Journal For Plague Lovers - Background

Background

The Manics posted the following message on their official website:

All thirteen songs on the new record feature lyrics left to us by Richey. The brilliance and intelligence of the lyrics dictated that we had to finally use them. Topics include The Grande Odalisque by Ingres, Marlon Brando, Giant Haystacks, celebrity, consumerism and dysmorphia; all reiterating the genius and intellect of Richard James Edwards.

Wire, the band's de facto lyricist, had begun contributing musically to the songwriting process on the album, stating "I did write quite a bit of music. I wrote all of 'William's Last Words', I wrote pretty much all of 'Marlon JD', I wrote the chorus for 'Peeled Apples', the verse for 'She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach'". The lyrics are taken from a folder of songs, haikus, collages and drawings Edwards gave to bassist-lyricist Nicky Wire a few weeks before he disappeared. Edwards also gave photocopies of the folder to singer-guitarist James Dean Bradfield and drummer Sean Moore. The band have described the Rymans folder as having a picture of Bugs Bunny drawn on the front emblazoned with the word 'opulence' in capital letters. In promotional interviews for the album, Bradfield and Wire have revealed that the folder contains around twenty-eight songs. Four of these appeared on the 1996 album Everything Must Go: "Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier", "Kevin Carter", "Removables" and "Small Black Flowers that Grow in the Sky". Of the rest of the folder, Wire stated:

There's probably between eight and ten maybe that were too impossible. Some of them are little haikus, four lines. "Dolphin-Friendly Tuna Wars", that's one; "Alien Orders/Invisible Armies", that's one ; "Young Men", which is quite Joy Division. They just didn't feel right. We'll probably put them all out in a book one day. There's not gonna be a Journal for Plague Lovers Two. The special version of the record does come with the original version of the tracks on there. So you can see the editing process, if there is any.

Several tracks refer to Edwards' time in a couple of hospitals in 1994. Among them is "She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach", of which James Dean Bradfield said to the NME: "There're some people he met when he was in one of the two places having treatment and I think he just digested other people's stories and experiences." The final track, "William's Last Words", has been compared to a suicide note, and although Nicky Wire rejects this suggestion, Bradfield observes, "you can draw some pretty obvious conclusions from the lyrics." Wire, who admitted finding the task of editing this song "pretty choking", eventually composed the music and sang lead vocals after Bradfield found himself unsuited to the task. The album features several cultural references, including a passage from the film The Machinist, which features in the song "Peeled Apples" and a passage taken from the film The Virgin Suicides, which features in the song "Doors Closing Slowly".

Bradfield commented that Journal for Plague Lovers was an attempt to finally secure the legacy of their former member Richey Edwards and the result was that, during the recording process, it was as close to feeling his presence since his disappearance: "There was a sense of responsibility to do his words justice. That was part of the whole thing of letting enough time lapse. Once we actually got into the studio, it almost felt as if we were a full band; it as close to him being in the room again as possible."