Ashcroft on the internet

"Obviously we are aware of the power of [the internet]," explained Ashcroft. "It's great for us as a jamming band, because we get so much material.

I was saying to Nick earlier on today: 'A lot of our songs, there's about sixteen songs within them.' In the future, yeah, if we could go immediately to the fans, that would be fantastic, and we could release so much more stuff."

"The Thaw Session," Uncut Magazine article by John Mulvey

Just a quick one today: I must admit that, a few months ago, it was hard to imagine Richard Ashcroft ever being involved in music I’d like again. But The Verve reunion has thrown up a few intriguing possibilities, not least the suggestion that they may sidestep all the windy balladry and return to the sort of cosmic orientation that made the band so interesting in the first place.

All this anticipation was kind of confirmed today, when I heard this download that’s turned up on NME.com. It’s called “The Thaw Session”, it seems to be what we can only call a jam, and it goes on for a reassuringly preposterous length of time. Listening to it for the second time right now, I’m reminded of a bunch of very early shows I saw the band play, when Nick McCabe’s levitating, ambulatory guitar lines seemed to goad Ashcroft into ever more cosmic behaviour.

Part of me – I guess I was maybe 23 at the time and a committed indie kid, for my sins – recoiled from the unmediated hippiness of it all. But a lot of me was drawn to it: like the Spiritualized records of the time that Verve (as they were then) had studied so assiduously, it pointed to the expansive possibilities offered by psychedelic music. I suppose I’ve never looked back.

I always liked the early singles best, though, when it felt as if McCabe was in the ascendant, when Ashcroft was impelled to behave like a dislocated spirit more than a belligerent, romantic everyman. So it’s encouraging when “The Thaw Sessions” appears to begin in the middle of a wandering, fragile McCabe riff, then spends a long time happily going nowhere much.

An astral synth hum provides a constant. Jones and Salisbury have a feathery, jazzy flutter to their rhythms, a real loose-limbed feel. And Ashcroft is a ghostly, mystical presence, drifting in and out of the mix, extemporising vaguely – recapturing, most importantly, the subtlety which has eluded him so completely throughout his solo career.

If I could find an analogue in their existing catalogue – or at least from what I remember; it’s been a while – it would be with “A Man Called Sun”, a liquid, quicksilver vibe that’s a million miles away from the plodding, foursquare balladeers they went on to inspire. I’m reminded of Echo And The Bunnymen, and how their reunion saw them suppress the mercurial aspects of their sound in order to conform with prevailing indie mediocrity. The Verve, heroically, seem to be taking a diametrically opposite path. Let’s just hope these jams never solidify into anything so prosaic as songs.

New date for December

The Verve have announced an extra UK date at Nottingham Arena on Tuesday 11th December 07. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, October 26, at 9:30 AM but will be available to subscribers to The Verve's mailing list via pre-sale on Thursday, October 25, at 9.30am.

The Thaw Session

When The Verve got together again for the first time in 9 years, they met in a recording studio in West London. Twenty minutes later, they picked up their instruments and started playing. The result was the Thaw Session. It is 14 minutes of pure Verve. The download will be available for one week only. Download at NME.com.

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The beauty of the jams is that we just don't know where we're gonna go to next," Richard Ashcroft explains of 'The Thaw Session' (the title a reference to 'Deep Freeze', the strung out, experimental secret track on 'Urban Hymns'). "It's exciting, for the four of us to do that kind of thing again. That's the only reason I'm here really, to get the four people together to create this sound. That's the buzz."

"I've been listening to some live Verve stuff," Nick McCabe enthuses. "Si found loads of live versions of things like 'Life's An Ocean', and they were getting more elaborate each night - they piss on the originals from a great height. Just us playing together, bouncing off each other."

"That's how we learnt to play music," Simon Jones continues. "Locked away in a room in Wigan, 16, 17, just jamming. The fact that we did that for 10 or whatever years, that's still there, man, that never disappears. So for this we literally just pressed record and saw what happens. And what happens is The Verve."

"That the beauty of this band - the sum is greater than the parts," says Richard. "I'm sure when Nick's playing his guitars he's buzzing off the drums and bass, or the vocals. Like when we go and listen back, we tend to buzz off somebody else. Unless you're in a slightly self-conscious state of mind and you're totally in on your own instrument. It's more really for us and the fans, who have stuck around all the years and have supported us, and me, and the whole thing as an entity. They're the people, beyond ourselves, that are really gonna appreciate this..."

New Verve songs + reunion tour rehearsals

The names of the new songs are:

Sit And Wonder
Judas
Appalachian Springs
Mona Lisa
Rather Be

They were revealed by Simon Jones in his blog: "Should I give titles away yet?, I don't want to give the game away (already have), but I would like some feedback on all this - now's the time to speak up! What have we missed that you wanna hear? Is it too early to play new stuff? Do we skip the obvious? Do we do the obscure? Let me know!"

"Richard will be joining us later when we've gotten the music together. Gotta say - 'twas the greatest few days playin' old tunes! Started with 'Life's An Ocean' and gotta say it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up! So far we got a shortlist of about 20 odd tunes to pool from for these first gigs, in no particular order we played - 'Make It Till Monday', 'Virtual World','She's A Superstar', 'Gravity Grave','This Is Music', 'A New Decade', 'On Your Own', 'History', 'Stormy Clouds', 'Life's An Ocean', 'A Northern Soul', 'All In The Mind!' (Sounded Amazing), 'B.S.S' ['Bitter Sweat Symphony'], 'Drugs Don't Work', 'Sonnet', 'Lucky Man', 'Come On', 'Weeping Willow', 'Rolling People', 'Velvet Morning', 'Space And Time', 'Man Called Sun', 'Starsail' and new ones."

Jones added that, in addition to the new songs he mentioned, the band had written a lot of new material which they intend to record early next year.

"September was spent in Terry Britten's amazing studio in Richmond. It's brimming with vintage gear, an old E.M.I desk (Pink Floyd -'Dark Side Of The Moon' era) and billions of guitars, old analogue gear, a treasure trove of effects pedals (Nick like a kid in a toy shop!)," he explained.

"The sessions have been pretty amazing, we certainly have an embarrassment of riches where material is concerned! We will need to do a lot of listening over the next few months before we reconvene in the new year to pull it all together! Plenty of hour long jams and killer choons! we just need to get the balance right."

Verve's NME interview

In case you missed the last issue of NME with Verve's first interview since the reunion, here's a second chance. Follow these links to page one, page two, page three, page four, page five, and page six. Enjoy!

Ashcroft speaks about forthcoming live shows

The Verve have spoken about their forthcoming live dates, plus the relationships in the band which have led them to break up twice before.

Frontman Richard Ashcroft spoke of his excitement about playing live again and gave an insight into how he might choose the setlists for the live shows.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music, Ashcroft said: "Sometimes lyrically you feel uncomfortable with stuff you've done in the past, so lyrically it's got to be right for me now and musically for the rest of the guys. "Luckily we wrote some songs that had a timeless quality so we're not too fearful about it. Should be good concerts."

Ashcroft went on to discuss how relationships between the band members had thawed. "We've had a few fights but that's just the way it is," he joked. "Nah - we're fine, we're cool, it's good. "It's all about the healing process, it's about forgiveness and it's about moving on, it's all about love and it's all about peace. No more fights.

When asked about the first band meeting since the split, Ashcroft said: "We just turned up and without going into too much psychology and ripping ourselves to pieces, I think we met and within 20 minutes we were playing music. "I think we're just going to let the music do the talking and I'm very happy with the results so far."

Ashcroft may have had success as a solo artist, since The Verve broke up, but Richard says there's nothing quite like being in a band when it's all going well. "Certain bands have got certain combinations that a bit of magic happens and I'm very lucky to have been part of that before and looking forward to the future and doing it again so it's all very exciting."

Urban Hymns wins Classic Album at the Q Awards 2007

A well deserved award recognizing, what many feel, is the band's magnum opus. 

The awards were held at London's Grosvenor House Hotel on October 8. The full list of winners can be found here.

Richard Ashcroft was there to collect the award and later said this about the new Verve album: "It should be out by Summer, it sounds great. All Verve fans will be happy with the mix, from people who loved Northern Soul, Urban Hymns, it's all there, we're buzzing."

Interview Podcast

In the downloads section you'll find a recent BBC Radio 1 podcast-interview with Richard Ashcroft.

NME: World's first reunion interview, The Verve

They said it would never happen, but after all the drugs, arrests and bust-ups, The fucking Verve are back. Come On! Words: Hamish MacBain Photos: Dean Chalkley
Tuesday June 26 of this year, the morning after the after Glastonbury: NME, like most of Michael Eavis' 177,499 other now-departed guests, is lying in bed, fucking dying. The prospect of doing anything whatsoever, other than a lot of wallowing, seems unlikely, the thought of getting out of bed unthinkable. The phone rings and, not surprisingly, doesn't get answered. It rings again; same thing. A beep signals the arrival of a text and, now thinking it might be something important. we nudge over to the side of the bed to see what it says. The message contains just six words, but on reading them we're feeling higher and more alive than we did even at the peak of our Saturday night back in Pilton, It reads: "THE FUCKING VERVE ARE BACK TOGETHER'"

Given the animosity, the finality with which they imploded eight years ago (more of which in a minute) it seems unthinkable. Only after the discovery that there are six shows announced and that The Verve are actually, at this exact moment. back recording in the studio together do we believe it. The Verve! If mere mention of that name is enough to blast us out of the year's deepest, darkest comedown, that's because that's what this band were always about. See, while in the mid-to-late-'90s Oasis perfectly epitomised your closing-time buzz, The Verve were the ultimate 5-6-7am high (or just as likely .. low). They made dubbed-out symphonies, sometimes string-laden and ;i~i beautiful and euphoric and sensitive, sometimes terrifying and claustrophobic and noisy, always an experience. They conversed, both musically and lyrically, in a hyperbolic, anything-is-possible language that made most sense in the early hours like no group before or since. They had a singer who once claimed, with a straight face, that he could fly. Cynics laughed at him, at his and his band's total and utter belief in the power of music to not just make you feel good, but to take you somewhere else. They prefixed his name with "Mad", But he proved them all wrong.

"We all decided that, rather than meeting for a cup of coffee or a beer or whatever, we should meet in a studio where we can do what we do, Straight away." Now, three months on, we're sat a foot away from Richard Ashcroft. Sunglasses, spliff and self-belief all in place. he's recounting the exact moment his band started making music together again, after hearing him state in 2006 that we'd be "more likely to see all four Beatles onstage together than The Verve".

Thinking about it though, in 1997. on the eve of releasing the single that would see his band permeate the mainstream, he also told NME: "I ain't a solo artist. I was put on this earth to be part of The Verve and make sure that I can take it as far as I possibly can." Maybe it's worth remembering at this point that said song - 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' - hinged around the line, "I'm a million different people from one day to the next', but anyway...

Today he's sat around a kitchen table in a small rehearsal studio in Richmond, Surrey with guitarist Nick McCabe, bass player Simon Jones and drummer Pete Salisbury. They're excitedly enthusing about their '90s-defining supergroup, not in terms of the past, but of the future.

"Just the social aspect would've been enough for me, just for me to be in a room with these three people again." That's Nick McCabe talking; a man who hasn't been interviewed as a member of The Verve - just as none of them have - for nine years, The Nick McCabe who left The Verve to stumble to a close without his astonishing playing in 1998, after breaking his hand in a fight with Richard Ashcroft. "I mean, we did like five days, ages back, and we had a fucking laugh, you know? We just went in there for five days and out of nothing came...'

Richard: "...,an embarrassment of riches."

Note at this point: bands finishing each other's sentences is a good sign. As is their bass player saying things like this: "I literally got out the cab. these three were already here and within 20 minutes we were playing together. It was just... beautiful. I fee1like I've never played as well in my life and hearing Pete after such a long break, he's never played as well in his life. Richard's got some amazing tunes and, for me, when I hear Nick, he plays guitar like no other person on the planet. before or since. Last night. watching him do it. he's got a lot of tracks of guitars, but the way he blends it all... he's got a pure vision before he creates. It's just amazing. That first week we did was just unbelievable."

Pete Salisbury: "You can hear it on the tape, what we did that first three days. Just the excitement of it all..."

Nick: "What we do together, there's no way that I could sit down and come up with it. I play better in this band and I think we all do, don't we?" And like only a true gang could, all the other three members of The Verve respond simultaneously and in a split second. "Yeah!"

If this suddenly reunited Verve now appear the best of friends (and, trust us, sitting in a room with them, they really do), that certainly hasn't always been the case. Even their six initial years together, between their first single (the spiralling, psychedelic epic 'All In The Mind', way back in '92) and their final McCabe-less gig were as full of drug-induced paranoia, ego and madness as they were with awe-inspiringly out-there music. plus, The Verve have already split up and got back together once before. They made it through beautiful. blissed-out debut 'A Storm In Heaven', just. But by '95 and the ecstasy-fuelled classic that was second album 'A Northern Soul', they were pushing themselves to such narcotic limits in pursuit of creating the most powerful of sounds that implosion became inevitable.

"We put much more effort into getting wasted to make music than we ever would now," says Richard of that period. "Some nights if you were in a certain state of mind, It could be pretty scary, d'you know what I mean? It was dark."

On the release of the third, astonishing single from that album, 'History', Nick walked and The Verve was over. Richard started working on what "at one point was gonna be a solo album", but realised he needed "the greatest guitarist of his generation" to play on it.

Nick McCabe re-joined at a late stage in recording what' would become 'Urban Hymns', and with two of the most ubiquitous singles of the '90s ('Bitter Sweet Symphony' and their first Number One 'The Drugs Don't Work'), The Verve announced their return and proceeded to go as stratospheric as they had always threatened to. "I remember hearing on the radio: 'And Number One. . . once again... 'Urban Hymns' by The Verve'''' Richard recounts, "and just thinking, 'WHO IS FUCKING BUYING THIS ALBUM?'"

They played a triumphant homecoming at Haigh Hall in Wigan, with Ashcroft announcing before a 15-minute version of the skyscraping 'Come On' that, "We've been saving it all up for this moment. right here, right now! Eight fucking years! COME ON'" Three months later, Nick left again and, after some festival appearances without him, The Verve split. seemingly for good. Richard Ashcroft released three solo albums (on which Pete played drums), appeared onstage with Coldplay at Live 8 and last we heard was being arrested after refusing to leave The Bridge Centre youth dub in Chippenham, Wiltshire, after stumbling in saying he wanted to work with the kids - "It was stupid of me," he explained recently. "But it was an innocent thing. It was about getting people to write music, write their own songs. Not necessarily be part of a fame school. just at a local youth club:' Nick McCabe did remixes, embarked on a couple of soundtrack projects and made music privately. Simon Jones first put together Verve soundalikes The Shining, then played bass with Irish songstress Cathy Davey. They all got married, all had kids, calmed down, were and are all fairly well-off.

Bad blood aside, they didn't really need to see each other. The Verve seemed as unlikely to reform as those other '90s superstars, The Stone Roses. So what happened? Whose hand was holding the olive branch?

Richard: "Erm..." Nick: "(Motions towards Richard! That would be you, wouldn't it?"

What prompted it?

Richard: "I'm not really gonna go into the details 'cos I can't really remember what I was thinking at that time. It just seemed like something that happened quite quickly, then I kind of voiced it to Pete and..."

Nick: "...we ended up having a nice chat for about three hours on the phone, didn't we?"

Richard: "Yeah, we had a good chat together and.. you know.. eventually I spoke to Si, Si spoke to me and that was that."

There must have been things that needed to be said?

Nick: "I think me and Si sort of arrived at the same point, mentally. We had quite a long time being angry about it. Then, once you've sort of resolved a lot of things in your own mind. you kind of realise that it wasn't such a big deal in the first place. Then you think. 'God, what went on there?' All the stuff that happened since is a little bit of a nonsense really, you know?"

Richard: "It's all bollocks anyway, we're not here to start getting on to the fucking couch. We're The Verve, we've got our lives, we've got our kids, we've got our wives. We've got our situations, but now we're prepared to... you know, there's a lot of sacrifice goes on making a record and doing the do, and we're prepared to do that. To put our loved ones in situations where we perhaps were not with them, because we know that perhaps if we didn't do it right now, we might never do it.'

Simon: "I think everything we needed to say to each other was said on the phone before we met. so that we didn't have to deal with that shit.'

Pete: "There really wasn't that much to say anyway...' But what happened to all that animosity? Richard telling NME in January of last year that he had "some serious problems with one of the guys that ain't gonna be resolved in this life". Or Nick, in his only post-Verve interview in 1999 , saying that "'The Drugs Don't Work' is up there with the best Bon Jovi record".

Richard: "When you've got strong people, strong personalities, which we all are, you're each gonna have your own interpretations of situations. But you have to understand that and get over it. The way the media works, ,. the media desperately needs a fucking story. So what's the story here? When we were doing the photographs earlier, 'Oh, Richard, you stand a little bit closer to Nick' (He's referring to instructions from NME 's art director, at our covershoot earlier today! Is that your story? Are you already getting the story with me and Nick being together?'Oh, slightly back!' (Now laughing) What. are you gonna give us fucking guns so that we can have a little... d'you know what I mean?"

Nick: "It's just a case of perspective is something you don't have at that age. It's not a soap opera. I'm not interested in making myths or debunking myths now. [f other people wanna do that go ahead and do it. [ really don't."

Richard: "Exactly. That's a perfect point. And I reiterate that. I reiterate Nick's point exactly." What of the cynics who think it's all about money?

Nick: "Well, nobody's been waving wads of cash at us."

Simon: "We've not had a penny." You must be aware of the potential, though?

Simon: "It wasn't like, 'Fuck, let's get back together and make a load of money.' That didn't have anything to do with it whatsoever."

"People who are like, 'Ohhh, look at him on the gravy train'," Richard Ashcroft spits, "Give a fuck! Those people weren't there at whatever time it was when I was in the middle playing a Vocoder singing lyrics, buzzing off this sound. None of those bands who get back together, they never make a record. They never put themselves on the line. And if you don't get this, cool. Go and watch whatever you need to watch. Go and join the medieval... put people in the stocks kind of thing [eh? - Giberish Deciphering Ed]. This is hip-hop, man. This is rock'n'roll. but it's hip-hop as well. It's hip-hop philosophy. It's like, 'We're makin' a record, man. We're The fucking Verve!"

The fucking Verve. So often that expletive is inserted into their name by both band and fans, and for good reason. The Verve were always about spectacle, about being stars to stare upwards at. In their first ever NME interview, in 1992, Richard proclaimed: "One of the saddest things that's happened to music is the death of celebration. When [ go to see a band, [ love the barrier between them and the audience. It's fair enough all that anybody-could-doit stuff. but like it when you're looking at this band thinking. 'Fucking hell I'd love to do that but [ don't know whether I could-In the modem MySpace-fixated world, though, those barriers have gone, as anyone who has had their messageboard post replied to by Pete Doherty will confirm.

Vague approval of Arctic Monkeys aside, The Verve have little interest in modem music. "I consciously seek not to find out what's happening," says Richard, "I don't give a fuck what's happening any more." Simon Jones, meanwhile, likes - Joanna Newsom. loads of hip-hop", but tends "to stay away from modem guitar bands, 'cos at the moment it's not really doing anything for me". Nick McCabe is equally uninterested. "I have periods where I have a glut of finding out what's going on," he smiles. "and then I decide I was right not to bother!"

So the question is if they are to be more than a mere celebration of times past, can The Verve matter to this generation as they did to their own?

Simon Jones is quick to respond, "If I was 16 and I heard that," he says, motioning towards the studio, I'd think it was unbelievable. you know? [ don't think that matters. I still feel 21, you know what I mean?"

"The old stuff definitely sounds like the work of young men to me," Nick concludes, "and while I love it for what it is, this one is the best record yet."

Richard: "I don't think you can get around the fact that we have changed. There have always been a lot more hedonists around in the band and I don't think that's really gonna be the case this time. We're still out to do that twist your melon thing, it's just that we can now twist your melon without having to bend our own melons to the point of snapping. It's the Aldous Huxley thing: the door's open now and it's always open..."

So much water under the bridge, so much time past. such a different context for The Verve to find themselves in now. When they first landed, they were like nothing else. and that's why they changed lives, Lots of them. After they split up for the first time, there were doubts when they reformed. but they reached a level of greatness that surpassed even what their singer could have imagined. And today? Well, they've already achieved one impossible this year, in completely vanquishing our Glastonbury comedown. What m happens next is anyone's guess....

• NME, originally appeared 6 October 2007 

December ticket information

From See Tickets:

Legendary indie rock band hit the come-back trail with a series of UK dates.

On sale 10am Friday 5th October: http://www.seetickets.com.

More reunion photos plus extended tour dates

Resulting from a sold out November tour, the band have now announced a second UK Tour for December 2007. The dates and venues are as follows:

Thursday, December 13, London o2 Arena
Saturday, December 15, Glasgow SECC Center
Monday, December 17, Belfast Odyssey Arena
Thursday, December 20, Manchester Central

General sale begins at 10 AM on Friday, October 5. Subscribers to The Verve's mailing list will have access to advance pre-sale tickets which will be available at 9 AM on Thursday, October 4.

About the reunion and upcoming tour, Richard Ashcroft has said "once the talking is over and you have tried to mend a few bridges and you have created some more music, the excitement raises and there are things that I am looking forward to like being in a band again so I can put my guitar down and have a dance on stage, something I have missed over the years.”

THE VERVE BREAK THEIR SILENCE: "THERE'S NO ANGER ANY MORE"

Wigan's finest finally open up about their vicious split and why, after eight long years, they're back in action

The Verve have broken their silence about their surprise reunion. When the band announced a series of shows and plans to record an album back in June, they kept silent, letting their manager do all the talking.

However, the quartet have now spoken to NME - their first interview since reuniting.

The band split last time in 1999 following the release of album 'Urban Hymns' - although they had broken up once before in 1995.

So bitter were relations in the group that frontman Richard Ashcroft suggested a Beatles reunion was more likely than the band ever getting back together.

However, speaking ahead of their shows, which kick of in Glasgow on November 2, guitarist Nick McCabe explained that the anger the band members felt towards each other has well and truly subsided and when frontman Ashcroft approached the rest of the group about a reunion they all felt it was the natural thing to do.

"Well, I think me and Si [Jones] sort of arrived at the same point, mentally really," explained McCabe. "We had quite a long time being angry about it, and then once you've sort of resolved a lot of things in your own mind about it, you kind of realize that it wasn't such a big deal in the first place."

The band are now currently writing songs for a new album, and while they do not have a confirmed release date, frontman Ashcroft suggested fans will have something to look forward to sooner rather than later.

"It's pretty early days, really, to say what the sound is, where we are right now," explained the frontman. "From the bits I've heard so far, it's got elements of all The Verve sounds that people are into. Tunes, jams, jams that'll morph into tunes, you know?"

The band are now focused on their winter tour, with more dates rumored to be announced alter this year.

"I feel like I've never played as well in my life," explained bassist Si Jones of the band's rehearsals so far. 

"And hearing Pete [Salisbury, drummer] after such a long break, he's never played as well in his life either. Richard's playing keyboards and guitar and we're all contributing. That's how we do it, it's very organic. We came in and...Richard's got some tunes, but in terms of jams, we came in and just pressed record and see what happens. And what happens is The Verve."

For an exclusive interview with the band, see this week's NME issue, out October 3.