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Seven Days In The Life Of Richie Edwards - Select, February 1992

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ARTICLES:1992



Title: Seven Days In The Life Of Richie Edwards
Publication: Select
Date: February 1992
Writer: Richey Edwards
Photos: Valerie Phillips



SelectFeb92 (1).jpg SelectFeb92.jpg



"Monday: Wake up. Have usual breakfast of Highland Spring mineral water and tomato and cheese. No eyeliner around so I wear Vauranet sunglasses. Leave Black Barn studios where we've spent the last four months. Quarter of a million over budget. Twenty-two weeks once the mix ends. CBS car drops me on Fulham Broadway. Do two Japanese interviews. Read the mail at our management offices. CBS car takes me to the studio. James makes us practise. Spoils my day. Spike Edney arrives for his final session on the keyboards. I go next door to the T.V. room. Watch him play onstage with Queen. Then get some wine. Watch "Last Exit to Brooklyn" on satellite TV Rape scene. Too much reality. No sleep.

Tuesday: Go into Guildford. Buy "Silver Surfer", Franz Kafka, flower-coloured denim jacket from Snob, some roses, typewriter ribbon, white shirt from Etam, Black Crowes T-shirt. Arrive back at studio just before Nick returns from his fruit machine trip to Woking. Today he lost 20 quid. Cut up the days papers Sun, Mirror, for letters to spray paint my shirt. I use 2.49 Halfords car spray paint. To write "Aesthetic Debris". Then I cut up Bert Stern's last photo session of Marilyn. And collection of Rodin stills. I need them for my wall. Before dinner I finish reading "Everyone Will Live In His Own Cathedral" by Christopher Gray. James shows us his new tattoo which says "Anxiety Is Freedom". I go to the TV room. Complete new US import Donald Duck quackshot on our SEGA megadrive. It treats me better than most people do. Also I think how shit everyone is who still owns a Nintendo. And shit Vic Reeves is for only being able to get to level two on Sonic The Hedgehog. And I finished the fucking game months ago. It has been my duty to practise six hours a day. Fuck my guitar. Too easy.

Wednesday: Feel depressed. We leave Black Barn tomorrow. There's thousands of pictures to be taken down. Breakfast is always sad on Wednesday though. (Because) The music press arrives. Go back to bed. Stay there until the "Six O'Clock News". Rip down my bedroom wall. I don't want to leave Keith, Johnny, Stalin, Flavor Flav, Axl, Liz Taylor to be as maggots. People are like maggots, small, blind and worthless. Start a bonfire outside my bedroom. Burn all the torn pictures, cut up books, clothes that remind me of Black Barn. Sean, Nick and James join in. Matt the cool engineer comes to watch. Hanoi Rocks are playing at full volume. "Don't You Ever Leave Me" on repeat play. I think a lot about Razzle and how sad I am. Ruins our spiritual dignity.

Thursday: Rory our tour manager arrives. We leave for London. Since January we've been living with our manager in Shepherds Bush. Until we finish mixing we will be living with Steve Brown our producer. In his Wandsworth mansion. James and Steve start the mixing at the Hit Factory. I walk around Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street. I am delivered to the advertiser who is the customer. 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. I am forced back to the studio. Watch "Secret History" on Channel 4. About the 1972 Civil Rights marches through Londonderry. Thirteen innocent people died in free Derry. Opposite the Hit Factory an IRA bomb was found last week.Outside is the West End. Local Government is blocking up potential bomb risk postboxes. They will never take them away. Just keep them boarded up until they forget once again about Ireland. They cannot control terrorism. They can only react.

Friday: Play Pubic Enemy "Fight the Power" and The Clash debut. This makes me happy. Steve is in studio three working with a group of singers working on "Another Invented Disease". I go to the TV room. Watch edited BC version of "Scum" and listen to the last side of "Quadrophenia". Feel tired. One of our managers arrives. Takes me for a drink at a studio in Acton. This means I get to spend the night at our other manager's house. In Shepherds Bush. On the floor.

Saturday: Buy a fur coat from Kensington. Go back to Wandsworth. Drink lots of Glengettie tea and watch my Ali videos. Go back to be with the remote control once "Saint And Greavsie" starts. Wish I could be a seed. Above my bed are Steve's gold-etc-discs. Photos of Ian Astbury recording "Love". And George Michael at Steve's party. Andrew Ridgely looks pissed. Read the papers. "The Independent" says Eastern Europe is a testimony to capitalism. But it will become Third World capitalism along the lines of Pinochet. One of the CBS drivers is a Yugoslavian political refugee from 20 years ago. Why doesn't the media ever talk to people like him? Just like it only ever has investigative journalism when it can cause a loose thrill. The Broadwater Farm three needed media coverage the day they got arrested. Europe will always be failed America. Use my remote control to play Public Enemy. They say "You have to realise-that it's a form of slavery, organized under swarm of devils". I love my remote control all afternoon. Playing records. Watch "In Bed With Madonna". Then "In Bed With Carter". Madonna is politics. She understands Coca Cola. Carter only understand rent laws. It is tiring staying in bed all day. Wake up though for the Benn fight. Bad fight. Today I feel. Claustrophobia. Moribund. Pregnant. Stagnant. Says Simon Reynolds. Today I would rather fall in love with a washing machine than a woman.

Sunday: Steve's wife cooks dinner. Hit Factory. The Bomb Squad remix of "Repeat" arrives. We love it. Steve and James overdub "NatWest-Barclay's-Midland's-Lloyds". I stay in TV room. Play back "A Streetcar Named Desire". A few times. I find a sample for "Little Baby Nothing". The song with Traci Lords. Poetry (Blanche Dubois) versus strength (Stanley Kowalski). Society. It goes:

Stella: "You didn't need to be so cruel to someone as alone as she is."

Stanley: "The delicate article she is."

Stella: "She is, she was. You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody. nobody was as tender or as trusting as she was. But people like you abused her and forced her to change."

Tennessee Williams as Bible. Rest of my day I try and find out as much information as possible for the legal department. Traci Lords flies in on Friday. On the way back to Wandsworth I ask driver to stop near Oxford Street. Buy Sly and The Family Stone's "There's A Riot Going On" and "Silver Surfer:The Universe According to Thanos". Love n' haight. Shower. Lie in bed all evening reading Sunday papers. Read that Jules Krolls discovered that Saddam Hussien's creamed five per cent off Iraq's $200 billion oil revenue. For the last ten years. And how much oil the US has stock-piled. They believe it's a more effective weapon than the atom bomb. And that despite this the Saudi people will be returning to tents within a century. Also that Debbie Lang's impeccable boyfriend heritage - David Bowie, David Essex, Andy Summers. Roger Taylor -is married by Climie fucking Fisher. All this upsets me. Big time. Ask myself who teaches us to stand for the flag and the National Anthem. The media. Fall asleep thinking you did your job well in the '80s. It takes a genius to make a fake the standard by which we come to judge the genuine."