Richard Ashcroft/The Verve (new single and video out/ Ri still hot)

Started by NEON MERCURY, August 04, 2003, 11:58:11 AM

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Pubrick

Quote from: pyramid machine on October 30, 2007, 12:59:06 PM
if anyone could answer pway's question...do so please.

no idea who's producing it, hopefully timbaland!

anyway, very much enjoyed that jam session.

they're clearly not here to "get on the fucking couch"

under the paving stones.

mogwai

The Verve return with barnstorming show in Glasgow

But how many new songs are there...

The Verve played their first show as an original four-piece in almost a decade tonight (November 2) with a much anticipated reunion gig in Glasgow.

During a 90 minute performance, the band, who reunited in June, stormed through a 17 song set that included favourites such as 'Bittersweet Symphony' and 'The Drugs Don't Work'. But there were some audible boos at the end of the Carling Academy show when, after a three song encore, fan favourite 'History' wasn't dusted down.

There were no support acts tonight. Instead DJs played ahead of the hugely in-demand show - tickets were trading on ebay for £250 a pair. As the band got ready to come to stage there were snippets of moments that may have come from the recently unveiled 'Thaw Sessions', alongside a screen flashing images that included Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Reginald Perrin.

The show started with a classic Verve moment. As the band strode onto stage shamanic frontman Richard Ashcroft moved to the mic and announced "this is music" to cacophonous yelps - introuducing their classic of the same name.

It was a night that saw little said from the stage. At one point Ashcroft announced simply that it was great to be back in Glasgow after nine years, though physically The Verve looked to have changed little. And any thoughts that animosity lingered between Ashcroft and his foil Nick McCabe were extinguished early on when, in a simple gesture, the frontman acknowledged his guitarist during a solo on the first track.

The band also unveiled one new song. Seven tracks into the gig Ashcroft announced "we're going to try somthing new here" and, apologising for reading from a sheet of paper, he and the band worked through an untitled track that was distinguished mostly by a rumbling bass. The song owed more to Gorillaz and The Stone Roses second album than The Verve's rich back catalogue. Lyrics included: "I should have warned her/I'd fall to pieces."

The Verve finished their set with a massive 'Bittersweet Symphony' before returning for a three track encore. They play the same venue tomorrow (November 3).

The set-list in full was:
'This is Music'
'Sonnet'
'The Sun, The Sea'
'Weeping Willow'
'Life's An Ocean'
'Space And Time'
New Song, Untitled
'Velvet Morning'
''
'Catching the Butterfly'
'A Northern Soul'
'The Drugs Don't Work'
'The Rolling People'
'Bittersweet Symphony'

Encore
'Man Called Sun'
'Lucky Man'
'Come On'

MacGuffin

'Music's a personal crusade, very much within his soul. But he's reaching out for something else - what he can be'
Back with the Verve after almost a decade, the singer still seeks the bigger truths
Source: Dave Simpson;The Guardian

Richard Ashcroft, who is fronting the Verve for the first time in nine years, embodies the notion that if you aim for the stars you'll at least hit the ceiling. Born in Wigan into a working-class family, he has hauled himself to the top of rock through herculean self-belief. The Verve's 1997 Urban Hymns was the fifth fastest selling British album ever on release and it remains one of the landmark 90s British rock albums.

Combining gritty urban realism with music that touches on the elemental, he acts as a lightning conductor for the hopes and fears of his band's huge audience, his emotional delivery turning scarring songs about the human condition - "You're a slave to money and you die," he sings in Bitter Sweet Symphony - into something celebratory and uplifting.

Noel Gallagher wrote Oasis's song Cast No Shadow about him, and Coldplay's Chris Martin has called him "the best singer in the world".

But all this has been achieved at some cost. Ashcroft has endured enormous tension; he has smashed up hotels, shattered relationships, had two band splits and tried fearsome experiments with mainly psychedelic drugs (taking ecstasy every day for three weeks recording the Verve's coming-of-age second album, A Northern Soul).

But Ashcroft is not easily shaken, whether performing with a drip hanging from his arm (following a collapse) or suggesting that "you have to go through these things to taste the extremes". When his girlfriend of six years ran off with his childhood friend, he poured his anguish into the Verve's 1995 chart breakthrough, History. But the 36-year-old has spent his life turning drawbacks into positives and refusing to accept that human beings have limits.

So thin as a child that a doctor told him he'd probably have a cold for the rest of his life, he threw himself into his first obsession, football, with the ferocity he would later bring to music - breaking the ankle of future Verve drummer Peter Salisbury and his own nose several times playing for pub sides and Wigan Athletic youth team.

Seeing the Stone Roses in 1989 convinced him that a lad could aspire to something other than the local baked bean factory and at 18 he formed the Verve with schoolfriends Salisbury, Simon Jones and Nick McCabe.

A desire to confront bigger truths may have been triggered early on for Ashcroft; his father died from a blood clot to the brain when he was 11, a defining moment for him. "Other kids would be playing with their Action Man and I was questioning life and society," he said.

Tim Vigon, the band's PR in the 90s, suggests this event, addressed in the Verve's 1997 number one, The Drugs Don't Work, fed Ashcroft's confidence.

"The cover of History read 'Life is not a rehearsal'," Vigon says. "It wasn't an empty phrase. They lived like that. I've never met a bunch of people who were so definite that it was going to happen for them. Richard embodied that and he brought everybody with him. His focus was unstoppable. If you've lost someone you lose your inhibitions. Once you realise that the worst can happen, you might as well just fuckin' have it."

Miles Leonard, Parlophone Records MD but formerly a Virgin talent scout, remembers that when he saw the Verve playing to three people, Ashcroft was treating the tiny backroom venue as if it were Wembley stadium. "Music's a personal crusade for him," Leonard says. "It is very much within his soul. He sings from the heart. There's a lot of truth and honesty but he's reaching out for something else, what he can be, and the combination is very powerful."

Ashcroft carries some influence from his stepfather, a Rosicrucian into enlightenment and telekinesis, but his own quest for transcendence has landed him in trouble. The music press dubbed him "Mad Richard" after he said he could fly, but Leonard says he meant in the music. "But what a thing to aspire to."

Conversely, Ashcroft has been known to walk offstage or away from the band when "the feeling" is absent. However, without the Verve around him, he has seemed less self-assured. He named his first solo album Alone With Everybody. Subsequent fairly successful records, marriage to musician Kate Radley and children did not tame his restless soul. Never a materialist, he has been stung by accusations that he became a "rock star buying a big house" and said "80% of everything I've experienced since the Verve has been depressing".

Last year, he revealed he had been prescribed Prozac and had been arrested after going into a Wiltshire youth centre and demanding to work there. Ashcroft suggests he has always suffered from depression but can dispel it through creativity.

The band's long-standing manager, Jazz Summers, agrees: "There's a chemistry in that band that's very special and when you see him unleashed with those three people it's amazing. Richard Ashcroft is an enormous talent - as a musician, songwriter and spiritual shaman. He touches people."

The CV

Born: Wigan, Lancashire, in 1971, the son of an office clerk and a hairdresser. Married to Kate Radley, former keyboard player with Spiritualized. Two children.

Education: Winstanley college, Wigan, but at 18 walked out of an A-level exam saying he was going to be a musician.

Career: Lead singer of the Verve 1989-99, Solo artist 2000 until present. Playing with the Verve again from this year.

Music: Verve albums include Verve (EP, 1992), A Storm in Heaven (1993), A Northern Soul (1995), Urban Hymns (1997).

Singles include All in the Mind (1992), Bittersweet Symphony (1997), The Drugs Don't Work (1997), Lucky Man (1997).

Solo albums include Keys to the World (2006).

Solo singles include A Song For Lovers (2000), Money To Burn (2000), C'mon People (2000).
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

mogwai

The Verve are aiming for 'spectacular' return

Albums Of 2008: band reveal all about forthcoming record

The Verve have spoken about their forthcoming new album, which they are putting the finishing touches to now.

Speaking to NME.COM, bassist Simon Jones explained that he hoped the results would be "spectacular" on the belated follow-up to 1997's 'Urban Hymns'.

"There's 'Sit And Wonder' – that's the one we were doing at the gigs," Jones explained.

"That was born out of a 25-minute jam, and we just edited it down into a song. That's kind of the method we've always used, ever since the early days. We all take away the tracks, and make a note of all the bits that are good, then just put them together.

He added: "Then there's 'Appalachian Springs', which is a song of Richard (Ashcroft, lead singer)'s, but one where there's just three chords going round and round so we can still jam through it as a band. And 'Mona Lisa', that's a much more strictly written, Richard-y type thing."

These more structured Ashcroft moments will be balanced out by the likes of 'Judas' – a song born out of a full band jam, with Nick McCabe's unique guitar playing leading the way.

Jones described 'Rather Be', a song set for the album, as having "a string line looping around three chords all the way through – kind of like 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' did, although it's not really anything like that".

He said: "It needs arranging, but that's a pretty strong one. It's very vocally led that one, with loads of great intertwining vocal lines, kind of making a chorus even though the chords haven't changed. Richard's a bit of a master at that."

The band, who are recording their first record in over a decade at the at State of The Ark studios in Richmond, Surrey, are aiming to get the record out towards the end of the spring, in time for the inevitable festival headline slots this summer.

"For us now it's just a case of getting the balance between Richard's songs and the more jam-based songs," the bass player concluded. "If we can get the balance right, then it's gonna be a spectacular record, without a shadow of a doubt."

MacGuffin

The Verve land in US for first time in 10 years

The Verve played their first concert in the U.S. in ten years, taking the stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival.

The psychedelic Brit Pop group played for about an hour as one of the main attractions on Friday, the first day of the three-day Southern California festival. The Verve reunited last summer, but had previously only played a handful of sold-out concerts in Europe.

On Friday, frontman Richard Ashcroft thanked "the hardcore" for coming out to see them. The band was sure to play its biggest hit, "Bittersweet Symphony," but Ashcroft made it clear they weren't only on a nostalgia trip.

While introducing one of the Verve's new songs, "Sit and Wonder," Ashcroft noted that many reformed bands don't write new music.

"But that's what we're all about," said Ashcroft. "So let's make some music."

The Verve, who plan to put out a new album this year, formed in 1989.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Pwaybloe

Here's a couple of new songs they've performed live the last few weeks.  Video isn't that great, but the audio is better than most.

Love Is Noise

Sit And Wonder

They're both cobbled from Ashcroft's solo music and a new Verve hybrid.  They're definitely looking forward rather than back. 

MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Redlum

\"I wanted to make a film for kids, something that would present them with a kind of elementary morality. Because nowadays nobody bothers to tell those kids, \'Hey, this is right and this is wrong\'.\"
  -  George Lucas

Pwaybloe


mogwai

i'm digging a bit of the verve's performance at the t at the park festival in scotland. some of the highlights is "the drugs don't work" with a beautiful extended outro that i've been playing over and over.

check it out here:
http://imfeelingsupersonic.blogspot.com

Pwaybloe

It's leaked.  So, who's going to download it?

Well, you better not!

Stefen

Did the whole thing leak or just a few songs? I hate downloading half leaks. They're usually mutt rips with one song coming from some radio station in Bristol, and another song coming from a station in Detroit, and another song some kid recorded with a tape recorder off his stereos speakers and they're all in different bitrates. I'll wait till it's up on What or Waffles.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

cinemanarchist

Quote from: Stefen on August 13, 2008, 09:57:10 AM
Did the whole thing leak or just a few songs? I hate downloading half leaks. They're usually mutt rips with one song coming from some radio station in Bristol, and another song coming from a station in Detroit, and another song some kid recorded with a tape recorder off his stereos speakers and they're all in different bitrates. I'll wait till it's up on What or Waffles.

The whole thing leaked and the version I'm listening to sounds polished and complete.
My assholeness knows no bounds.

Stefen

Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

cinemanarchist

Quote from: Stefen on August 13, 2008, 10:51:33 AM
Werd. I'll have to check it out when I get home.

HOLD THE PHONE. At least a couple tracks cut off before they are finished. Sound quality is still top notch and there are even bonus track but if you want the total experience you may have to wait a day or two. Sorry to get your hopes up there. I'm still enjoying it though.
My assholeness knows no bounds.