The new clues that suggest missing Richey staged his own dissapearance

[raven]

Originally Posted by Europa Gluten Free

The chapter that started breaking down the Holy Bible lyrics was atrocious.
Each section seems to return to the point that Richey was interested in this movie or that book in which the protagonist disappeared and committed suicide and so it all makes sense. That is the overall narrative thread. Very poor.

The Holy Bible is summed up as 'spiralling disjunctions, scattershot outrage and sheer cryptic messiness'....which isn’t a particularly good description of the album but of the book? They ignore the majority of his work which is odd if this is an attempt to recognise the writer/lyricist/wordsmith. Instead they focus on a handful of songs pretty much exclusively from The Holy Bible and we all know that of course the personal is political? Well, they take this absolutely literally and the songs are all stripped of the political and historical content and of their merit and are turned into hidden rants against the band and against the constraints of the record company and the business as a whole. Man kills everything? The Man who owns the record label, references to dictators and political failures like Pol Pot? All reflect Richey’s obsession with the perfect disappearance (have to say personally I didn’t get the impression he was particularly but maybe it’s just because you feel the urge to resist being shoved around by the author so much) Pol Pot was certainly responsible for a lot of disappearances but I just, fail to make the connection,...

The Intense Humming of Evil that’s riled a few is just random ideas thrown in devoid of context. When you go back to the lyrics it doesn’t seem to be referencing them entirely. Nowhere does it mention the prevalence in the media and on campuses at the time of holocaust denial which really forms the background with historical facts suddenly up for serious debate under the misnomer of free speech...if you’re looking for links link it in with PCP as the ideas that thread through both link together. When words are rinsed of meaning, when every opinion is afforded equal respect, that’s opinion not person, in the name of free speech we risk losing the meaning of everything....6 million lives? Well, maybe (Deborah Lipstadt’s book Holocaust on Trial published the year before the album came out is excellent. If you want more insight read that don’t be looking for how kulturkampf and raus raus were about telling his bandmates where to get off

Where is the exploration of his work, appreciation, critique. His intention which they mention but lose under all this clue seeking was to provoke, to make people think – it’s all he really wanted to achieve, the band was the vehicle for that and absolutely there are some very disturbing lines on the album that tell you about the state his mind was in....but those lie primarily in songs like Die in the Summertime, 4st 7lbs...those aren’t really touched on, in Yes too which is instead reduced to some bizarre part telepathic part conspiracy theory rambling about the evil entertainment industry abusing its young.

I do get an impression of Richey but it’s shadowy and it really feels like his absence has left a space for everyone to write his narrative and they write it through their eyes. He feels strangely absent through a lot of it absent to them too maybe?
There are mentions of Syd Barrett obviously, Ian Curtis, Kurt including the murder conspiracy and Brian Jones ditto....in fact they’ve slotted him quite tightly into a Brian Jones mould I feel someone’s read a few of his biographies whilst writing this which would explain the incessant attempt to make you feel that in the few short few months between the album coming out and his disappearance he was made to feel unwanted by the band and pushed out by the management.....the facts seem to fit more neatly in the case of Brian Jones but not too well here for all that those months did sound like absolute hell

My impression is that his sister, his friends who contribute here, Jo, were not close to the band and Richey didn’t seem inclined to talk about the people he knew with others and that this wasn’t a conscious keeping people separated but just happenstance, friends who met Richey at college were a year older/ahead of the rest of the band for example and Jo was so far on the periphery she wasn’t really part of his life with the band. All accounts and references to the 3 are drawn from press interviews apart from the odd controversial comment like Nicky saying there was a Vivian in Richey’s hotel room that last night. How he would have known is a mystery but it’s all a mystery, how Nicky came to say it is a mystery given how the Rachel camp seem so adamant that the band positively kept them at barge pole length.

It’s petty at times ‘it must have been frustrating for them (the band) to abandon some of their more familiar habits to accommodate somebody who was in recovery’ said his sister commenting on the difficult autumn tour when Nicky just wanted to go home and James drank it all out but knew he couldn’t drink on the bus in front of Richey and hostile at others. His sister doesn’t believe Richey did ever hand the Bugs Bunny folder of writings that went on to form Journal for Plague Lovers over to the band (It was at his flat when he disappeared it states and they asked Rachel if she would fetch it for them which she did without looking at it at all and clearly now regrets)

The band’s respect for the family’s privacy is acknowledged but it’s a backhanded compliment as she believes it’s an excuse for them to do nothing to actively help search for him. It gets petty on the part of one of his friends regarding what the band have said, petty and childish in its assumption that the band's hurt is somehow less than theirs as if there’s a rulebook.

And jealous? I feel that’s underlying a lot of it. The band were close but they were also around him nearly all the time over those last few years and I don’t get the impression the others quite had him that close which must hurt even if it makes no sense. And there isn’t one instance of Richey actually saying anything negative about the 3 friends in the band it’s only implied and deduced by the writers while he hangs back off the page

One person who does give you a real sense of the man though is Rosie Dunn a journalist who was in the Priory at the same time and formed a friendship that lasted on until he disappeared...skim to her parts she makes you feel he’s there in the room in a way the rest of the book’s accounts don’t. She’s observant and tactful too brings across his kindness, his intelligence, his humour too even in that place. Yes she should have been entrusted with the book

All that said, and I know I’ve broken the word count record, the final chapter Rachel’s Search is worth everyone’s time and why, as frustrating as the book is, as ill put together and lacking in reflection, jumping from one philosopher to another, one author to the next and all reduced to just explaining his disappearance as if his vanishing was his life’s work it’s impossible to judge her because she has put in hours, weeks, months, years trying to find just a trace of him and she has come up against one brick wall after another. The initial investigation possibly helped put pay to his family ever learning the truth. They failed for example to authorise a search by the coastguard and Severn Area Rescue Association following the discovery of his car despite being aware he was very vulnerable. Failed not just to view the bridge CCTV but to even check if the service station and car park had any. The stories she learnt about the experiences of others who had family members go missing are harrowing and can only have lodged themselves in her mind regarding Richey and his possible fate. I can’t judge her. Who am I to judge her?? I just wish she’d put her project, put her brother in the hands of a more capable writer/journalist/reporter