How The Verve Became Legends Long Before “Bitter Sweet Symphony”

The Verve is most known for “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, but two studio albums and a break-up preceded the timeless anthem. You’ll see below why the title of The Verve’s biggest hit in many ways sums up the story of how Richard Ashcroft, Nick McCabe, Simon Jones, and Peter Salisbury were already an influential band long before “Bitter Sweet Symphony” became one of the decade’s biggest songs.

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A lot happened before The Verve released Urban Hymns in 1997. Before a highly publicized legal dispute with The Rolling Stones and before Ashcroft strolled down a busy London sidewalk in the music video for “Bitter Sweet Symphony”. The band was destined to be legends long before the colossal single.

“Star Sail” from ‘A Storm In Heaven’ (1993)

The Verve’s debut album opens with Nick McCabe’s celestial guitar noise. Soon, the rhythm section of bassist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury enters to move McCabe’s space rock with a deep groove. Richard Ashcroft led his band like a shoegaze shaman, which earned him the nickname “Mad Richard.” Much hype surrounded The Verve in 1993, and before Oasis released its first single “Supersonic’, the Gallagher brothers were The Verve’s opening act.

“Blue” from ‘A Storm In Heaven’ (1993)

Urban Hymns topped the charts because of “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, “Lucky Man”, and “The Drugs Don’t Work”. However, casual fans drawn in by the ballads may not have been prepared for psychedelic jams like “Catching The Butterfly” or the bombast of “Rolling People”. But Ashcroft wouldn’t have written a song about drugs if he hadn’t used them to escape. The Verve existed outside of Britpop and offered a connection point between early 90s shoegaze and the indie rock scene that led to Oasis and Blur. “Blue” is Britpop escaping the chrysalis of shoegaze.

“This Is Music” from ‘A Northern Soul’ (1995)

If you started a rock band in Britain in the 90s, you needed to exit the garage with the kind of self-confidence akin to Muhammad Ali’s bravado. And Ashcroft’s boldness rivaled even Liam Gallagher’s. Calling a song “This Is Music” is how you do it. It opens with Jones’s distorted bass notes and quickly moves into a psychedelic jam built for Glastonbury. The Verve came from Wigan, and Ashcroft makes a declaration from the band’s hometown: “I stand accused just like you / For being born without a silver spoon / Stood at the top of a hill / Over my town I was found.”

“History” from ‘A Northern Soul’ (1995)

The Verve already broke up (the first time) when “History” landed on the charts. Ashcroft wrote a song using lines from William Blake’s poem “London”, and it foreshadowed the orchestrated anthem that soon changed his life. This track is crucial to The Verve because it gave Ashcroft a new vision as a songwriter. And its arrival alongside the band’s self-destruction showed how Ashcroft and company were always tumultuous. But it’s hard to write a symphony without a certain degree of bittersweetness.

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