Everything Must Go

It was the headline you didn't really want to see - Manic Street Preachers' Richey Edwards Officially Dead. There's no poetry in the line, no glamour, no defiance, just a resigned sigh after nearly 14 years of nothing. He walked off the page in February 1995, leaving his car abandoned by the Severn Bridge. I've heard many astounding conspiracies since then, I've been sent cryptic messages and I've studied his lyrics and musings for some kind of a clue. It's unlikely that the guy is still alive.

Occasionally people ask me what my dream interview would be I always answer that it would be Richey, back from the wilderness after leading some extraordinary other existence. He always had the potential to be a rock and roll Rimbaud, throwing his juvenile intensity into the aether before living that second act. Instead, the evidence may suggest that he was an unusual, intelligent artist who finally couldn't cope.

The first three albums are proof of his unruly art. The post-Richey album' Everything Must Go' is a reflection of his worsening state in the latter period. The Simon Price book will give you the awful narrative. You can read my 1994 Richey interview here, and I wrote this feature on the band as they prepared their return in 1996.

There was another sheaf of Richey's lyrics that the band said they wouldn't touch. It was from the very last period of his notebooks, and now it seems that they are being reworked as one of the strangest Manics albums ever. I can't wait to hear it