Re-imagining Richey: celebrity disappearance, Manic Street Preacher fandom and Ben Meyer's 'Richard'

In 1995 the Manic Street Preachers played their last show as a four piece before their “minister for propaganda” Richey Edwards disappeared on the advent of a US tour. Although his body was never found, his car was discovered at the Seven bridge so it was assumed Edwards had committed suicide. Fifteen years later, in a novelization called Richard, music journalist Ben Myers wrote a fictionalized first-person account of Richey’s life story in order to explore the troubled guitarist’s mysterious last days. This paper uses academic research on fandom and a revision of the tool of psychological autopsies to contextualize a range of responses to the publication of Richard.