Lost photos before Richey Edwards’ disappearance

Previously unseen photographs of the Manic Street Preachers have emerged 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.

That’s where she met Edwards, as well as his bandmates Nicky Wire, James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore, for the first time.

“[Richey] was really lovely,” she said. “Just like the rest of them.

“Obviously, Nicky and Richey were very flamboyant, with leopard print and makeup, so it was a dream for me to photograph him.”

The 200 photographs featured in Valerie’s new book, Little Baby Nothings, were previously thought lost until she recently discovered the negatives in her archive.

The photographs marked the beginning of an almost-two-year journey alongside the band in its formative years – following them from gig to gig and into the recording studio as they made their debut album.

“It was kind of die by the sword for them,” she explained. “They really lived it, and they really believed in their band. They really were serious about it.”

Edwards, from Blackwood, disappeared on 1 February 1995.

His car was found abandoned near the old Severn Bridge, but no trace of him has ever been found, and he was declared legally dead in 2008.

Valerie said he was a particularly creative individual, who decorated the walls of his temporary bedroom at a studio in the middle of nowhere with a detailed photo montage.

“Richey just happened to decide to customise his temporary bedroom from wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, and I just thought ‘Wow, that’s just so, so cool, and thank you for giving me the greatest photo backdrop’. It was just brilliant.”

Working alongside the Manics for twenty months in total, Valerie followed the band through their early, tentative steps into the music industry.

And it sounds as though she got a very warm, Welsh welcome.

“I was welcomed into James’ family home,” she said. “He shared a room at the time with his cousin, Sean – they slept in bunkbeds.”

“Everyone was just really welcoming. I don’t think I’d ever been to a house in Wales before, somebody’s home, so it was just really fascinating.

“It was different to anything I had ever seen before – it was just very cosy and it really was just a bunch of friends hanging out, that’s very much what they were like.”

Valerie quickly became a fan of the band – she first heard the single Motown Junk before she set off to Wales.

“I loved that record and I was really excited to be doing pictures with them,” she said.

“I thought they were absolutely brilliant, so it was not surprising to me that they became big.”

Some of Valerie’s photos were later featured on the cover of the band’s hit single, Motorcycle Emptiness.

“They had a naivety and innocence but they were also super smart, and very literate – they had lots of intellectual references to books and art, and Richey was the same.

“He was just really lovely and really charming and cool, and really good fun to photograph.”

In a foreword at the beginning of the book, bandmate Nicky Wire said: “We thought these photos were lost but they are found.

“I’m so grateful to Valerie for those intense twenty months when she saw all the energy and ragged glory of Manic Street Preachers and more importantly, captured our little bit of history seen here in these vivid, beautiful photographs.

“During this time she documented every element of our rise from a terraced house in Wales to our first top ten hit,” he added.

“These photographs are revelatory and so evocative – I can smell the hairspray, I can taste the alcohol.”

The band’s frontman James Dean Bradfield said seeing the photos for the first time brought back fond memories.

“You look at the albums and you wince at some of the haircuts,” he told Radio Wales Breakfast.

“But we didn’t wince at many of the haircuts, we’re quite proud of those haircuts.”

Valerie looks back on the time she spent with the Manic Street Preachers with fondness.

“Every time we got together and did pictures, I just had a really brilliant, fun time,” she said.

Valerie went on to have a long career photographing the likes of Amy Winehouse and Sienna Miller.

But she credits her time with the Manics as shaping her signature style.

“Seeing them live in all these little sweaty, tiny, baking hot clubs – the energy was just bouncing off the walls. It was amazing. Remembering all that and looking at these almost baby pictures was quite moving.”

Little Baby Nothings is available now on the Manic Street Preachers website.