16 October 2009

Verve celebrated 15th Anniversary of 'A Storm in Heaven'

This just in. It turns out that The Verve, along with their wives and girlfriends, stopped by Sawmills Studios for the 15th anniversary of 'A Storm In Heaven.' Article below, but it isn't solely Verve related, think Law:

The Law are ready to cause chaos

BLAAM! The fire extinguisher comes crashing down and there's a metallic clang as the padlock comes flying off.

A flurry of arms grabs the door and it's quickly wrenched open. Behind it are cases of lager, spirits and wine - enough booze to make even Mötley Crüe feel a bit queasy.

"We're in," grins the ringleader as he lays the extinguisher on the floor and eyes the prize.

This is the tuck shop at the world-famous Sawmills Studio. Some of rock's most notorious wildmen - including The Verve, The Stone Roses and Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant - have taken advantage of its stock to help inspire the recording process.

But in 30 or so years, the storeroom at the remote Cornwall studio has been broken into on just TWO occasions.

The first was in February 1994 when the then unknown Oasis found themselves feeling a bit parched while recording their debut album Definitely Maybe there.

It took another decade and a half for it to happen again. But this time there was no point in calling The Law . . . they were the ones responsible.

"Our management got a huge bar bill," sighs frontman Stuart Purvey. "We drunk the place dry." But the Dundee outfit, who were at the studio recording their debut album A Measure Of Wealth - out this week - admit they quickly came to regret the error of their ways.

"We miscalculated," confides bassist Simon Donald. "The studio was locked up for the weekend and they asked us how how much booze we wanted from the tuck shop before they locked it up.

"But in no time at all, we'd drunk it all, and after we'd run out, we kept thinking about how much there was behind the tuck shop door.

"So we screwed it . . . and ended up drinking until 9am. We thought that, because it was a Sunday, we'd be able to sleep it off. But a couple of hours later, The Verve turned up.

"It was exactly 15 years since they'd recorded their debut album A Storm In Heaven at the studio so they'd dropped in with their wives and girlfriends to reminisce.

"They're one of our favourite bands so we couldn't just lie in our beds - even though we were feeling really hungover."

No strangers to the path of rock'n'roll excess themselves, the Wigan rockers recognised kindred spirits and cheerfully overlooked the tell-tale signs of a weekend-long bender.

Six-string virtuoso Nick McCabe chatted about guitars with his Law counterpart, Stevie Anderson. Meanwhile the Tayside band's drummer Martin Donald talked to Verve sticksman Pete Salisbury, telling him: "On some of our album tracks, we've been using the same snare drum The Stone Roses used to record Fool's Gold. It sounds amazing."

"It was great to meet The Verve," says Stuart. "The trouble was that we were feeling wrecked and really terrible so we probably didn't appreciate it as much as we might've."

Source: News of the World, Article by Tim Barr