Nailed to History by Martin Power

Author:Martin Power [Power, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849381758
Publisher: Music Sales
Published: 2018-06-04T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

A Beckoning Silence

Arthur Rimbaud wrote about a season in Hell. 1994 had seen the Manic Street Preachers experience almost a year long spell in roughly the same vicinity. “From Thailand to the smashing up of the Astoria,” Nicky Wire confirmed, “it was hospitalisation, no money, drudgery, hateful, miserable… just awful.” It wasn’t just Wire who had felt the burn. To escape the rigours of touring and pressures surrounding Richey Edwards’ continued traumas, James Dean Bradfield had been drinking alcohol as an emotional prop and useful narcotic – his body and mind dog-tired as a result. Sean Moore, though still a poster boy for stoicism, had also felt the stress of recent events, trying wherever possible to balance his workload with keeping an ever-watchful eye on the comings and goings of his oldest friend.

As for Richey himself, 1994 had been a journey without maps. Having provided the Manics with the best writing of his career and the template upon which The Holy Bible was built, Edwards had spiralled out of control: the cuts had grown deeper, the behaviours more difficult to understand, the weight of it all too much for a time. Then, following the false dawn of The Priory, he again appeared to falter, the Manics’ European tour marked by heartbreaking episodes of self-harming and mounting inner disorder. There had been small wins, though. Since leaving hospital, Richey had fought and largely won his battle with drink, exchanging his litre a day vodka and whiskey habit for copious amounts of caffeine. Equally, his guitar playing had greatly improved, even if he never quite mastered Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’, despite countless attempts from James and Sean to teach him.

But for every seeming victory, there was a comparable defeat. Though he needed to stay clear of alcohol to maximise the benefits of the Prozac he had been prescribed, Edwards greatly missed its effects. “I can’t do anything I want to any more,” he complained to Nicky. There was also the matter of gleaning any satisfaction at all from touring. While the band felt their co-headlining tour with Suede had brought out some of the better performances of their career, Richey was less convinced. “It was the first time I thought we weren’t all reading from the same page,” James later told NME. “Richey had taken to ‘marking’ gigs then, and not a lot of them got very good marks. We were enjoying them, and he was giving them shit marks. I thought ‘This just ain’t making him happy’.”

Of that, there was little doubt. In addition to actually marking concert appearances, Edwards was also scoring the quality of his days from nought to 10 while on tour. Some days, such as when he visited Paris’ L’Empire de la Morte – a series of extended catacombs/tunnels running beneath France’s capital city, filled with old skulls and bones – were awarded a ‘nine’. Others, including his time spent in Amsterdam and Hamburg, were awarded considerably less. Most days though, he seemed content to pass in his own company.

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