image copyrightValerie Phillips
Caption, Manic Street Preachers star Richey Edwards, photographed a few years before his disappearanceItem information
- Autor, Ryan Leston
- Author’s title, BBC News
-
October 13, 2024
A series of never-before-seen photographs of the Manic Street Preachers have come to light, almost 30 years after the disappearance of the band’s former lyricist Richey Edwards.
Photographer Valerie Phillips was sent to Pontllanfraith, South Wales, in 1991 to photograph the Manic Street Preachers during the making of their first album, “Generation Terrorists”.
There he met Edwards for the first time, as well as his bandmates Nicky Wire, James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore.
“(Richey) was really lovely,” she says. “Just like the rest of them.”
“Obviously Nicky and Richey were very extravagant, with leopard prints and makeup, so it was a dream for me to photograph it.”
image copyrightValerie Phillips
image captionNicky Wire and Richey Edwards were known for their extravagant style.
The 200 photographs featured in Valerie’s new book, “Little Baby Nothings,” were thought lost until she recently discovered the negatives in her archive.
The photographs marked the beginning of an almost two-year journey with the band in their formative years. Valerie followed them from concert to concert and to the recording studio as they made their first album.
“They really believed in their band. “They really took it seriously.”
image copyrightValerie Phillips
image captionPhotographer Valerie Phillips followed the band for two years.
Edwards, from Blackwood, Wales, disappeared on February 1, 1995.
His car was found abandoned near the old Severn Bridge (connecting England with Wales) but no trace of it was ever found and he was declared legally dead in 2008.
Valerie says she was a particularly creative person, having decorated the walls of her temporary bedroom in a studio in the middle of nowhere with a detailed photo montage.
“Richey decided to customize his temporary bedroom from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s great, and thanks for giving me the best photo backdrop.’ It was just brilliant.”
Working alongside the Manics for twenty months in total, Valerie followed the band through their first, tentative steps into the music industry.
And, it seems, he received a warm Welsh welcome.
“I was welcomed into the James family home,” he says. “At that time he shared a room with his cousin, Sean; “They slept in bunk beds.”
image copyrightValerie Phillips
image captionValerie had unprecedented access to the band from 1991 to 1992.
“Everyone was very warm. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a house in Wales before, in someone’s house, so it was really fascinating.”
“It was different to anything I’d seen before – it was very cozy and it really was just a group of friends hanging out, that’s very much who they were.”
Valerie quickly became a fan of the band: she had first heard the single “Motown Junk” before leaving for Wales.
“I had loved that album and I was very excited to take photographs with them,” she says.
“I thought they were absolutely brilliant, so I wasn’t surprised they got big.”
‘We thought these photos were lost’
Some of Valerie’s photos later appeared on the cover of the band’s hit single, “Motorcycle Emptiness.”
“They had naivety and innocence, but they were also super intelligent and very cultured; “They had a lot of intellectual references to books and art, and Richey was the same.”
“He was just loving and charming and cool, and so much fun to photograph.”
image copyrightValerie Phillips
Caption: Nicky Wire appears with his bandmate, Richey Edwards.
In a foreword at the beginning of the book, bandmate Nicky Wire wrote: “We thought these photos were lost, but they were found.”
“I am so grateful to Valerie for those intense twenty months in which she saw all the energy and glory of Manic Street Preachers and, most importantly, captured our little piece of history seen here in these vivid and beautiful photographs.”
“During this time she documented every element of our rise from a house in Wales to our first top ten success,” he added.
“These photographs are revealing and very evocative: I can smell the hairspray, I can taste the alcohol.”
The band’s leader, James Dean Bradfield, commented that seeing the photos for the first time brought back good memories.
“You look at the albums and shudder at some of the haircuts,” he said on a BBC radio programme.
“But we’re not horrified by many of the haircuts, we’re very proud of those haircuts.”
Valerie fondly remembers her time with the Manic Street Preachers.
“Every time we got together and took pictures, I had a really great time,” he says.
Valerie had a long career photographing the likes of Amy Winehouse and Sienna Miller.
But she believes it was her time with the Manics that shaped her signature style.
“Seeing them live in all these sweaty, tiny little clubs, the energy was just bouncing off the walls. It was incredible. Remembering all that and looking at these photos almost from when they were babies was quite moving.”
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