 4 Real Incident
The first time I ever saw Richey cutting himself was at university, revising for his finals. And he just got a compass and went like that (draws invisible blade across arm). But I knew a lot of people at university who did that, so when he did '4 Real', obviously I was really shocked.
Nicky (1994)
I was really fucked off with (journalist) Steve Lamacq. I didn't know what I could possibly say to make him understand. How easy and cheap is it for me to just hit him? I would never want to do that. I could rather cut myself, because I feel I can justify that. Whereas I can't justify hitting him.
Richey (1994)
Self mutilation in pop - you can trace it though from Iggy Pop to Julian Cope, but they just wanted to be seen as mad fucks. Richey is the least violent person I've ever met in my life and what he did just showed that as soon as a person is prepared to turn violence on themselves as a statement, people become totally shocked.
James (1992)
I tried talking to Steve (Lamacq) for an hour to explain ourselves. He saw us as four hero-worshipping kids trying to replicate our favourite bands. There was no way I could change his mind. I didn't abuse him or insult him, I just cut myself. To show that we are no gimmick, that we are pissed off, that we are for real.
Richey (1991)
The journalist was trying to say we were manufactured and just hero-worshipping past bands. We play rock 'n' roll and we live rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is our lives.
Richey (1991)
We're completely happy that people despise us - but when you get a writer who should be in fanzines saying that he doesn't believe we meant it and that we're just a manager's invention, then I got so pissed off that I had to do it. That guy couldn't conceive that people can be so frustrated and pissed off that they're prepared to hurt themselves.
Richey (1991)
It was the only way to get through to a 24-year old who thinks like a 45-year-old.
Richey (1991)
It shook us all up. We stood in disbelief, I think that was the beginning. Richey had always been very straight and normal through school and university. He was no-one you'd point a finger at and say 'he's strange'.
Sean (1996)
People should realise what the level of violence is like in most people's lives. It's sad that working-class resentment is always turned on itself. Nobody seems to realise that.
Richey (1992)
Breakdown
The reality of Richey's life is blurred by the way he disappeared. He might've known what was going on deep down, but what he gave out...you'd just wonder why small things would bother him immensely. When we were rehearsing he'd phone me 50 times to check the time.
Nicky (1996)
I don't think (Richey's breakdown) was a natural extension of being in a group. It might have accelerated it, that's all. In some ways, Richey's a very Richard Briers person, very cardigan, pipe and slippers. But I think if he'd gone on to become a lecturer - which he might well have done - the same thing could have very easily happened., perhaps in a more private way.
James (1994)
I'm weak, all my life I've felt weak compared to other people, if they want to crush me they can. But I know I can do things that other people can't.
Richey
In Portugal Richey and I were in the hotel watching dreadful European TV and we weren't on until four in the morning and I have never felt so bleak in my life. Richey was having a few crying sessions. He burst into tears after the gig and then, three months later, he had his first breakdown when he chopped himself up.
Nicky (1996)
I wasn’t coping very well and I though my body was probably stronger than it actually was. My mind was quite strong. I pushed my body further than it was meant to go. And then I went to hospital in Cardiff. That wasn't much good. The band came to see me and it was pretty obvious that there wasn't much point in me staying there.
Richey (1994)
It was obvious he had to go to hospital. He realised it, we realised it, his parents realised it. He's just really ill in a lot of ways at the moment. Something's gone a bit awry, and I think he feels deep down it would have come to this whether he'd been a teacher or a bank clerk. I personally think being in a band has accelerated it.
Nicky (1994)
The way we see it is that he'll be back as soon as possible and if it comes to the point where he's not coming back, we won't continue.
Nicky (1994, on Richey's hospitalisation following a breakdown)
It's very romantic to think 'I'm a tortured writer', but mental institutions are not full of people in bands. They're full of people with so-called normal jobs. Or were full. 68,000 beds have been closed down in the last couple of years, which I wouldn't have been aware of unless I was actually in one.
Richey (1994)
The Priory (the private clinic where Richey was taken after his first breakdown) ripped out the man and left a shell. These people say they've got a cure, but that cure is to totally change your personality. You could see him struggling with this, wondering if this was the only way.
Nicky (1996)
I think it would make me angry if Richey's songwriting just became therapy.
James (1994)
We have to watch how we govern ourselves now. Without being corny, Richey and I were, if not quite birding and boozing buddies, something like that. We'd go out or stay up after the gigs. We can't do that now. I wouldn't want it for him. As far as his treatment is concerned, it's just not on the agenda. We don't want to be unfeeling dickheads.
James (1994)
A lot of groups would have got in another guitarist, but that wouldn't have been right for us. We were all quite numb to any sort of discussion about the group's future because we were all too concerned about Richey. We never entertained any discussion about the group until he brought it up himself.
James (1994, on playing five gigs while Richey was recovering from his breakdown)
Anorexia
It's a well known fact that anorexics try to cover up their condition with baggy clothes all the time. On the first day of the British tour, Richey walks in and he's wearing the tightest pair of girls' leggings that I've ever seen in my life. He still wanted the rest of the world to know he was completely fucked up.
Nicky (1996)
The best thing is knowing that no one can do a fucking thing about it. People can't actually hold you down and force food into your mouth. And someone can't be near you 24 hours a day to stop you doing something to your body. And ultimately they've got no right to, because it is your body.
Richey (1994)
We had so much poetry off anorexics and a lot of it was so shit even Richey was getting fed up - not another pile of this again. I said, 'look I'm gonna have to write a song taking the piss out of their poetry', and he was laughing. Even though he was one - or at least half anorexic - he could still see what I meant. He'd go, 'Oh no, not another fucking poem about eating an apple in the morning'.
Nicky (1996)
There's a trigger in Richey that he can't control. He doesn't have a second skin. He has a mental illness ... You can do all you can, but you can't Put someone in a strait-jacket. It's a cliché, but you can only be there for the fall.
James (1994)
The worst thing I did was to keep trying to be normal, which is how I ended up in hospital. Now I wake up in the morning and I know what I want to do - I want to write, it makes me feel better in myself... I value writing songs, I do regard myself as a good poet. I work hard. Songwriting is an art and I really try my best at it. The band is getting better and better, the lyrics are too. I've found better ways to express myself... I don't think I've changed what I say but maybe I'm saying it in a different way.
Richey (1995)
Richey was too vain to admire people like himself. He got so sick of anorexics coming up and offering him peaches.
Nicky (1996)
We had to put (Richey) to bed one night cos he just burst out crying in the car. And then he phoned me up at about half-three in the morning and you know those terrible commercial presentations you get? Some American twat showing you how to flatten your stomach or summat - he phoned me up, and we were watching that together, and it seemed so bleak and nondescript. We didn't have a row or anything, but he kept yapping and I was really tired. The next morning, he comes up to me and he says, 'Here you are, Wire.' And he gave me a fucking Mars bar, as a little present.
Nicky
Early evening I walk around Soho on my own as I have so few friends. It starts to rain. And even cheap dreams don't stop the rain.
Richey (1992)
I'd love to love someone seriously, but considering what I'd expect and what would be expected of me it seems quite difficult. I feel nobody would want to live with me. To love somebody involves being trapped by jealousy. It's really hard. I never wanted to love somebody insincerely - and I don't mean sexually, but intellectually and mentally too... Seriously, if I was in love with a woman, she'd have to be more attractive than Bette Davis, more than anyone else. I'd peel every picture off my walls.
Richey (1995)
Tony Hancock's suicide note ('things just went wrong too many times') is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
Richey (1992)
The last thing I wanted to do was end up a fucking junkie alcoholic mess like Shane McGowan [sic]. The thing about self- harm is that you are aware of what you're doing. That's how you justify it... It's the arbitrary factors that determine your life.
Richey (1994)
In terms of the 'S' word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has done. In terms of An Attempt. Because I am stronger than that. I might be a weak person, but I can take pain.
Richey (1994)
On the Suede tour in 1994, I was aware that, for the first time ever in my life, I was starting to grow away from Richey. He came out of the Priory, full of this 12-point recovery programme and all that shit, and he just wasn't the same person any more as far as I was concerned.
Nicky (1995)
If I can't sleep I tend to have destructive ideas and I have to do something to root them out. I couldn't sleep and all I could think of was shaving my head, so I did. I can sleep now. I was almost in love with my hairstyle. But in the end I just felt like abandoning things like that.
Richey (1995)