A BITTER SWEET TRIUMPH
Banned from GCSE music for not playing glockenspiel, within years The Verve star was filling stadiums and selling millions of records. But an acrimonious royalties row marred his most iconic hit… until now
IT WAS the song that wormed its way into the national consciousness. The Verve’s iconic anthem Bitter Sweet Symphony – its video featuring singer Richard Ashcroft walking obliviously into passers-by and over a car – was one of the biggest hits of the Nineties and remains a radio staple to this day. Celebrated and satirised in equal measure, it is a classic. Yet the hit featured a sample from the Andrew Loog Oldham orchestral cover of The Rolling Stones’ 1965 song The Last Time and a deeply acrimonious copyright dispute with a former Stones manager saw Ashcroft lose millions of pounds in royalties.
Allen Klein, dumped by the Stones in 1971, owned the copyright to The Last Time – and The Verve were forced to give 100 per cent of Bitter Sweet Symphony’s royalties to his company, ABKCO. Things got so bad, Ashcroft stopped thinking of his band’s biggest hit as his own.
Speaking exclusively to the Express, Ashcroft admitted: “Bitter Sweet Symphony became an anthem for other people.
“Years ago, I felt it belonged to the people, not to me. In my mind, that’s how I got around what happened with the copyright. I gave that song up, really. But the way it’s come back to me is fantastic.”
Happily, the dispute over the 1997 smash was finally resolved shortly before lockdown and Ashcroft is now able to perform it as his own. To celebrate, he re-recorded Bitter Sweet Symphony for his latest album, Acoustic Hymns Volume 1, comprising new takes on his old songs. Cheekily, now he has the copyright back, he has made his new version sound more like The Rolling Stones than The Verve’s original. The track even features Stones touring pianist Chuck Leavell.
ASHCROFT, 50, explains: “The irony is, my new version sounds more Stones-esque with Chuck playing. But it’s a tip of the hat to the Stones.” The dispute remains so notorious, it has become the subject of a potential Netflix docudrama, much to Ashcroft’s annoyance. He reveals: “I saw an absolutely terrible script Netflix were going to do about Bitter Sweet Symphony. It was an insight into just how far from reality these shows can go.
“It was an absolute piece of garbage. It’s quite scary someone wanted to make it and make people believe it was the reality. I hope it doesn’t happen.”
The song’s saga would be bizarre by most people’s standards, but is typical of the singer’s spectacular life.Alongside No1 singleThe Drugs Don’tWork,TheVerve made four influential albums, including the multi-platinum Urban Hymns, before splitting in 2008.
Acoustic Hymns Volume 1 is Ashcroft’s sixth consecutive Top Five album since going solo. It’s a far cry from going to Wigan comprehensive Up Holland High School, where he met his Verve bandmates.
“It didn’t feel like there was much of a bright future when I grew up,” recalls Ashcroft, whose office worker father
Frank died when the singer was just 11.
“I came from an atmosphere of, ‘Don’t get ideas above your station, lad.’ I was aware of those low expectations from a very early age, which gave me a melancholic, philosophical outlook. It maybe gave me a little bit of an edge as well. From not being allowed to take
GCSE music because I couldn’t play a glockenspiel to selling seven million albums with Urban Hymns was literally 10 years.” Determined to prove doubters wrong, he put on a front by making outrageous statements in interviews, like claiming he could fly. The singer, a boxing fan, now says he was misunderstood, explaining: “When you start a band, you can’t have the attitude that you might get knocked out in the first round. That’s not going to work.
“People understand that vibe of youthful arrogance a little more now. And what I said wasn’t pure arrogance. It was about building the band’s energy up, to try something that was difficult to achieve.”
Despite The Verve’s success, relationships were as turbulent as their close friends in Oasis. And although now estranged from his former bandmates, Ashcroft speaks of them fondly and insists: “None of us would
look back without remembering that we laughed a hell of a lot.There’s always things I could have done differently, but you only realise them with the benefit of hindsight.”
TheVerve were known for their drug intake, and Ashcroft admits: “There are certain things I wish I’d got out of my system a bit quicker, in order to focus on realising I’m a creative person. The age we were, there’s a certain superfluous madness you have to go through anyway – and it just so happened we were in a band at the same time.
“If we’d have been drinking green juice before going on stage back then, it would have been such a huge change of environment, I don’t think we’d have known what to do.” Ashcroft has spoken about battling depression, and believes the Britpop era was far from ideal in its portrayal of mental health. He says: “We went through a very contrived period of angsty rock.
“The Verve had problems as a band, times when touring was difficult, but it just felt normal. Seeing other artists who were corporate give out an energy that was almost suicidal, I found that really distasteful.
“I’ve always loved the energy of people like Bob Marley more, singers who give you hope and redemption. I try for that in my music, because it gives me hope and redemption too.”
That confident attitude continues today in his music. He wore a literally dazzling jacket covered in Swarovski crystals on his recent arena tour. Handmade by the star and his wife – keyboardist Kate Radley – the jacket helped boost his confidence.
He reasons: “You’ve got to try every little thing you can do to help your performance.A heavyweight boxing bout can be over in under a minute, so you’ve got to make the build-up exciting. It’s the same at my shows, doing whatever I can to have people hopefully leaving feeling elevated and astounded.” It’s an attitude that means Ashcroft doesn’t want to tell his life story in a conventional fashion.
Rather than seeking to write an autobiography, he wants to write a musical.
“I genuinely think a musical life story would be amazing,” he smiles. “It’d be less hassle than a book too. The idea of writing a book, no, I’d rather live my life than write about it.
“A musical would be a funny way of doing my life story. I’d rather do it in a funny way, because celebrities take themselves too seriously. I’m amazed people care about celebrities and what they think. If I read it, I think: ‘Oh, get out of it’.”
HE IS serious, however, about the impact of the pandemic, fuming: “I don’t feel a connection to people in the public eye who plainly ignore what we’ve been through. I guess it can be hard to say, ‘We have lived through all of this’.”
Ashcroft, who lives with Kate and son Cassius, 17, while elder son Sonny, 21, is at university, admits: “I know I’m a different kettle of fish to people who were hit hardest in lockdown. I can cope with isolation.
“It would have been easy for me to get in my bunker and say, ‘See you in 2030, hope you’re alright!’ But that’s what motivated me to make my new album, showing my family that things could get better.
“I’m in a privileged position. Earlier in my career, I took four years off, didn’t do anything. But that was my choice. I’m contrary. Once it’s decided for me to take a break, I’ll think, ‘What? I can’t do anything? I don’t think so’. That’s why I was in a studio, making an album with 22 string players in masks.”
Buoyed by the reception to Acoustic Hymns Volume 1, Ashcroft is already planning an album of new songs – and his former copyright nemeses The Rolling Stones have inspired him how to plan the rest of his career.
He supported the Stones in 2018, and enthuses: “Seeing Mick Jagger perform up close is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It was like Cocoon. Mick is 28 years older than me, and he gave me 28 years of energy. I won’t be up to Jagger’s performance levels when I’m his age, but I thought, ‘If he can do that, that’s something to aim for.’”
One of The Verve’s biggest hits was Lucky Man, and Ashcroft concludes: “Music brings us together and I hope I can continue to make music that can achieve that. Like the song says, I’m a lucky man.”
‘I was aware of people’s low expectations for me from an early age. It gave me a melancholic outlook’
●Richard Ashcroft’s new album, Acoustic HymnsVolume 1, is out now on BMG Records