Manics: 'Not about rock’n’roll myth'
Updated on 12 May 2009
Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire talks to Stephanie West about making their new album, Journal For Plague Lovers, based on lyrics left to them by missing guitarist Richey Edwards.
Richey Edwards, who went missing in 1995 at the age of 27, was officially declared dead in November 2008. Nicky Wire describes how he kept Edwards's lyrics in a "beautiful, old fashioned Ryman's box binder", and how the band felt they had a "real responsibility" to make the album.
"Making the album was an academic challenge," he said. "It was a real desire to match what we considered the brilliance of Richey's words, to try and make the music as good as the words.
"It kind of made us fall in love with him again as a writer, as an intellect. It just made us feel like we had that perfect symmetry of a four-piece again. Not so much commercially, but just as four people who really connected with each other.
Wire says it was lead guitarist and vocalist James Dean Bradfield's decision to make the album. "James just thought Ritchie left us these lyrics, he obviously wanted us to use them," he said. "It just felt like we had a real responsibility, I don't know why after all these years, to do it."
"I just guess the last three or four years we've become comfortable with talking about him much more," he went on to say. "It's just not all about rock’n’roll mythology. I used to play football with him, went to university with him. It's not all about a rock’n’roll icon.
"We just felt we had some kind of duty really. He did leave us these lyrics. I think because the last album was such a success, people couldn't accuse us of trying to revive our career.
"It's a tightrope, a balancing act ever since Richey disappeared. You're always kind of conflicted by everything you do. There's always that sense of longing.
"There's always a sense of, not regret, just missing someone through all the experience."
