the bittersweet history of a rock band poised to make a comeback

Followers of British rock were recently stunned to learn that The Verve was back in the studio, recording new material for the first time in 10 years. Short of a reunion by The Smiths, a return to guitar-based rock by Radiohead or the long-overdue break-up of Oasis, this was the most unlikely of dreams come true: Richard Ashcroft had finally reunited with guitarist and essential creative foil Nick McCabe. A decade ago, they created one of the most enduring songs ever to come out of Britain, but its contentious success drove them apart and destroyed the band just when the world was beginning to listen.

Cast your mind back, now, to summer 1997. You’re rolling down the strip at Hampton Beach, intent on scoring some Blink’s Fry Doe, when Puff Daddy’s “I’ll Be Missing You” invites itself into your ride for the 47th time that day. A touch of the scan button and you happen upon a repeating riff of orchestral strings that makes you suddenly feel like your ’92 Escort is the coolest place on the beach. It builds, slowly. Some spacey sounds are added. Then drums. And then the vocal:
   

    ’Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, this liiiife.
    Tryin’ to make ends meet, you’re a slave to money,
    Then you diiiie.

One of the many ironies of “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was that, while it finally broke The Verve in the United States and became their biggest hit, a legal dispute over the string sample that kicks it off ensured that the band didn’t make a single penny from it. The CliffsNotes version of the story goes something like this:

1962: Gospel group The Staple Singers release Swing Low, which includes the song “This May Be the Last Time,” composed by Roebuck “Pops” Staples.

1964:  The Rolling Stones record the song “The Last Time” which is heavily influenced by “This May Be the Last Time.” Produced by Phil Spector, it tops the charts in the UK. In an interview, Keith Richards admits to borrowing liberally from The Staple Singers.

1966:  The Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra releases a batch of Rolling Stones tunes as swinging instrumentals called “The Rolling Stones Songbook.” The record includes a strings-heavy version of “The Last Time.”
1996:  Thirty years later, Richard Ashcroft acquires permission to use a small sample from the Oldham version of “The Last Time” as the building block for a song on The Verve’s upcoming third album.

1997:  When the album, “Urban Hymns,” is released and “Bitter Sweet Symphony” becomes an international success, the owners of the Rolling Stones’ back catalog immediately sue The Verve. ABKCO, run by the infamous Allen Klein, claims that Ashcroft used “too much” of the original song and demands that The Verve both attribute songwriting credit to Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and surrender 100 percent of the song’s royalties. Richards and Jagger receive a Grammy nomination for the song, and Klein licenses its use to everyone from Nike to Air New Zealand to the Seattle Seahawks.  Adding insult to injury, Limp Bizkit eventually mashes the song with lyrics from Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home,” creating the devil spawn “Bittersweet Home.”

At the time, Richard Ashcroft famously stated that “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was “the best song Jagger and Richards have written in 20 years,” but it was clear he didn’t find the situation funny. The Verve’s passion and hard work was lining ABKCO’s pockets, despite the fact that Jagger and Richards had, themselves, taken credit for the song from Pops Staples. In fact, the short phrase used in “Bitter Sweet Symphony” bore little resemblance to either The Staple Singers’ or Stones’ versions of the song, and it could be argued that the string sample was an original composition by Loog Oldham. Perhaps worse, The Verve was making its name with a song that, on paper, at least, was not theirs.  And they were being seen as soulless pitchmen as a result of advertising deals they had nothing to do with. The legal wrangling and hypocrisy intensified tensions already present within the band. Less than a year later, with “Bitter Sweet Symphony” still playing over radios around the world, The Verve was no more.

Formed in Wigan in 1989, The Verve always aspired to shake free of limitations and break through boundaries. While their self-titled EP (1992) and first album, “A Storm in Heaven” (1994), had been trippy dreamscapes reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins, 1995’s “A Northern Soul” found them hitting their stride with songs that raged for transcendence rather than meandered through the mysteries of the universe. “I stand accused, just like you,” Ashcroft screams on “This Is Music,” “for being born without a silver spoon.” And where guitarist McCabe had laid down psychedelic walls of sound on their first efforts, here he unleashes monster riffs and dangerous atmosphere.

If anything, this fury of existential angst was even more intense on 1997’s “Urban Hymns.” The 13 tracks find Ashcroft “more dead than alive,” looking for God in a phone box and stashing pills under his pillow. The mood would be hard to take were it not for McCabe’s perfected slashes and howling fills—a fact not lost on Ashcroft and the rest of the band, who had originally started the sessions without him. At the same time, gentle tracks like “Sonnet” and “The Drugs Don’t Work” tempered the piss-and-vinegar with sensitivity and even love. “Urban Hymns” was the tribute to human existence that The Verve of “A Storm in Heaven” had been striving for.

Following the band’s breakup, Ashcroft followed the rock tradition of seeking solace in the studio as a solo artist. The result, “Alone with Everybody” (2000), followed the sad and all-too-common formula of the former frontman: bland music, over-production and lyrics turned boringly inward. The soft rock continued on 2002’s “Human Conditions,” and Ashcroft soon found himself being compared to Neil Diamond—minus the popularity and acclaim.

In an echo of the video for “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” the cover shot of Ashcroft’s most recent solo effort, 2006’s “Keys to the World,” features the singer walking toward the camera on a London street. But the differences between the video and the album cover are more striking than the similarities. In the “Bitter Sweet” video, Ashcroft had been full of attitude—fiercely strutting toward the camera, bumping into pedestrians, leaping onto the hoods of cars when they block his way. But on the latest album cover, the image is still. The street is empty and rain-soaked, and Ashcroft is buttoned-up tight in an overcoat, his eyes cast down. If he ever had the keys to the world, he seems to have misplaced them 10 years back.

In the documentary footage included on “The Verve: The Video ’96-’98,” Ashcroft attempts to describe the recording sessions of “Urban Hymns.” “We’re just going up to the top now, ready to let it go like a springing coil and get shot off into the universe. “It’s Pompeii. Krakatoa,” he says. Whether or not these latest sessions will generate that kind of fire in him remains to be seen, but footage of The Verve’s 1998 show at Haigh Hall in their hometown is evidence of how prophetic he can be. In an electrifying performance of “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” he leads 40,000 people through a kind of holy ceremony that The Rolling Stones would probably love to sample, and that would have inspired pride in the heart of Pops Staples himself.