00:08The most difficult thing about knowing what to do after Richard disappeared was that, you know, somebody hadn't said to
00:20us, I don't want to be in this band anymore.
00:22Somebody hadn't left us enough saying, this isn't working for me anymore. Somebody hadn't said to us, well, if you
00:29want to carry on without me, fine, but I can't do it.
00:32None of those things had happened, you know, it was just somebody who just left, that somebody being Richie, somebody
00:38left and they didn't, there were no, there were no instructions as to what to do in this situation.
00:47You know, and when other bands have suffered a loss of a member, whether it be through death or creative
00:55tensions or whatever, they could actually make a decision, they could say, well, this person doesn't want to be in
01:01the band anymore, but we want to.
01:03But we weren't in that, there was no, there was no instruction manual for what we went through. We were
01:08just for a long time waiting for news on Richard. We were just always waiting for news.
01:13Maybe three or four months there was just an absolute void. I've never taken, you know, drugs apart from the
01:20paracetamols and stuff, but this is like a lost period for me.
01:24I felt every single day, just like the dangling man, like Saul Bellows dangling man. It just seemed an impossible,
01:32and just an impossible situation, really.
01:38So like, you know, after that period of six months, you know, you can't wait for news anymore. You just
01:43can't, because it was kind of driving us.
01:48I'm just mad in the sense of just not knowing what emotion to have, you know, whether you'd be scared
01:54for what the future might hold, or whether you grieve about it.
01:58And I just, I don't know, I feel like I may have been on Prozac, even though I wasn't. I
02:03just seemed in a kind of glaze, just an absolute glaze of nothingness, waiting for something to happen.
02:10And the only way to actually just, to kind of, you know, to get through that period of, of just
02:18like being like suspended in midday, as people, as friends, as musicians, was to actually start playing music with each
02:24other again.
02:25That was the only answer we had.
02:33I think possibly the last memory of Ricky was House in the Woods, where we were demoing for the next
02:38album. You know, we didn't even think that we would be, you know, sort of, even get, you know, that
02:44we would even get to that stage of demoing for the fourth album.
02:47And just the fact that he was calm, you know, he'd gone through his problems, you know, being to the
02:52Priory, he seemed to have got over it. And, you know, just, you know, the waters were very calm, you
03:00know, we were creative again.
03:02And I can't, so I can't distill what Richie's about, you know, it is such a mad mixture, in terms
03:07of what I think about him. You know, it was, the velocity of his intelligence was absolutely, just scary, most
03:15of the times.
03:16And the velocity of his commitment to the cause of the band was absolutely frightening, sometimes. But then other times,
03:23he'd be the most absolutely, just, cuddliest person in the world.
03:27And so Welsh, you know, just sit down with some sandwiches and a pot of tea and just watch the
03:31rugby and get just lost in it.
03:33So, you know, it's way too complicated to actually just have an abiding memory of Richie, which is impossible.
03:39Yeah, lots in the plan, you know, falling asleep on stage, possibly.
03:43We did two gigs in the day, like some old thing you read about from the 60s, you know.
03:50We started in Germany and we ended up in Belgium, I think.
03:54And, um, kind of peaked too early, drink-wise, and he just, during Landslider, like becoming a landslide, he just
04:00fell asleep on James' foot.
04:03And then he woke up startled and thought, oh my God, it's the end, I've got to jump in the
04:07crowd, like I usually do, but there was no crowd there.
04:09Luckily, it was a garden fucking party we were playing, so he went head first and straight into the mud,
04:14it all fits across.
04:17But, I mean, I just got loads of memories, just to be honest, writing lyrics together, sitting down and writing
04:21motorcycle emptiness together.
04:23At my desk, in my little mum and dad's house, you know, there's just, I just don't know anyone else
04:30who does that in rock history, really.
04:32People who write words together, who can't really play their instruments.
04:37It's just such a bizarre thing, you know.
04:40I don't know, I just love those, and we wrote lots of lyrics together, so I guess the Leonard McCartney,
04:46Jagger Richard thing, but just to get, just as words, that's pretty special.
04:56It's the biggest regret that he never saw us become really, really big.
05:01You know, that's because he had so much power in his head, I would have loved to see more he
05:07would have done with that magnitude of success.
05:10The only way to actually imagine what Richie would have felt about getting, like, the Enemy God, like Genius Award
05:15and all that kind of stuff, is that the academic in him would be very, very proud to get an
05:21award.
05:24But, um, the actual artist would be disgusted by it.
05:29I think he would have loved it, but there was something, he would have either done something to himself or
05:32written something about it, just to kind of make it even better.
05:35He probably would have loved it, to be perfectly honest with you.
05:38There was definitely a conflict between him wanting to be accepted, but knowing that to want acceptance was kind of
05:46almost like prostituting himself.
05:48So, that side of him, I loved the side of him, but I rejected it.
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