Manic Street Preachers Interview with Nicky Wire

On Journal for Plague Lovers, the US and Guitarist Richey Edwards

Oct 4, 2009
Mikala Taylor

Manic Street Preachers - Sony Music Canada

In an exclusive interview, Wire talks about what it means to remember Richey and how the Manics have brought his memory back with new album Journal for Plague Lovers.

An interview with Nicky Wire cannot take place without a quick wash of context. On February 1, 1995, the night before a US press trip, Richey Edwards, guitarist and lyricist for Welsh rock band The Manic Street Preachers, disappeared. The story was widely reported on in the UK and there, he is considered an icon.

This writer had the privilege of spending an evening with the Manics in 1992 in Copenhagen. Richey Edwards was an incredibly intelligent, complicated, lost-looking fellow who subsisted on a diet of vodka and crisps. He had a wry sense of humour and a soft voice. He loved his dog Snoopy, the media and attention. And he was Nicky Wire’s best friend.

It is generally accepted that Edwards, who suffered from mental illness and anorexia, likely committed suicide. Yet his body has never been found. A few still believe Richey is still “out there.”

And in a way, they are right.

On Journal for Plague Lovers

The Manic Street Preachers latest album, Journal for Plague Lovers (Sony) contains lyrics written entirely by Edwards – words handed over, in a mess of papers, to Nicky and the band a few weeks previous to the disappearance.

But rather than sound elegiac, the album is a triumph. Thirteen tracks, 13+ years after Richey, and 13 different emotions seem to course through the notes. It is, by turns, heartbreaking, pretentious, anthemic, celebratory and utterly commanding. Its critical success isn’t just Richey’s, it’s the success of a band reunited.

In this exclusive, three-part interview, bassist Nicky Wire folds himself into a chair at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom to speak candidly of coming (back) to America, recording JFPL, his mate Richey and what it was that made him so special.

Exclusive Interview with Nicky Wire

It could be said you’ve had a love-hate relationship with the US, but it’s been mostly hate, hasn’t it? Why has there been a 10 year gap between tours here?It wasn’t really hate – it was just the hypocrisy of the US, the duality, the good and the bad. But the whole thing with North America in general is that the world is a big place. It got to the point where if we could go to Hungary or Romania or wherever and play to 10,000 people, well, it was easier than trying to “crack” North America. It just doesn’t happen for some people, does it?

Is it strange to think that many of the fans coming out to see you now never saw or knew of the band during Richey’s era?

Actually, we signed a few of the old singles in Seattle last night – which was really nice. To think that someone who hadn’t seen us in Seattle had the old albums – well, some of them didn’t even look like they were born when we started! But I think when we started we were much more of a lifestyle choice, than a band and I think that’s resonated through the years.

James Dean Bradfield's Music, and Richey Edwards' Lyrics

Much debate has gone on about the timing of releasing this album. Was this a way to bring your friend back into the band?

When we were doing the album it did feel, in a very strange but very beautiful way, that we’d regained that balance and that was how we started the group. But it was a kind of suspended disbelief while we made the record. As soon as we’d finished it and realized what we’d done and what we’d made, it became a bit more emotional. It felt like it was the four of us and we had the strength to take on the world again.

Musically the album is very different. More complex. Where do you start with words that were scribbled on several pages, given to you by someone an age ago and who himself is now lost?

[Singer] James [Dean Bradfield] started it. And I sometimes wonder, not if he’d become bored with me but, you know, that he wanted a new sound to take him in a different direction. The first time James started coming up with stuff, he’d been looking at the lyrics much more than I had, and he was drawn into making music for them. Straight away you could tell that what he was coming up with, very quickly, actually was in a different universe.