The scars came back when he drank too much. Or so Richey Edwards explained to an interviewer in Toronto in April 1992. “It’s healing very well,” elaborated the Manic Street Preachers’ guitarist and lyricist. A fragile grin played across his face.
He proffered the arm into which he had notoriously carved “4 Real” with a razor blade the previous May. The faintest traces of the words were visible as a glowering welt. “It always comes out nice and red if he’s had a bottle of vodka,” nodded his bandmate Nicky Wire. “Brings it out in the blood.”
Edwards continued to smile sadly as Wire spoke. That expression of delicate amusement tipping into something bleaker was already familiar to the Welsh quartet’s fanbase, in particular the segment drawn to Richey’s gothic beauty and haunting lyrics. He was the heart and bruised soul of the group.
But today, so many decades later, Edwards is seldom remembered in this way. Saturday 1 February marks the 25th anniversary of the musician’s disappearance. He checked out of his hotel in London first thing in the morning and drove to Wales. That same day he crossed the Severn Bridge, which connects England to Wales. There, the trail grows cold and one of the most enduring puzzles in British indie rock begins.
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