Richey : 4 Real

At the edge of eternity is torture, in our mind's never-ending ambition to damage itself.
Nicky (1993)

What made Richey the way he was? There is no dramatic thing, that's the scariest thing of all. To be honest, I think that, if anything, it's because his childhood was so happy that when he reached the age of responsibility, he couldn't handle it. He genuinely loved being young, but when you leave school, that's when the real world hits you. That's the most traumatic thing, having to grow up and realising - as he would put it - that everything was shit. Richey used to say 'you're born unmarked', then he'd look at himself and go, 'now I'm scarred'. They do say that 27 is the optimum time for males to commit suicide or break down, usually because of a longing for a disappearing youth.
Nicky (1996)

Living in a tower block with hundreds of other students was a really bad experience. I think if I'd been able to have a flat of my own, my memory would have been very different. I've never been good with very many people. I've always surrounded myself with just a few.
Richey (1994)

Richey just reached a point where something clicked. His self-abuse has just escalated so fucking badly - he's drinking, he's mutilating himself, he's on the verge of anorexia...there's a line in 'Yes'; 'hurt myself to get pain out'. Richey just found it so hard to say no to anybody, and that really was his way of letting out pain.
Nicky (1994)

  

When I cut myself I feel so much better. All the things that might have been annoying me suddenly seem so trivial because I'm concentrating on the pain...I'm not a person who can scream and shout so this is my only outlet. It's all done very logically.
Richey (1994)

They only people who are disturbed by Richey cutting himself are those who don't know him. They don't understand... We know him, we do understand.
Sean (1994)

When it came for me to do my finals, I suddenly realised that I can't go into my finals pissed. So the way for me to gain control was cutting myself a little bit. Only with a compass - you know, vague little cuts - and not eating very much. That way I found I was really good during the day. I slept, I felt good about myself, I could do all my exams. I got a 2:1 so it wasn't a 100 per cent success, but I got through it. I did it.
Richey (1994)

You just get to a point where if you don't do it to yourself, you get a feeling that something really terrible is going to happen, and when that moment comes, it's the logical thing to do. It doesn't hurt. You're not screaming and shouting. A couple of days later you feel like a sad fuck, but that's part of the healing process: after that you feel really good. People that harm themselves, be it through anorexia or razors, know what they're doing.
Richey (1994)

When I'm driving my car and the traffic lights turn red I think it's because I'm in the car. I feel persecuted...
Richey

The Infamous 4 Real Incident

The first time I ever saw Richey cutting himself was at university, revising for his finals. And he just got a compass and went like that (draws invisible blade across arm). But I knew a lot of people at university who did that, so when he did '4 Real', obviously I was really shocked.
Nicky (1994)

I was really fucked off with (journalist) Steve Lamacq. I didn't know what I could possibly say to make him understand. How easy and cheap is it for me to just hit him? I would never want to do that. I would rather cut myself, because I feel I can justify that. Whereas I can't justify hitting him.
Richey (1994)

I tried talking to Steve (Lamacq) for an hour to explain ourselves. He saw us as four hero-worshipping kids trying to replicate our favourite bands. There was no way I could change his mind. I didn't abuse him or insult him, I just cut myself. To show that we are no gimmick, that we are pissed off, that we are for real.
Richey (1991)

We're completely happy that people despise us - but when you get a writer who should be in fanzines saying that he doesn't believe we meant it and that we're just a managers invention, then I got so pissed off that I had to do it. That gut couldn't conceive that people can be so frustrated and pissed off that they're prepared to hurt themselves.
Richey (1991)

  

The journalist was trying to say we were manufactured and just hero-worshipping past bands. We play rock 'n' roll and we live rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is our lives.
Richey (1991)

It was the only way of getting through to a 24-year-old who thinks like a 45-year-old.
Richey (1991)

It shook us all up. We stood in disbelief, I think that was the beginning. Richey had always been very straight and normal through school and university. He was no-one you'd point a finger at and say 'he's strange'.
Sean (1996)

People should realise what the level of violence is like in most people's lives. It's sad that working class resentment is always turned on itself. Nobody seems to realise that.
Richey (1992)

Self-mutilation in pop - you can trace it through from Iggy Pop to Julian Cope, but they just wanted to be seen as mad fucks. Richey is the least violent person I've ever met in my life and what he did just showed that as soon as a person is prepared to turn violence on themselves as a statement, people become totally shocked.
James (1992)

It was the only way of getting through to a 24-year-old who thinks like a 45-year-old.
Richey (1991)

Breakdown

The way we see it is that he'll be back as soon as possible and if it comes to the point where he's not coming back, we won't continue.
Nicky (1994, on Richey's hospitalisation following a breakdown)

I don't think (Richey's breakdown) was a natural extension of being in a group. It might have accelerated it, that's all. In some ways, Richey's a very Richard Briers person, very cardigan, pipe and slippers. But I think if he'd gone on to become a lecturer - which he might well have done - the same thing could have very easily happened, perhaps in a more private way.
James (1994)

I'm weak, all my life I've felt weak compared to other people, if they want to crush me they can. But I know I can do things other people can't.
Richey

In Portugal Richey and I were watching dreadful European TV and we weren't on until four in the morning and I have never felt so bleak in my life. Richey was having a few crying sessions. He burst into tears after the gig and then, three months later, he had his first breakdown when he chopped himself up.
Nicky (1996)

I wasn't coping very well and I thought my body was stronger than it actually was. My mind was quite strong. I pushed my body further than it was meant to go. And I went to hospital in Cardiff. That wasn't much good. The band came down to see me and it was pretty obvious that there wasn't much point in me staying there.
Richey (1994)

It was obvious he had to go to hospital. He realised it, we realised it, his parents realised it. He's just really ill in a lot of ways at the moment. Something's gone a bit awry, and I think he feels deep down it would have come to this whether he'd been a teacher or a bank clerk. I personally think being in a band has accelerated it.
Nicky (1994)

  

The reality of Richey's life is blurred by the way he disappeared. He might have known what was going on deep down, but what he gave out...you'd just wonder why small things would bother him immensely. When we were rehearsing he'd phone me 50 times to check the time.
Nicky (1996)

It's very romantic to think 'I'm a tortured writer', but mental institutions are not full of people in bands. They're full of people with so-called normal jobs. Or were full. 68,000 beds have been closed in the last couple of years, which I wouldn't have been aware of unless I was actually in one.
Richey (1994)

The Priory (the private clinic where Richey was taken after his first breakdown) ripped out the man and left a shell. These people say they've got a cure, but the cure is to totally change your personality. You could see him struggling with this, wondering if this was the only way.
Nicky (1996)

I think it would make me angry if Richey's songwriting just became therapy.
James (1994)

We have to watch how we govern ourselves now. Without being corny, Richey and I were, if not quite birding and boozing buddies, something like that. We'd go out or stay up after the gigs. We can't do that now. I wouldn't want it for him. As far as his treatment is concerned, it's just not on the agenda. We don't want to be unfeeling dickheads.
James (1994)

A lot of groups would have got in another guitarist, but that wouldn't have been right for us. We were all quite numb to any sort of discussion about the group's future because we were all too concerned about Richey. We never entertained any discussion about the group until he brought it up himself.
James (1994, on playing five gigs while Richey was recovering from his breakdown)

Anorexia

It's a well known fact that anorexics try to cover up their condition with baggy clothes all the time. On the first day of the British tour, Richey walks in and he's wearing the tightest pair of girls leggings that I've ever seen in my life. He still wanted the rest of the world to know he was completely fucked up.
Nicky (1996)

The best thing is knowing that no one can do a fucking thing about it. People can't actually hold you down and force food into your mouth. And someone can't be near you 24 hours a day to stop you doing something to your body. And ultimately they've got no right to, because it is your body.
Richey (1994)

We had so much poetry off anorexics and a lot of it was so shit even Richey was getting fed up - not another pile of this again. I said, 'look I'm gonna have to write a song taking the piss out of their poetry', and he was laughing. Even though he was one - or at least half anorexic - he could still see what I meant. He'd go, 'Oh no, not another fucking poem about eating an apple in the morning.
Nicky (1996)

The worst thing I did was to keep trying to be normal, which is how I ended up in hospital. Now I wake up in the morning and I know what I want to do - I want to write, it makes me feel better in myself... I value writing songs. I do regard myself as a good poet. I work hard. Songwriting is an art and I really try my best at it. The band is getting better and better, the lyrics are too. I've found better ways to express myself... I don't think I've changed what I say but maybe I'm saying it in a different way.
Richey (1995)

We had to put (Richey) to bed one night 'cos he just burst out crying in the car. And then he phoned me up at about half-three in the morning and - you know those terrible commercial presentations you get? Some American twat showing you how to flatten your stomach or summat - he phoned me up and we were watching that together, and it seemed so bleak and nondescript. We didn't have a row or anything, but he kept yapping and I was really tired. The next morning, he comes up to me and he says, 'Here you are, Wire.' And he gave me a fucking Mars bar, as a little present.
Nicky

Early evening I walk around Soho on my own as I have so few friends. It starts to rain. And even cheap dreams don't stop the rain.
Richey (1992)

  

There's a trigger in Richey that he can't control. He doesn't have a second skin. He has a mental illness... You can do all you can, but you can't put someone in a straight-jacket. It's a cliché, but you can only be there for the fall.
James (1994)

I'd love to love someone seriously, but considering what I'd expect and what would be expected of me it would be quite difficult. I feel nobody would want to live with me. To love somebody ivolves being trapped by jealousy. It's really hard. I never wanted to love somebody insincerely - and I don't mean sexually, but intellectually and mentally too... Seriously, if I was in love with a woman, she'd have to be more attractive than Bette Davis, more than anyone else. I'd peel every picture off my walls.
Richey (1995)

Tony Hancock's suicide note ('things just went wrong too many times') is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
Richey (1992)

The last thing I wanted to do was end up a fucking junkie alcoholic mess like Shane McGowan [sic]. The thing about self-harm is that you are aware of what you're doing. That's how you justify it... It's the arbitrary factors that determine your life.
Richey (1994)

In terms of the 'S' word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has done. In terms of an attempt. Because I am stronger than that. I might be a weak person, but I can take pain.
Richey (1994)

On the Suede tour in 1994, I was aware that, for the first time ever in my life, I was starting to grow away from Richey. He came out of the Priory, full of this 12-point recovery programme and all that shit, and he just wasn't the same person any more as far as I was concerned.
Nicky (1995)

If I can't sleep, I tend to have destructive ideas and I have to do something to root then out. I couldn't sleep and all I could think about was shaving my head, so I did. I can sleep now. I was almost in love with my hairstyle. But in the end I just felt like abandoning things like that.
Richey (1995)

Richey was too vain to admire people like himself. He got so sick of anorexics coming up and offering him peaches.
Nicky (1996)