The Verve – Band that helped define the 90s.

Lunch with The Verve today – recorded at the 2008 Glastonbury Festival on June 29, 2008 by BBC 6 Music.

The Verve will most likely go down as one of the truly defining bands of the 90s. Initially embracing Shoegaze but drifting into Indie to become one of the major influences on what eventually became known as Britpop.

The band’s commercial breakthrough was the 1997 album Urban Hymns, one of the best-selling albums in UK history. It features the hit singles “Bitter Sweet Symphony“, “The Drugs Don’t Work” and “Lucky Man“. In 1998, the band won two Brit Awards, winning Best British Group, appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in March, and in February 1999, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song.

Soon after their commercial peak, the band broke up in 1999, citing internal conflicts. According to Billboard magazine, “the group’s rise was the culmination of a long, arduous journey that began at the dawn of the decade and went on to encompass a major breakup, multiple lawsuits, and an extensive diet of narcotics”. During an eight-year split, Ashcroft dismissed talk of a reunion, saying: “You’re more likely to get all four Beatles on stage.” The band reunited in 2007 and released Forth in 2008, which spawned the single “Love Is Noise“. Amid revived tensions, the band broke up for the third time in 2009.

In August 2009, The Guardian speculated that The Verve had broken up for a third time, with Jones and McCabe no longer on speaking terms with Ashcroft as they felt he was using the reunion as a vehicle to get his solo career back on track. Being asked about the supposed split, Ashcroft told The Daily Telegraph, “I can confirm we did what we set out to do […] Right now there are no plans to be doing anything in the near future.”

Among the reasons for the breakup, it is known that in August 2008, McCabe was ordered to quit drinking by the band’s management team, however, the damage had been done to the band’s ambient and it was at a point of no return.

McCabe, Jones, Rossi (who served as a touring musician of the Verve) and the drummer Mig Schillace started a new band, The Black Ships, who later changed their name to Black Submarine. In September 2017, McCabe said he had not spoken to Ashcroft for over a year and that a possible reunion would be unlikely in the foreseeable future. That year also saw the release of the 20th-anniversary version of Urban Hymns.

In April 2019, the Rolling Stones agreed to return the royalties and songwriting credits for “Bitter Sweet Symphony” to Ashcroft. Ashcroft announced the agreement in May, when he received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors. He said it was a “kind and magnanimous” move, and said: “I never had a personal beef with the Stones. They’ve always been the greatest rock and roll band in the world. It’s been a fantastic development. It’s life-affirming in a way.”

For a reminder – crank it up and dive back in time, just for an hour.