Two months ago I was out having a drink in London. And someone says to me, ‘How can you be out having a drink?’ I say, ‘What the fuck are you on about?’ He says, ‘If I was you I’d be in my room chopping myself up by proxy for Richey.’ People think they know how they’d react if they were his friend. But I don’t feel that I’d been Richey’s friend at that point, because you didn’t have a clue what had happened at all. There were no equation.

JDB to the NME 1996/05/11

THE PURE MOTIVE

It’s an origin story that now seems as notorious and as recognisable as Bruce Wayne’s parents being gunned down in Crime Alley. Yaddayaddayadda, eve of American tour, yaddayaddayadda, Vauxhall Cavalier found parked on Severn Bridge, yaddayaddayadda, not seen since February 1st 1995. And if I were to map out the disappearance of Richey Edwards (the band’s co-lyricist, Minister of Propaganda, and “guitarist”) here again in detail you’d probably let out a groan at the waste of time similar to that you’d release were the next Batman film to feature of yet another scene explaining what happened to Thomas and Martha. Also, I don’t want to victim blame, Mr and Mrs Wayne, but ‘Crime Alley’? What did you think was going to happen?

The band would be forced to deal with the emotional devastation of the never solved disappearance of its central member and the members’ childhood friend for the rest of their career. Though, even by the point of that missed flight to the US, Richey Edwards had long been taken from them. ‘The Cult of Richey’ may not have been named as such yet (and, as far as I can tell, may well have first been coined by Manics bassist Nicky Wire to refer to the hysteria around Richey’s disappearance in 1996), but it really began to form following Richey’s hospitalisation just before the release of ‘The Holy Bible‘. And then that album was released – with its largely Richey-penned lyrics that perfectly chronicled the overwhelming power of everything on our fragile and sensitive souls – and it was like, no, he’s ours now, you can’t have him. Even before Richey’s disappearance, fans would write into NME and Melody Maker expressing how deeply they understood his condition. Even suggesting that, maybe, only they know how to save him? And what was all Richey’s self-harm and self-destruction if not our saviour offering up his own sacrifices to atone for our sins??

The problem with being as talented as any artist in history at giving voice to the inner torments of humanity, is that people are going to start believing in real parasocial connections. How could they describe my feelings so well if we weren’t already so close??

But the problem with artists is that they have an infinitely frustrating tendency to move on and evolve far quicker than their audience.