The closing moments of "Removables" are wonderfully unsettling. One of my favourite little musical pieces in the entire Manics canon.

Great song. There are a few on the album I find average, none I actually dislike.

Removables contains one of my top ten MSP moments - the start of the second chorus where James lets go and screams 'ALL REMOVABLES!!'

I think it was a shame that the EMG 10th anniversary edition didn't include any of the demos that were actually completed when Richey was still around. According to Simon Price's book they had demoed Kevin Carter, Elvis Impersonator & Small Black Flowers in late 1994. Would be good to hear the versions of songs that Richey would have heard.

What did James say exactly about it? Because as far as I can tell the rhythm guitar bit at the end of NSAF sounds very much like Richey's guitar playing (check out the Glastonbury 94 performances when Richey actually played, the tone and overall sound of his guitar sounds pretty close as far as tone goes to whats played at the end of NSAF.)

Well, seeing as Richey wrote the lyric, I think it's safe to say it was written before he disappeared.

Unless the Manics really have known where he's been all this time? :P

Sean Moore: famous lyricist!

I have to jump in on a thread where Further Away is getting bashed. Due to my own self-inflicted EMG over-exposure, I hadn't listened to the album in almost a decade when one night I drunkenly decided to play some tracks from it. Playing this song reduced me to horrible tears in a way I wasn't prepared for or expecting in the slightest. It's now my favourite from that album.

Oh, I don't think Richey wrote NSAF. I remember reading in Q or something just after EMG came out that the song was written by Nicky while he was on tour and missing his wife (must have been written during the THB tour). As I recall, he mentioned it being 'a sort of love song to her'. So, it was neither written by or about Edwards.

Yeah I'm fairly certain NSAF's lyrics would have had to been written post-Richey's disappearance, the lyrics in fact reflect that I believe. I was under the impression Richey's only possible involvement with that song was that they possibly had a take of Richey playing some guitar lying around (either that was unused or they were working on the music for the song before Richey's disappearance and Richey simply contributed a small guitar part for the song) and they decided to add it into the song's mix.

Urgh!!! What the fuck am I on about? My brain clearly hasn't recovered from last night. Of course it was Nicky that wrote the lyric. It doesn't even sound like a Richey lyric! I'm such a fucking numpty...

That's Further Away, no? He wrote the lyrics to that on the THB tour, and has said it was the closest they'd come to a love song, but always denies that it was a fully-fledged love song.

Does anyone know whether the version of Small Black Flowers on the EMG 10th anniversary edition of EMG is the version that Richey heard the night before he disappeared? I could be wrong but am sure that on the way to the Embassy Hotel the night before he disappeared, James played him a demo of Small Black Flowers in the car??

Pull yourself together man!

I can't remember which interview it was only that it must have been recent-ish - probably around the release of Journal as my memory's of limited capacity and that he was talking about some of the daftest rumours to have sprung up around Richey - and one of them was the rumour that Richey played guitar on No Surface....I remember it cos I'd heard the rumour and that was the first time I'd come across any comment on it from the band.

Think it was written in 94 through the Holy Bible tour when Nicky was feeling distanced from Richey who was unravelling, self harming a pretty bleak time. It feels like that too the distance from a close friend or the barrier self harm can put up, the anger the guilt

I thought it was just about all the band members feeling for the first time that they were becoming distant from each other, living their own lives and such rather than being 100% committed to being in a band together.