Nailed to History Read online

  Contents

  1: When We Were Happy

  2: The Bands Of Boredom

  3: Convergences

  4: Education Is Never A Waste

  5: Escape Velocity

  6: Advancing Into Battle

  7: Signs And Wonders

  8: The Fabulous Disaster

  9: Everything That Glitters

  Picture Section A

  10: Temporary Caesars

  11: A Spell Of Riot

  12: Ever Decreasing Circles

  13: Intermission

  14: A Beckoning Silence

  15: In Absentia

  16: Chosen

  Picture Section B

  17: As You Sow, So Shall You Reap

  18: Joy In Repetition

  19: A Sort Of Homecoming

  20: Know Your Limits

  21: Slipping Into Fiction

  22: What Immortal Hand Or Eye?

  23: Return Of The Beautiful Boy

  24: Nailed To History

  Multimedia Discography

  Recommend to a Friend

  Also Available...

  Acknowledgements

  Discography

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  When We Were Happy

  “Children find everything in nothing. Men find nothing in everything.”

  Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone Scelto

  Being children and knowing no better, they loved it at first. Then, as they grew, they came to understand its limitations and began to resent it. That resentment led to boredom, crushing boredom, and the need to escape its confines became overpowering. And with the advent of adulthood, escape they did. When asked questions by others, they were quick to pick at its every fault, bury it in insults, even disown it. But as time went by, they became more forgiving, and their words became kinder. One of their number, if not quite the prodigal son, soon returned to live beside it and might berate you for speaking badly of it at all.

  The ‘It’ in question is Blackwood, South Wales, and Blackwood gave birth to the Manic Street Preachers as much as their parents ever did.

  Perched on a hillside at the edge of the Sirhowy Valley, Blackwood lies just far enough from major roads to enjoy some clean air, though not quite the ‘pure stuff’ that city types form hiking groups to breathe. A busy road cutting right through the high street makes sure of that. Since 1996, it has been a part of the county borough of Caerphilly, though before Wales began unifying its local authorities, Blackwood fell within the auspices of Islwyn and Gwent County Council.

  At its centre lies the Miners’ Institute, or ‘The ‘Stute’. Originally built in 1925 as a snooker hall for local colliery workers, the Institute fell into disrepair during the Eighties, its fate mirroring that of the ailing mining industry. Re-opened as a multi-entertainment centre in 1992, Blackwood Miners’ Institute now serves the local community for comedy, music and drama, its name a gentle reminder of harder times. Approximately 14 miles from the city of Newport and a little further to Cardiff, Blackwood – or Coed Duon, as it is known in Welsh – is a small town, the total population tipping 20,000 or so. That number has grown rapidly in recent years with local regeneration projects, new bridges and better link roads to bigger places putting Blackwood up there with other commuter-friendly locations in the area. However, it wasn’t always that way.

  The records have it that Blackwood started life as a model village founded by local colliery owner John Hodder Moggridge in the early 1800s. An enlightened man for his time, Moggridge was concerned by the poor living conditions available to his mine workers and built a series of small, but surprisingly sturdy cottages with accompanying allotments that he duly leased back to them – at a modest profit, of course. The Blackwood experiment proved such a success that he repeated the formula in nearby Ynysddu and ‘The Ranks’, some four or so miles away. By the 1830s, the village had extended its boundaries and even found a political voice, with one of its residents, Zephaniah Williams, a major activist within the growing nationwide Chartist movement. Now regarded as the first real example of the working class banding together to effect political reform, Chartists represented fair wages, a better standard of living and a vote for all men over the age of 21, regardless of origin or social position.

  To that end, Williams and local Chartist leader John Frost planned what became known as ‘The Newport Rising’ at Blackwood’s Coach & Horses pub in November 1839. The idea was noble enough: lead a march of protesters to the nearby town, bring attention to the cause and simultaneously set free their fellow activists thought to be jailed at Newport’s Westgate Hotel. Sadly, their efforts to storm the Westgate armed only with pikes was soundly rebuffed by a small, but well armed military presence. When hostilities ceased, at least 20 protesters lay dead, with a further 200 men – including Frost, Williams and a number of Blackwood natives – sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered for high treason.

  Relative mercy was shown: the sentence was commuted from death to transportation to Tasmania. If the plan itself failed, it at least showed that the men of Blackwood had some iron in their blood, this fact eventually commemorated by the building of the Chartist Bridge: a futuristic structure unveiled just outside the town in 2005, it links the east and west sides of the Sirhowy Valley, providing quicker routes for business and an end to the traffic tailbacks that marred Blackwood’s high street for many a decade. The statue of a Chartist that guards the bridge, pike in hand, body turned towards Newport remains a less practical, but perhaps stronger memento of the town’s involvement with that cause.

  As the 19th century turned, Blackwood left behind its village origins, and showed the first real signs of the town it would eventually become: a long wide street, with trams moving its citizens back and forth, a parade of shops, a bank and more pubs than one might describe as strictly healthy for its size. In line with the Welsh religious revival of 1905, God also moved into Blackwood, with Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal and Catholic churches soon arriving to offer alternative routes to salvation. When the Titanic was sinking near Newfoundland in 1912, a local man named Artie Moore was one of the first to hear its cries of distress through the hiss and crackle of his amateur radio set. Sadly, the authorities paid no attention to him at the time. Moore was later given a job with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, whose radio system was installed on the Titanic when Moore tuned in that night. Some seven decades later, Blackwood would become home to some of the very electronics and communications businesses that Marconi paved the way for, though their arrival in the area would be a distinctly mixed blessing.

  During World War Two, children from England’s South Eastern counties were evacuated to Blackwood’s surrounding areas, finding the hills – some peppered with cherry trees – a curious, but safe alternative to the blitz conditions plaguing their parents some 150 miles away. Not that Blackwood and its men didn’t play a part in both World Wars, the names of those locals lost in battle now etched upon the town’s cenotaph. By the early Seventies, Blackwood was more or less fully formed. Still on the hillside, still equally close to God, alcohol and the mining industry, it remained a place that traffic passed through when journeying to bigger conurbations such as Pontypool, Newbrigde and Ystrad Mynach. Many of its residents would also follow that traffic in search of their weekly wages, or the more earthly delights of Cardiff or Newport: “In the Seventies,” said one resident, “Blackwood was a typical Welsh town. Still is, to a point. Good and bad habits, a bit of an in-betweener. Most people saw it from the window of a car.”

  Of course, the young Nicholas Allen Jones – or Nicky for short – didn’t care about any of that. At least, not at first. All he really wanted to do was play. Born on January 20, 1969, Nicky Jones’s abiding love – then as no
w – was sport. Cricket, golf, athletics, boxing, Nicky loved the lot. However, he particularly excelled at soccer, following his team of choice, Tottenham Hotspur, avidly as a child. Inevitably, Jones was keen to transfer the skills he witnessed on The Big Match to the pitch, or in Blackwood’s case, a large unruly playing field owned by the local Gossard factory. As workers produced corsets and girdles inside, Nicky and his teammates were kicking a ball a hundred or so yards away. The dedication paid off: as a teenager, Jones would captain Wales’ schoolboy team, his skills as an attacking midfielder eventually leading to a trial with Tottenham’s arch north London rivals, Arsenal. Sadly, genetic predisposition in the form of a weak back curtailed Jones’ football aspirations for good. That said, this wasn’t yet a factor as he tore around the Gossard field trying to emulate Spurs’ Steve Perryman and Glenn Hoddle.

  Nicky’s love of sport was inherited from his father, Alan, who after a spell in the army and time spent in the local collieries, eventually settled as a builder for hire. Alongside wife Irene, Alan bought a modest home in Woodfieldside, just outside central Blackwood, and set about the business of raising a family. Nicky Jones was not the first boy of the household. That honour fell instead to his brother Patrick, who, born in 1965, was four years Nicky’s senior and his unofficial football and cricket coach. A “traditional lower middle class” brood, then, but not one following any of the usual clichés: “It’s not a very rock ’n’ roll thing to say,” Jones later confirmed, “but I had a fantastic childhood. I hate those working class caricatures of chips and beans. It wasn’t like that. My mum and dad actively encouraged me in everything I did. My dad was a hard worker with an anarchic streak, which definitely came through. Physically, I was more like my mum… more feminine.”

  The bond between mother and child was especially strong as Nicky – though naturally sporting – fell prey to a succession of childhood illnesses that often saw him home from school: “I’d spend hours on my mother’s bed,” he said, “watching her do her hair and all that stuff. I was just fascinated with that. I’ve always seen my mother as the most gentle, fantastic human being.” Though he would later indulge the feminine side of his nature with some style, the young Jones was then content to give his all for silverware – albeit of a rather unique variety: “The major league was (our) Woodfield side against Pontllanfraith,” Nicky later told Q, “and we used to play for a trophy my dad found in a rubbish tip. It was a Crown Green Bowls cup but we ran down the street with it when we won anyway. One day, Sean brought James to play for Pont.”

  The boys Jones referred to were Sean Moore and James Dean Bradfield, two local acquaintances living in Pontllanfraith, a mile or so away from Nicky’s Woodfieldside home. For James, Nicky Jones was already something of a Blackwood ‘face’: “I remember seeing Nick first when I was about five years old. He stuck out because he was the tallest in the class.” Unlike Jones, who would soon acquire the nickname ‘The Wire’ due to his impressive height, James Dean Bradfield was not a tall child: “fucking short, actually”. Worse still, he was born with a lazy eye, or to give its proper medical term, amblyopia. To correct the condition, Bradfield had to wear large correcting glasses that earned him the unfortunate monikers ‘Joe 90’ and ‘Beaker’ from schoolmates. However, despite being named for a bespectacled puppet and Muppet, James was seldom bullied – there was a little too much fire in the eyes behind the lens for that.

  Born in Newport, Gwent on February 21, 1969, James was similar in stature to his carpenter father, Monty: “My dad was a hard working, trade union, 15 cups of tea council man,” James later told the BBC, “a good man and true.” As stated, Monty Bradfield and his wife, Sue, who worked in a betting shop, had bought a house in Pontllanfraith, or ‘Pont’, for short. Moments away from Blackwood town centre, Pont was notable for being home to a number of miners plying their trade in local pits such as Oakdale and Penallta. Their post-work activities either took place at the nearby Institute or within the walls of The Penllwyn, a large imposing pub at the heart of Pont’s housing estate. An only child, Bradfield’s unusual forenames were a gift from his father. Quite the fan of thrillers and westerns, Monty had originally wanted to call his son ‘Clint Eastwood’ up to the day of his christening, but sanity and his wife’s objections prevailed. ‘Clint’ duly became ‘James Dean’ in honour of Hollywood’s original teenage rebel. In light of later efforts, the name remains reasonably apt.

  Like Nicky, Bradfield loved football, following the fortunes of Brian Clough’s then “Can do no wrong” Nottingham Forest. He was also a keen rugby player with an additional gift for long distance running – one that would see him complete his first marathon by the age of 16: “It was me versus the hills, there was no choice,” he later said. Thankfully, James’ brief dalliance with the steeplechase was abandoned due to height issues: “Nick and I had this dream of me bringing glamour to the steeplechase… but I was five feet five tall. I was never going to win the steeplechase, was I?” Bespectacled, short but athletic with it, Bradfield had another more sensitive gift: for several years, he was a member of his school choir, “It was all right,” his considered, yet curt response when once questioned on the subject.

  Bradfield’s spell as sole occupant of his bedroom came to an abrupt end in 1978, when his cousin, the Liverpool supporting Sean Moore moved in. Born on July 30, 1968, and a year older than James, Moore’s arrival at the Bradfield house was due to his parents’ recent divorce. With few alternatives available to her at the time, Sean’s mother, Jenny, turned to her sister for help with living arrangements for the young boy. Subsequently, a bunk bed was purchased – Sean taking the lower rung, James clinging defiantly to the top. Over time, this temporary measure became a permanent solution. And though Sean would always remain close to his mother – a regular fixture at the Bradfield home – his father became a ghost, only re-appearing again in later years when his son found success. Learning of his father’s re-emergence, Moore took a pool cue to his surroundings with inevitable results: “From the age of 10,” he later said, “I became isolated as an individual, entirely self-sufficient. I live from day to day.”

  That self-sufficiency soon took physical manifestation, giving Moore a detached, almost sullen demeanour. This was certainly a factor at school, when if he felt a teacher’s question to be stupid or irrelevant, he simply refused to answer – behaviour that eventually led him to being dropped from the top stream of his class. On the home front, things were also challenging, Sean having to adjust to a new household (replete with outside toilet), and the youthful presence of James Dean Bradfield in the top bunk. As with all such relationships, a period of adjustment was necessary: “It was a pretty normal childhood, really,” James later confirmed, “we just used to fight all the time. Sean thought he’d take the role of older brother, and he beat me up a few times. The only thing that sort of hurt me was that he’d ignore me at school. I’d walk up to him and say ‘Hello Sean, are we walking home later?’, and he’d pretend he didn’t know who I was. He just didn’t want to be seen with his nerdy, young cousin. But things changed. With the benefit of hindsight, Sean moving into our house was serendipity.” Over time, the arrangement began to work, Moore and Bradfield establishing a bond and simpatico more akin to brothers than cousins. Sean even developed an impressive patience with the younger boy, looking simply bemused when James – fresh with ideas of joining the army amid coverage of the Falklands War of 1982 – began a nightly weight training programme in preparation for the call-up.

  If Nicky Jones could have picked a second brother for himself, it would surely have been Richard James Edwards, better known as ‘Richey’. Another of the Gossard playing field boys, Edwards was a “decent right winger” who lived just up the road from Moore’s family, albeit in a “slightly better house” on Church View in Woodfieldside. The property in question had been in the Edwards family for some nine generations, though they would later sell it to move to a modern bungalow near Blackwood town centre. Born on December 22, 196
7, Richey was the son of Graham and Sherry Edwards, well known throughout Blackwood as hairdressers who owned the high street salon. Like Nicky’s dad, Alan, Graham Edwards was in the armed forces before taking up the barber’s trade, serving four years with a parachute regiment in a concerted effort to avoid following his own father’s footsteps into the mines. Richey was soon joined by a sister, Rachel, some two years younger, with whom he shared his pale colouring. The siblings would grow especially close, though Rachel would always call her brother by his given name, ‘Richard’.

  Edwards’ playmates had other ideas, and as appeared statutory throughout Blackwood’s childhood ranks, Richey was given a nickname – two, in fact: “(I called him) Teddy Edwards,” Nicky later remembered, “Because he looked like the TV teddy bear, a cuddly little fellow.” Others were less affectionate, christening him “Titch” in honour of his diminutive size. According to his father, Richey was a quiet boy, happy enough walking in the surrounding hills or kicking a football with friends: “He was studious and thoughtful,” Graham later said, “not the rebellious type at all.” Central to the Edwards’ family life was their commitment to the nearby Methodist church, where they attended services on Sunday mornings.

  A clear alternative to the distant Protestantism offered by the Church of England, whose message was understandably lost to communities such as Blackwood, the Methodists had gained a strong foothold throughout Wales. Embracing the poor, downtrodden and – bold for the time – criminal classes, Welsh Methodists advocated reason, service and equality, with strict study of the Old and New Testaments fundamental to their faith. There was also a distinct Calvinistic flavour to Welsh Methodism, its notions of predestination and God’s sovereignty over man’s fate the subject of many a sermon. Richey attended both services and Sunday school, but his later remembrances point toward a young mind wrestling with the blind acceptance of what he heard there: “I never saw the point of organised religion,” he said in 1993, “probably because I had to go to church so much when I was younger. I went to a tin-shack chapel when I was seven. There was some fat old cunt on a stage, screaming at you, naming you, humiliating you…” Though he could spout scripture parrot fashion with the best of them by his early teens, Edwards permanently terminated his association with the church at the same time, only returning to the subject of religion on his own terms a decade or so later.