A year later my best friend moved house and she had to go to a different school.I didn't have any other friends and spent most days at school by myself listening to my discman at the girls toilets.I was forced to go on a school trip where I had to be on a bus for 6 hours with all the people from my school that I hated.Nobody sat next to me so everyone kept asking me if they can leave their coats on the empty seat next to mine.After an hour my discman batteries died and I was left there with nothing to do sitting next to a pile of coats.The other kids where listening to really annoying Greek pop music very loud.I really didn't want to be there.I don't know why but I started crying.The same girl that showed me the Richey picture saw me and asked me what was wrong.She gave me her batteries for my discman and she also gave me Generation Terrorists to listen to. For the rest of the trip I was listening to it while I was looking at the pictures and reading the lyrics from the booklet. The music was so powerful and the lyrics were like nothing like I've heard before.I felt kind of ashamed and stupid because I couldn't really understand most of them.There were a lot of things mentioned in the lyrics that I didn't know.I was the worst student in my class and I was generally not interested in learning anything that the school 'forced' me to. I was more interested in things that I chose to learn.The lyrics also reflected the loneliness and emptiness that I felt but they did it in a way that made me want to do something to express my sadness and anger rather than just sit there depressed and do nothing.
We've never changed for anybody.Once people realized there was such a band as us, playing honest, straight-up rock 'n' roll,they came to us.They're all people our age fed up with dance and techno music.They're the 'blank generation' in that they come to us without any history to judge us by.
Richey James Edwards, 1992
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