60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Bitter Sweet Symphony”—The Verve

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Rob looks back at The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” and the band's legal battles over royalties owed to The Rolling Stones. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Niko Stratis Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I think a lot about the scene from Sean of the Dead, the zombie comedy from 2004, directed by Edgar Wright, where two zombies are menacing our doofy heroes, played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Simon Pegg plays Sean. They're standing in Sean's backyard, and two zombies are approaching,

and for some reason, Sean's record collection is sitting there in a box, and so our doofy heroes start throwing vinyl records like Frisbees at the zombies. in a feudal attempt to decapitate them. But first, they argue about which albums Sean can bear to part with. Purple rain.

No. Sign of the time. Definitely not. The Batman Santa. First of all, feudal is this week's Rob's historically mispronounced word of the week, brought to you by Coldstone Creamery. I am Rob.

I have mispronounced that word as futile. Most of the time for most of my life. Coldstone is not actually sponsoring Rob's historically mispronounce word of the week. I just want them to. I want them to bring back the lemon pie flavor and send me 200 quarts of it, not the love it size, actual quartz, along with a giant freezer at Coldstone. I felt seen by the Sean of the Dead, crate digging, vinyl zombie decapitation

gag. That is how I would behave in that circumstance. How does Prince relate to this situation? People talk about feeling seen by a movie or TV show or whatever, recognizing yourself on screen and feeling validated by seeing yourself on screen. And often, for those of you who are not awkward, heterosexual white men with podcasts, that's a necessary and long overdue and truly beautiful experience to see yourself and be seen in turn. But yeah, not for me, dude. I do not enjoy being seen. And furthermore, nobody else seems to enjoy seeing me be seen.

The High Fidelity Movie from 2000, based on the 1995 Nick Hornby Book and starring John Cusack. as a doofy rom-com hero who owns a record store and sucks. Basically, he's hapless and insensitive and emotionally studded. He's got way too many records in his shoddy apartment. He regales everyone with a ranked litany of ex-girlfriend catastrophes that are entirely his fault. Multiple people at the time told me that John Cusack and high fidelity reminded them of me. This is like 20 years before I got a podcast and started regaling people with my romantic catastrophes. And I'd say, oh, that's because

John Cusack's character is named Rob and I'm Rob. You just think that because we're both named Rob. And they're like, no, that's not why. What really matters is what you like. Not what you are like. Books, records, films, these things matter. Call me shallow.

It's the fucking truth. The girl I was dating when high fidelity came out hated that movie and I did not realize why she hated it. until we were no longer dating. At that point, I had a revelation.

So Sean of the Dead, right? They chuck a dire straits record at the zombies. Nothing happens. And so then it's back to the crates. Oh, Stone Moses. No. I like it. Ah.

Chardot. That's Liz's. Yeah, but she did dump you? Sean is also emotionally stunted and romantically hapless. This movie ends with him playing video games in a shed with a literal zombie. I can't relate. Don't throw Shade records at anybody live or undead under any circumstances. So Sean of the Dead is set in London and overall is an extremely British movie.

I don't need to say that, but I'm saying it. How you can tell that it's extremely British is that, yeah, that was a Stone Roses joke. The Stone Roses from South Manchester, the biggest and best rock band in England, if not the world, for about a year, a couple years. arena rock vibes, bluesy vibes, hippie vibes, baggy vibes. Baggy is my least favorite subgenre name in rock and roll history. I don't want to get into it. The Stone Roses had a lot going on. Sitting there in a theater, not in England in 2004, watching this movie as a young,

doofy rock critic, I had very little personal Stone Roses experience, but I knew what I needed to know to get this joke. The Stone Roses have two albums. Their first album, called The Stone Roses from 1989, is a beloved, immersive, grandiose, epic-defining, British rock classic. It turns out I've mispronounced that word, E-P-O-C-H as epoch for 20 years. Shit, I should have saved that for next week. And their second album, called Second Coming from 1994 is a belated, bloated, bloated, indulgent, excessively bluesy, total letdown. not a catastrophe per se.

I like it, but Chinese democracy vibes, perhaps. They blew it. They blew their deadline to achieve true immortality. I knew this about the stone roses, but I didn't personally feel it. I just knew that other people felt it and

adjusted my personal opinion. Accordingly, rock critics work like that sometimes. So about 20 years pass. And then, like 48 hours ago, I felt it. The Stone Roses, their beloved debut album, begins with 40 seconds of pointless, indulgent, vaguely industrial noise that is absolutely necessary if you have any experience with epic defining British rock bands. You've got to establish a mood. Think of it as standing in line to declare your ego to customs and quite a long line to declare your quite large ego to customs. Plus you can't just hit people with a baseline that rad right off the rip or they'll pass out like those goats that just faint out of nowhere.

Gary Moundfield on bass, aka Manny, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Incredible baseline. I am physically resisting the urge to fire up my bass here and poorly replicate this baseline to the delight of nobody. This is right at the 90 second mark. This song is finally gesturing vaguely in the direction. of at least trying to achieve escape velocity. We got Alan John Wren, aka Renny on drums. We got semi-bloozy guitar god John Squire on guitar.

This song finally fully hit me 30-odd years after it came out like 48 hours ago while I was driving my kids to a water park. That is not information you require. But if we start cutting out the information here that you don't require, we're just going to be left with the baseline of this song for 45 minutes. Don't go getting any ideas. You can hear his cheekbones. Yes, the first three words out of this guy's mouth,

and you just think this guy's got incredible cheekbones. Just whoop, just the perfect rock star face, the smoldering, pointy glower of geometrically precise rock stardom incarnate, handsome and severe and luscious and impassive and contemptuant. slouchy until you put a microphone in front of him. Whereupon he rises up to his full height of 10 stories tall, and his cheekbones get even pointier, and he starts softly singing about how he's possessed by the devil,

but it's chill. Ian Brown, everybody, frontman, stone roses. This whole song is basically that line a bunch of times, and then the chorus a bunch of times. I keep forgetting to mention that this song is called, I want to be adored. We should be on top of the pops, announced Ian Brown,

glowering rock star. I like seeing our record go up and Kylie Minogue and Phil Collins go down. There's no point moaning about them. You've got to get in there and stamp them out because I believe that we have more worth. This declaration is recounted in the book Britpop, Cool Britannia and the spectacular demise of English rock by John Harris. I love that book.

The Stone Roses appear very early in this book as an essential towering inspiration for the next decade of luscious and domineering English rock. And then the Stone Roses disappear for most of the rest of the book. A truly great band's demise must be a spectacular, nay, more spectacular than that band's assent. And the first Stone Rose's record is quite spectacular. I've known this for 30 years and I felt it for a few days now. We have discussed before in this space the concept of the Brit pop she, the very specific and deified and reviled and abstracted she to whom many great British rock songs refer. She loves you.

She's a rainbow. She's got everything. There she goes. She's so high. She's electric. She's a lady. She's loose. She's dead.

She's not dead. She's in fashion. etc. Ian Brown sneaks his personal mission statement into a song called She Bangs the Drums. The next song in this record is called Waterfall. It's about how she's a waterfall. The past belongs to the stone roses. The future, not so much. They're arguably the biggest band in the world for a year or two. Their song Fools Gold, the perfect nexus of colossal guitar god music and euphoric dance music. great song put on your baggiest trousers and listen to fools gold today then the band disappeared for like five years label woes general narcissism and malaise you know the deal the second stone roses record second coming finally comes out in

1994 several new and quite popular english rock bands i could mention have already filled the vacuum the stone roses left behind this record second coming never sucks outright even if the guitar god aspect is a little tighter-panced This time, if you get me, the jams get a little blues hammery. There's a song called Driving South. Driving South to Where? Brighton, Bournemouth, Penzance. Those are just cities in Southern England. I'm looking at a map of England.

The first song on Second Coming is called Breaking Into Heaven. It's more than 11 minutes long. Here's what's happening 30 seconds into it. Getting their egos through customs is going to take forever this time. Let's fast forward to three minutes in. Certainly they'll have it sorted out by then. Nope. The song itself takes four minutes and 35 seconds to kick in.

They break into heaven in slow motion. And once this album's finally out, the Stone Roses finally flame all the way out. They're supposed to play the Glastonbury Festival in 1995. They bail at the last minute, and they are replaced on the bill by Pulp, who do a triumphant and career-making rendition of their hit song, common people, which we've discussed in this venue. Brit Pop is taken over. Blur, pulp, Elastica, Suede, Supergrass, etc. I don't think I'm missing any heavy hitters there.

Put it this way. The album you make when you want to be adored is usually somewhere between five times and 50 times better and sharper and more focused and ultimately more adored than the album you make when you are adored. Once you're adored, you're just like everybody else. You try to make ends meet. You're a slave to the money and you die. None of the stone roses are dead.

I'm being melodramatic. They're fine. They reunite every so often. They played Coachella. Young people had no idea who they were. It was hilarious. Real quick, let's use an even more famous example. And let's play out the I want to be adored to, well, I'm adored.

Now what? Ark in reverse. Oh, what's that I hear? It's a bird. It's a plane. It's the dudes and oasis emerging from a helicopter. at the beginning of the video for Do You Know What I Mean?

Right, Oasis, sorry, I forgot Oasis. You got to watch the video to get the helicopter. Of course, though the Do You Know What I Mean video does chop off the full minute of random pompous noise that precedes anything happening in this song, which opens the third Oasis album, Be Here Now, released in 1997 and Redalant with mega-indulgent Second Coming Energy. and essentially described in that book about Brit Pop as literally the death of Brit Pop.

Oasis are at this point thoroughly adored. The Gallagher Brothers at all had famously emerged from helicopters before playing to 250,000 people over two days at two hilariously gargantuan outdoor shows in Nebworth, England, in 1996. They've done a couple full-length documentaries basically about those Nebworth shows, and Oasis have more or less conceded that probably for posterity's sake, they should have broken up either right after those shows or better yet right before. But it's hard to break up at the very peak of your adoration. Unwisely, but understandably, Oasis plowed on. They made like five, six, ten, 20 more albums of diminishing returns. I forget exactly how many. They tried to make ends meet. They were slaves to the money and they died. Nobody's dead in Oasis.

either. I hope the Gallagher brothers reconcile in my lifetime. They don't have to play music together ever again. They could just do interviews together. Wouldn't that be fun? Oasis, of course, engineered a more elaborate and protracted version of the I want to be adored to oops, I'm way too adored

arc. Technically their first album definitely maybe from 1994 was their I want to be adored album and plenty of people adored it. But then in 1995 they put out their second album, What's the Story in Morning Glory, which was their no serious we want to be like world historically super adored album and indeed oasis became world historically super adored because that's the album with wonder wall which we have discussed don't look back in anger champagne supernova some might say that's a great song fantastic album morning glory obviously you get me in the right mood though you catch me at my most ruminative and melodramatic and i'll tell you the best song on what's the story morning glory is called cast

no shadow. I think no matter what mood I'm in, I'll tell you that this is Liam Gallagher's best vocal performance, his tenderest vocal performance. Peak era, Liam Gallagher does not strike me as a guy who necessarily knows or cares about who or what he's singing about, but he seems to care this time. There's a genuine tenderness to his voice. Cast No Shadow is written, of course, by Liam's brother and arch enemy Noel Gallagher, these lyrics as well are just a touch more empathetic than Noel's usual.

So who is this poor fellow walking along the open road of love and life, surviving if you can, and eliciting all this tenderness and empathy from the infamously, galactically callous Gallagher brothers right there in the liner notes, the CD booklet to What's the Story of Morning Glory? it says, cast no shadow is dedicated to the genius of Richard Ashcroft. That's Richard Ashcroft, frontman, the Verve. This is the only song on this record, dedicated to anybody. Oasis had played some shows with the Verve, roundabouts, 1993. Oasis had opened for the Verve at these shows.

This is before even definitely maybe came out. Oasis won't be opening for anybody for very much longer. Quick word of advice for all you rock stars out there, don't be dicks to your opening acts, lest they blow right by you and get super bonkers famous and have the opportunity to somehow avenge your dickishness toward them with their own superpowered dickishness toward you, perhaps enacted while they are regaling a quarter million people in Nebworth.

The verve, I am relieved to report, were not dicks. to pre-empirate oasis. Richard Ashcroft in particular clearly made quite an impression. Noel Gallagher talking to Select Magazine about this song and about Richard, he said, he always seemed to me to not be very happy about what was going on around him, almost trying too hard. That's why it goes, he was bound with the weight of all the words he tried to say. I always felt he was born at the wrong place and in the wrong place, and he was always trying to say the right things, but they came out wrong. End quote.

The verve in 1995, when morning glory is out and oasis are arguably the biggest rock band in the world, the verve have put out two full-length albums and a few EPs, and they got a few legit jams, but those jams have not exactly set the world aflame. The genius of Richard Ashcroft is not yet evident to everyone. On the Oasis Reddit page, somebody asked once what was going on in Richard's life that inspired Noel to write a song, this downbeat. And one guy responded by mentioning that Richard had a dark past. He'd just gone through a big breakup.

The Verve weren't a commercial success yet. A couple other things. And then the guy writes, sorry, I'm slightly high and drunk myself. So I'm not sure if that was an answer to you question, but whatever, end quote. That's my favorite Reddit comment in a long time. Noel Gallagher's message on Cast No Shadow is, I want him to be adored. But the danger amidst the disarming loveliness of this song was that Richard might not ever write a song better or more beloved than the one somebody else wrote about him. But in 1997, amid the bloat of helicopter era oasis,

Amid the spectacular demise of Britpop, and amid the continued eternal devaluation of rock bands everywhere, nobody cast a longer shadow than Richard Ashcroft, or a brighter one. Until 2019, technically, and legally, and financially, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were listed as the songwriters on this song, but they knew the truth. And so did Richard Ashcroft, and so did you, and so did everybody else. And anyway, the cosmic injustice of Richard Ashcroft not officially getting the credit for the perfect song he wrote only added to the bitter sweetness and deepened the shadow. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 68th episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s. And a while back, we tweeted out a poll where you could vote for the song in an upcoming episode.

And the options included, you can't touch this. Fucking run. Tub thumping. Shoop. Only want to be with you. Firestarter. It was a good day. Stay.

I miss you. And live in La Vida Loca. None of those songs won the poll. No, this song won. Bitter-sweet Symphony by the Verve. Three words, Bitter-sweet Symphony from their third album, from 1997, called Urban Hems.

So the town of Wigan in greater Manchester, in northwest England, is known for three things, three crucial exports from Wigan in ascending order of importance. Number three, Uncle Joe's mint balls. It's a type of candy. Look it up. Suitable for vegans. Number two, the Heinz baked bean factory, which is, in fact, the largest baked bean factory. in the world. It's five times the size of Wimbledon. Okay? Three million tins of baked beans produced a day in Wiggin. That's from Business Insider. That can't possibly be right. Three million tens a day.

How many fucking beans are in a tin of beans? One bean? That's too many beans. That is an unsettling quantity of baked beans, in my opinion. Let's go live now to the audio feed from the gigantic baked bean factory in Wiggin. I'm sorry, I misspoke. I do not in fact have access to audio from the Heinz baked bean factory in Wiggin. That was from the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles. Wow. That is immature. That's not even the first time I have played that clip on this show. I'm very sorry. The combination of the. baked bean factory as big as five Wimbledons and Uncle Joe's mint balls established in 1898. I have been thoroughly derailed by these two pieces of information.

I am a shell of a man. I just read the newspaper headline, Uncle Joe to make history with two billionth mint ball, right? And that was 2011. Uncle Joe's cranking out 35 million mint balls a year, also an unsettling quantity. Here's a quote for you. Despite their name, the mints are not truly spherical, but oblate spheroids, end quote. There are like 10 sentences total in this Wikipedia entry, and that is one of them. Let me answer your next question.

The Heinz baked bean factory and the Uncle Joe's Mint Balls Factory, the slogan for Uncle Joe's Mint Balls is keep you all aglow. These two physical locations are three miles away from each other. in Wiggins. Sorry, 4.4 kilometers. If you take Dorning Street to Frog Lane to Woodhouse Lane to Challenge Way to Walt You House Lane to Kit Green, there is a business called Ninja Warrior UK Adventure roughly halfway, equidistant as the crow flies from the colossal baked bean factory and Uncle Joe's mint balls. And I want to know what it smells like there. Holy shit. This is a catastrophe. I have lost my goddamn mind. What was I talking about?

The all-time number one expert from Wigan, England is the Verve. This is the Verve's first single from 1992. It's called All in the Mind. You can hear Richard Ashcroft's cheekbones. Richard Ashcroft's cheekbones are a huge part of the reason why he can sing the words, I was born to fly, fly, pretty high.

And it sounds like he's reciting Proust. That's how you pronounce Proust, by the way, not Proust. Proust is the Rob's historically mispronounced famous author of the week. Brought to you by Uncle Joe's, oh my God, stop it. Do you mind terribly if I read you

the first two paragraphs of Rolling Stones cover story on the Verve from 1998? Only Richard Ashcroft appears on the cover with the cover line, the verve and the return of rock and roll. Stories written by the great David Frick. Let's take a break from me providing the words here, shall we? Here we go.

Even if he wasn't the singer, lyricist, and unmistakable face of the number one rock band in England, Richard Ashcroft would still be the kind of guy who could turn heads, melt hearts, freeze rush hour traffic, and stop conversation in a vacuum-packed pub without lifting an eyebrow. This is his shit right here. His features are an arresting collision of the classic rock star archetypes, the dark consumptive sensuality of the poet Barfly, the gaunt magnetism of the wasted warrior, the cocky, insucian charm of a jumping jack flash, further distinguished by a heat ray stare and long concave cheeks that look as though they've been dug out with a shovel, cut like a telephone pole. With only the barest suggestion of hips, Ashcroft's body is long and lean, all sinew and

insect grace, the frame of an elegant ascetic. And when he walks down the street, through the spacious marbled lobby of a Ritzie London hotel, barefoot across the living room floor of his home in a quiet southwestern suburb of the city, Ashcroft moves with a fluid, cocksure swagger that doesn't say get out of my way so much as I fucking dare you to keep up. End quote. He's handsome. All right. That was great.

David Frick's awesome. Disconcertingly handsome, Richard Ashcroft. Yes? He has to pack his cheekbones in his checked baggage at the airport. The sweet part is that Richard Ashcroft looks like a rock star to an absurd, to a disconcerting degree. The bitter part is that it took him six years to make. make the cover of Rolling Stone.

The Verve are a band, FYI, a truly great band, a great band with exquisite chemistry between initially four people, all of whom are necessary. Richard Ashcroft on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, maybe.

Nick McCabe, comma, guitar god, comma on lead guitar. Simon Jones on bass, Peter Salisbury on drums. They met as teenagers at Win Stanley Sixth Form College. in Wiggin, which is also 4.4 kilometers from the Big Bean Factory, 4.4 kilometers south. Their first EP came out in 1993, just called Verve.

The band, in fact, was just called Verve until the jazz label, Verve record started sassing them. So the band added the, this song's from that first EP. It's called, Ah, look at that. It's called She's a Superstar. There goes Proust again, rhyming high with Y. the true superstar, the true rock star in this band in the early days is Nick McCabe on lead guitar, who is never shredding in the parlance,

but this dude's already a master of atmosphere. I don't know what Richard is singing there. I don't know that Richard knows what he's singing there. It doesn't matter. For the full Nick McCabe on lead guitar experience, I recommend the second VP from 1993. It's called Voyager 1. It's on YouTube.

It's super rare. Apparently there's a myth that, 300 physical copies fell into the Atlantic Ocean. And this record sounds like a rad guitar player is transmitting from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. This song's called South Pacific. Close enough. Is that finger-tapping? Holy shit.

The Verve's first full-length album, also from 93, is called A Storm in Heaven. That's a rad title. And this is the Verve's first truly great song. It's called Slide Away. it's not as good as the Oasis song called Slide Away, but don't hold that against them. Simon Jones on bass, rad bass line,

Stone Roses-esque. This is a band. This is a gray band. In the event that Richard Ashcroft really is singing, Let the night sky cool your foolish pride. That's a great line. Great job. Even if that's not what he's singing, good job.

So the verve are vying for rock stardom, and they got Oasis opening for them, and a storm in heavens getting decent reviews, but soon Oasis and Blur and Swade, et cetera, are stealing all the thunder. The Verve are playing Glastonbury. They're in the mix. They're touring America and hating it,

which is a very blur construction. They're putting out a B-Sides compilation called No Come Down in 94 after only releasing one album. The Verve's early discography is very pleasantly bizarre. No-come-down is a 10-minute version of their song, Gravity, Grave, live from Glastonbury.

there's a lot of snarling and yelling. It kicks ass. This song is called One Way to Go. Try to guess the rhymes before they happen. You did it, didn't you? You guessed right. Die, fly, try. Good job.

Early verve, in essence, is a not entirely friendly battle between Nick McCabe, the underwater guitar god, and Richard Ashcroft's dark consumptive sensuality of the poet Barfly. And the verdict on the band's second full-length album, 1995's A Northern Soul, is that the poet Barfly wins,

or at least now his vocals get to be way higher. This is the first song. It's called A New Decade. It fades in slowly. Got to get those egos through customs. That line, the radio plays the sounds we made is a little aspirational and a little heartbreaking. The verves still aren't casting a proportionate shadow.

The verve are not yet adored. It's funny. You adjust the dynamics just slightly on this record, make the vocals a little louder, and the rad guitar just a little quieter, and then you're like, oh, right, you two. This is you two. This is Bono, the poet Barfly,

versus the edge, the soft-spoken guitar god. And in making Richard Ashcroft the focal point, what snaps into focus is the deep thought, romantic fatalism of Richard Ashcroft. You can sense his resignation that the world might not ever love him as much as Noel Gallagher loves him. You can sense that he knows it doesn't matter

because it's a bittersweet symphony this life. You try to make ends meet, you're a slave to the money, and you die, and you die alone. Sorry, but it's true. This song's called On Your Own. I don't mean to fixate on this, but all four guys in the Verve are on the cover

of a northern soul, and the three other dudes, to varying degrees, are perfectly handsome and presentable and normal cheek-boned specimen. And then you got Richard Ashcroft and his heat-ray stare, and I just absolutely,

if I were in this band, I would outright refuse to even appear in a photograph with this fucking guy, unless he were wearing a Chewbacca mask or something. Look at this album cover and pretend it's a drawing, pretend it's God's drawing. And starting with the guy at the far left and going clockwise, imagine that God is slowly getting better at drawing a rock star. Here's the song after on your own. It's called So It Goes.

Wow, this guy with the heat race stare is super bummed down. out. This guy's crooning like a rock star amidst strings on a song called history, and he sounds like he knows he might be history. Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say. Yikes. Okay. Okay. Richard Ashcroft's not doing too bad for himself in 1995. He got married. That's the area he married Kate Radley, who plays keyboards for spiritualized. While we're talking about psychedelic English rock bands who sing about flying high before they die. Angel sigh off the first spiritualized record, laser guided melodies in 1992. That song is unbelievable. Richard and Kate are still married as far as I can tell. Two sons. Don't tell me how old their sons are. Thank you.

He's doing great now and he was doing just fine back in 95. Still not casting a shadow, though. The verve actually broke up briefly after recording a Northern Soul in part apparently because everyone took too much ecstasy. Actually, per that Rolling Stone cover, Richard did the classic rock star thing where he quit the band and then immediately reform the band without Nick, the guitar player he was trying to get rid of. And you got this guy Simon Tong to play guitars and keyboards instead,

except the band's no good without Nick in it. And eventually the dudes all reconcile when Nick returns. And Simon stays also. And so now there's five guys in the verve. And now it's time to find. be adored. All right. So there's an old gospel spiritual called this may be the last time, or sometimes you'll see it as this may be my last time. Hang out in the right church long enough and you'll hear it and you'll love it. Here's a YouTube video of a Baptist church in Georgia doing it in 2010.

Very few people in this video are sitting down. Obviously, and if you're sitting down, look at that. Now you're not sitting down. The most famous recorded version of this song is brought to us by the Staples singers out of Chicago, one of the most adored soul R&B gospel groups in recorded history. Their 45 RPM single version of This Mayer, initially comes out in 1954. Pop Staples, his son Purvis, and his daughter is Cleotha and Mavis. His daughter Yvonne will later join the fold as well. Mavis Staples is the only member of the group still alive.

She turns 83 in July, and she is in fact touring this summer, summer 2022 with Bonnie Rate. You're going to want to go ahead and see that. Here we have the staple singers doing this may be the last time in the 50s. And then look out. Here come the Rolling Stones. Yes, it's the ultimate Mr. Cheekbones frontman versus Mr. Guitar God face-off Mick Jagger versus Keith Richards. The last time by the Rolling Stones, written by Mick and Keith, comes out in 1965. In his autobiography, called Life from 2010, Keith Richards writes of the early 60s, quote,

Mick and I knew by now that really our job was to write songs for the Stones. It took us eight, nine months before we came up with the last time, which is the first one we felt we could give to the rest of the guys without being sent out of the room. He adds, The song has the first recognizable Stones riff or guitar figure in it. The chorus is from the staple singer's version. This may be the last time. We could work with this hook.

Now we had to find the verse. When Mick and Keith did find the verse, Keith describes the result as, quote, a song about going on the road and dumping some chick, end quote, rock and roll. The stones have never tried to erase the staple singers from the equation. That would be perverse. In another book from 2003 called According to the Rolling Stones,

Keith says, We came up with the last time, which was basically readapting a traditional gospel song that had been sung by the staple singers. But luckily, the song itself goes back into the mists of time. End quote. What he means is that the song's so old that as far as songwriting credit goes, he and Mick don't have to share the credit or the money with anybody. Rock and roll. And then look out. Here comes Andrew Oldham. Yes, Andrew Oldham. Famous 60s Rolling Stone manager,

famous 60s Rolling Stone producer. In 1966, a group called the Andrew Oldham Orchestra puts out an album called The Rolling Stones Songbook. That, of course, was their version of the last time, but that, of course, was not the part of their version of the last time that you are most familiar with. And 30 years later or so, our boy Richard Ashcroft gets a hold of that record, and here's that riff, and as they later told Rolling Stone, he knows immediately that that riff can be turned into something outrageous. And it's just that simple. This part of the story is so agonizing and so well known that let's just get it out of the way,

shall we? Bitter Sweet Symphony is the first song on the Verve's third full-length album, Urban Hems, released in 1997. If you'd opened up the Urban Hems CD booklet in 1997, the liner notes, you would be informed that Bitter Sweet Symphony was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and performed by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. Lyrics by Richard Ashcroft. That was nice to let him have that. Now wasn't it? Bunch of lawsuits behind this shit. Officially, the Verve got screwed primarily by Alan Klein, infamous rock and roll supermanager, Alan Klein, who'd worked with

and or battled in court with both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It's Alan Klein who controlled much of the Rolling Stones catalog at this time, and as this song was already becoming a runaway hit, it's Alan Klein, who refused to clear the Bitter Sweet Symphony sample unless Mick and Keith got all the credits and all

the money, or more likely the guy who handled the money for Mick and Keith got all the money. In private, reportedly, Mick and Keith both liked Bitter Sweet Symphony, but they declined to get involved in this fracas or advocate on Richard's behalf. Rock and roll. I don't remember

a time when Bitter Sweet Symphony was super popular but not everybody knew the sorted backroom history of Bitter Sweet Symphony yet. In my memory, everyone knew about this always or knew the broad strokes of it. The fact that Richard Ashcroft looped four bars

of a cheesy orchestral cover of a Rolling Stone semi cover of a definitive staple singer's version of a gospel standard and then dumped 500 tons of transcendent on wee on top of that sample, along with his band, and then lost all the credit and all the money because of that original

four-bar sample. This fiasco is an essential component of Bitter Sweet Symphony. The song is about what happened to the guy who wrote the song after he wrote the song. The song is about the guy losing the song, even as he's singing it. Richard Ashcroft's big line at the time about this whole tragic legal fracas was that Bitter Sweet Symphony was the best song Jagger and Richards have written in 20 years. That's a great line. Honestly, that's as good a line as any line he sings in this song. I should say, though, our last episode was about Hull, about Courtney Love. And in 1998, she talked to Rolling Stone about working on the whole album's celebrity skin and trying to elevate the form of rock and roll and being inspired in her quest to elevate rock and roll by

Bittersweet Symphony. She said, There's a line in it that almost made me cry. But the airwaves are clean and there's nobody singing to me now. I'm going, wait for me. Don't jump. I'm coming. I want to fuck shit up. End quote. Now, suddenly everybody wanted to sing to or about Richard Ashcroft.

So Richard Ashcroft's doing an interview for his Rolling Stone cover story. We're in his apartment. the staple singers are on the stereo, the article notes, that's too random to actually be random. And he's explaining his thought process, what he wants to build around this sample. He says, I wanted something that opened up into a prairie music kind of sound, a modern day ennio Morricone kind of thing. Then after a while, the song started morphing into this wall of sound, a concise piece of incredible pop music. There are three or four vocals in there. It's like an outro to a temptations record, except I'm the four guys in a row, the rhythm one underneath,

the sex and violence voices, like a doo-wop thing. End quote. He keeps getting mad again, and who can blame him? He says, we sampled four bars. That was on one track. Then we did 47 tracks of music beyond that little piece. We've got our own string players, our own percussion on it, guitars. He says, it's beyond hip-hop what we've done. With hip-hop now, the trend is to leave the thing they've sampled as the hook to sell more records. This was old school hip-hop. Take something but really twist it and fuck it up into something else. Take it and use your imagination.

I'm sorry, wait a minute. Did he say sex and violence voices in that interview? Does he say that in the song? Apparently he does. I'll be damn. There's a lot going on here. If you get too wrapped up in the legal machinations of this song, you can convince yourself that there's so much going on here as like a legal strategy, right? Like the verb are trying to add so many layers to this song that it obscures or neutralizes or purifies the stone sample at the very bottom of it.

If they can only push that riff far enough back into the mists of time. Bittersweet Symphony does not exist without those four sampled bars. But Bittersweet Symphony builds an entire galaxy. around those four sampled bars that has nothing to do with anybody who had anything to do with those four sampled bars. And that galaxy only expands on the rest of this record, Urban Hymns. There are times on this show where I more or less ignore every other song on an album because every other song is nowhere near as interesting or noteworthy as the song I want to talk about. But Urban Hymns, despite having a stupid title, has got some jams, plural. Hems, plural.

Don't throw this record at any zombies. The drugs don't work. Jam. Lucky man, jam. This time, jam. Someday I need to do a psychological and musicalogical deep dive into why the this time chord progression is a very specific emotional trigger for me. But if I have the power to compare. to compel you to listen to exactly one other song by the verve let's make it the rolling people

wherein we are reminded and apparently i keep forgetting this that the verve are a great band the rhythm section the guitar god antics the swagger the bluesiness but not too bluesiness i love this song some young hungry and suciant rock band right now ought to take this 10 second loop and build a whole other Sweet Symphony on top of it. The very chill and yet ultra-precise mingling of vibes between the bass, the drums, the hang claps, and the guitar here is unreal. You can bask in the shadow of just those 10 seconds for hours. Great band.

The thought, at least while Richard Ashcroft was on the cover of Rolling Stone, is that the Verve might not see any money from Bittersweet Symphony, but they could still use this song to finally catapult themselves to rock stardom, and, yes, adoration. plenty of hit songs left to be written, and they profit off all of those, right? Then the band broke up again. Nick McCabe was no longer playing guitar in The Verve by 1998. The first Richard Ashcroft's solo album

called Alone with Everybody came in 2000. The next and last album by the Verbe would be released in 2008. It was called Fourth, F-O-R-T-H, like Go-F-F-E-F-F-E. And I put it on and just hoped that the first song had a long, noisy, indulgent intro,

a la Oasis and the Stone Roses, just for my own narrative symmetry. This song's called Sit and Wait. Hit it, boys. It's over in less than 30 seconds, but it counts. It's just indulgent enough. The reunion didn't take either. In 2019, in 2019, 22 years later,

Richard Ashcroft announced on Twitter that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, in a kind and magnanimous gesture had given Richard Ashcroft their share of bittersweet symphony. Quote, they are happy for the writing credit to exclude their names, and all their royalties derived from the song will now pass to me. End quote. Richard went on to call this turn of events life-affirming. It occurs to me.

That a ways his song, cast no shadow, about Richard Ashcroft. The chorus, such as it is, goes like this. You could see this line as prophetic, right? In 1995, it was not clear who they were or what his soul and his pride might specifically refer to. But two years later, Bitter Sweet Symphony filled all that in. At long last, Richard Ashcroft wrote, unofficially, a song that made him adored. But in the same breath made him even more of a tragic hero. You could see it that way.

or you could see the adoration as its own reward. The adoration should be enough to keep you all aglow. Our guest today is Nico Stratis. She writes for Spin, Bitch Media, Auto Straddle, and many other places. She also hosts the movie soundtrack podcast VA Club. Nico, welcome. Hi, so glad to be here. I'm so excited.

I'm such a fan. I'm first time calling a long-time listener. Well, we're a fan of yours as well. So that's awesome. That's great to hear. Thanks so much. This podcast of yours is very exciting and pretty new. I think you've done Empire Records, Angus, and the Crow so far. In that spirit, I figured we better start out talking about cruel intentions. Of course. The natural starting point. Exactly. For any conversation, really. It came out in 1999. It was pretty porny and cruel for a teen movie. And it ends with everyone finding out that says, there, Michelle Geller is a terrible person while bittersweet symphony plays in the background and Reese Witherspoon drives off. Like, the song basically soundtracks a bunch of teenagers, like giving withering looks to the villain of the movie.

What made this song perfect for this scene in this movie? I mean, I would argue the song is kind of a perfect end of the movie song, right? Because it has, because of the way the orchestral section that repeats, because of the way that builds, It really feels like when you listen to that song, I do feel like I'm a credits are about to hit. Like if that's not, if you're watching a movie and that song comes in, grab your keys. The movie is like nearly, it's nearly done. We're almost out of here. But it's like, you know, it's funny.

I haven't watched that movie in so long because I think it's a one and done kind of movie. Like I remember watching it once and I was like, I'm good. I never want to watch that ever again. But I watched it again. I watched the ending again this morning, like really early in the morning. And it's dark. It's really, it's really like grim. But it kind of does, like, the song kind of works.

You know, there's like the part where Richard Ashcroft is saying, like, I can change, I can change. And it's the close-up on evil Sarah Michelle Geller, because she has dark hair. You know, she's evil in movies when she has dark hair. And she's good when she's blonde. It's very complicated symbolism. It's complicated. If you do what, I just have a tattoo of that on my forearm. So if I remember watching something, then Sherry-Miselle is.

And that I just chat. Oh, right. Okay. She's blonde. and this is the good version or vice versa. But it has that moment, and it's like, you can tell they kind of try to sync the lyrics up to that ending, which is, again, I mean, not to like turn this into the Cruel Intentions podcast

for the next hour and a half, but, you know, the ending of that movie where, you know, it reveals that she's a terrible person, and they've got this printout of a diary that looks a lot like a zine. It's like that diary is like a lot of zine qualities to it. It's like a riot girl aspect, totally. Totally, right? And it's like, you know, there's the one, like,

the show's close up with the pages, and he's just, like, written, like, a Coke problem next to somebody's face. And it's just like, imagine that was a diary that you found line around, which is a picture of somebody's face, and it's just a Coke problem next to them. But it's like, you know, she's also not really given an opportunity to either, like, you know, it's this way we also view, like,

people that are troubled or addicts or whatever. It's like, well, now she's a villain. And she also, like, I realize there's a person in a casket that we're talking about, there's the dead body of Ryan Felipe that is sort of hovering over the end of the scene. But also, like, so I guess she's just a social pariah now. Like, they find the cocaine in her cross, which is like, if you're going to hide cocaine anywhere, a cross is a pretty good place. Jesus would never think to look there. But it's definitely, I don't know, the song really sets the scene nicely. And then there's that, there's the parting shot, you know,

of Reese Witherspoon, René Zellweger, one of the two, Reese Witherspoon. Reis Wetherspoon. That's Reese, yeah. Reese, yeah, not a Renee. Nerea, Renee, but a Reese. She's driving away in the car, and it sort of pulls back, and it's, you know, the song is just so kind of fitting for this moment. You know, maybe not, look, I'm a, I'm a Marcy Playground Purist for that soundtrack, personally.

What is, is that sex and candy or is it another song? No, they have a cover of a song called Coming Up from Behind on that soundtrack. I see. I need to revisit that, I guess. I did glad to that. placebos on there, right? Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you if the soundtrack as a whole holds up or if this is like a one song deal. You know, I think like a lot of soundtracks in the 90s, partially why I wanted to do a soundtrack podcast. And maybe, look, maybe this is this is me figuring

out, well, to do the crossover. I'll have you on on VA Club. We'll talk about the cool attention soundtrack in full. I would love to be on. Yes. But, you know, it kind of was one of those soundtracks that's like, hey, we've got the one song you want. And then here's a bunch of other stuff that's represented by the people selling the soundtrack. That's sort of what it feels like to me. And I, like, legitimately, I'm not even like, it is funny to say it, but it's also true that I was like, oh, there's a Marcy Playground song on the soundtrack that I don't know because I liked that band. You know, they were big on the, like, Sex and Playground was everywhere. I think there's second record where the one where they had stolen the cover from Gibby Haynes, that was out at the time, too.

So I'm getting deep into the Marcy Playground. You really are. Your knowledge of Marcy Playground exceeds mine, so I defer to you absolutely on that. We got Counting Crows on here. We got Blurrs, Coffee, and TV. Yeah, which is a great song. It's a great song. It's a fantastic song. That's a good soundtrack song. That's a good pull. Absolutely. It's funny that a song or a soundtrack that is so, for a movie that is so American, leans in a bit pop for the soundtrack, right? It's a weird juxtaposition. Yeah. So I guess this leads to the question. Like, is Bittersweet Symphony ultimately an uplifting song?

Like, that's a dark ending, as you say. And so I think what makes the song work is it's, how does this song make you feel, either when you see it in this movie or just when you encounter it on the radio? Does it make you sad? Does it make you happy? Like, what is the desired effect of this song? Well, I think partially maybe just because it's British, it makes me feel very modeling in a way. You know, like when this song was sort of a good thing.

going concerned when you would hear it on the radio a lot. I was working in a grocery store, so I would hear it all the time. Partially why, like, it's paired in my mind. I think I mentioned this to you before off podcast, but it's really tied to the way by fastball because they would always play together. They would be like in the same programming block. So it's like a double shot. Yeah, like you remember when you would make a mixtape for somebody and you would pair two songs together and then they would become intrinsically linked and you would hear the end of one song and you you'd be like, oh, I know what's coming next. So when I hear Bittersweet Symphony, and I'm like, here we go.

The way's coming. I love this song, and it doesn't come, and I'm always disappointed. But I would say Bittersweet Symphony is like one of those songs that sounds kind of happy, but it's actually kind of, like, I listened to it the other day. I was walking my dog really early in the morning. So it was like kind of like the sun is just coming up. It's like 6 a.m. And it just sort of made me feel like an extreme feeling of melancholy really fell over me.

And I think maybe just because Richard Ashcroft sort of like, has that energy about him, you know? He's like a walking dust cloud a little bit. He really is. He's got the black fuzz, you know, the storm cloud over his head at all times. And those piercing eyes? The cheekbones are always what get me. But he's just, he's like the archetypal, you know, British, glowering, melancholy rock star.

It's just, it's disconcerting whenever I even see a picture of him quite frankly. He looks like the evil third Gallagher brother. Simon Gallagher. Oh, no. Exactly. Oh, my God. I'm curious what percentage of people know this song primarily from cruel intentions? Like, Bitter Sweet Symphony had already been a hit for a couple of years at that point.

Like, does it insult the song if a lot of people still think of it as the cruel intentions song? Well, I think it might be kind of nice to be tied to because I think there's a lot of other baggage with this song, legally speaking. I think, you know, if you can hit your wagon to a song that people make fondly remember, like a movie that people will fondly remember if they haven't watched it in recent years. Like, I think if you think about cruel intentions, you're like, yeah, that's a great movie. I like that movie when I rented it. If you go back and watch it, that's a very different feeling. But I think if you can be tied to this movie, which is like a cultural touchdown of the late 1990s,

I mean, that's not a bad thing necessarily. I think a lot of good art has been, especially when soundtracks, like, this is like peak soundtrack, Garrett too, right? Like when the soundtrack was king. If you can be tied to a movie in that way, I mean, there's worse fates. Absolutely, there are. As you say, I can't hear this song without thinking about, you know, the legal drama, you know, all the writing credit,

you know, Richard Ashcroft didn't get, all the money he didn't get. Like, do you actively feel bad for him while you listen to this song, or is that way overdoing it? There's no reason to feel bad for this person. I mean, I do kind of, I was saying this to my, to my part, and we were just driving home from something, and we were talking about this song, knowing that this recording was coming up,

and I was talking about that. And I said, do you realize this song was everywhere? Like, literally everywhere. It was huge. Like, this is right when Brit Pop was becoming big in North America. You couldn't avoid the song if you wanted to. And he made actually no money to it because it all went to the Rolling Stones manager.

Like, I think he got $1,000. It's like when the, whatever it was, it was insulting. Yeah, yeah. And they gave it back to him last, like 2019. They gave it back to him. The streaming, it's not nothing, but as you say, like, the difference between getting it now and getting it in 1997 is ignored.

I think I kind of feel bad for him, but then when I'm watching the video, I feel that is worse because I'm staring Richard Ashcroft in the face. I'm like, fuck, you got totally screwed over for this. He's thinking about that while he's shooting the video. It's pretty clear. That's why he only bumps into women on the street is that he's thinking about this video. That is a remarkable aspect of that. that video, is it not that he sort of, I guess that's accidental, but he does just run into a lot of women in four minutes. Like, what are you supposed to take away from that video about this song or about

him? I think it's partially tied to the, like, the very subtle misogyny of 90s music. And the 90s music, like, culture and everything surrounding it is like, all the women in that video are there to be bumped into by Richard Ascroft. Every guy he means. Now, there is an alternate cut where he gets beat up. Right, right. But we don't see that version. Because even there's the point where there's the street tufts towards the end that he sort of, that like turn around and mock him.

But again, they move out of the way. They make deference to him, but every woman that he sees, he bumps into. And it's like, they're there, there's to be objects that he, like, hits and interacts with in this, like, aggressive way. And every other man is just, like, to be avoided and not bothered. And it's very, like, if you wanted a snapshot of the way the like 1990s music culture treated women. It was like, you're here, but your objects that were like,

we're bumping into and like interacting with in a negative way. We see you and we don't like you that much. We see you and we're going to run you over, I guess. You mentioned to me, it's a direct echo of the unfinished sympathy video, Massive Attack, which was 1991, I think. And it's Sharra Nelson walking down the street and she manages to not, you know, jump on any cars or plowing to anybody. Like, that's a somewhat less famous video than Bitter Sweet Symphony, obviously.

Like, is this an act of respect or disrespect toward that video, the Bitter Sweet Symphony version? I've been thinking about this because I posted this thing on Twitter the other day about my favorite genre of music video being en route. And I shed a video of Vanessa Carlton and Green Day for the one I come around video. I just like, I like a video where someone's going somewhere. And, of course, a lot of people jumped into my mission. with screenshots of the Bittersweet Symphony video. And of course, naturally, if you bring a Bittersweet Symphony in public, people need to remind you, in case you were unaware,

this video is an homage to massive attack. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm not at all. I'm a journalist or like a music professional. Thank you for teaching me this basic fact. Twitter. I think about it.

I've been thinking about this a lot. And like, it isn't an homage, but is it disrespectful? maybe because the spirit of the massive attack video is very different, right? Like, she is this woman that we see walking. She's in her community and she's moving places and she's engaging with the world around her. And it's very much, it's a love letter. It feels like a love letter to that community that she lives and exists in, right? And it's very, you know, it's beautiful even though it's a massive attack song,

which can be kind of like dark and heavy at times. But it's like, it's a lovely video and it's really great and it's beautifully shot. And like you said, less known than the, Vitter Sweet Symphony video, which I guess leads into another Verve song. At the end of the video, when he meets the band, and then they start walking off together, that leads into the whatever that other song is, We Like Drugs or whatever that song is called.

Are you referring to the drugs don't work? That's a different sentiment. There is some... Very different. You're right. I would listen to a verve song called We Like... drugs, though. Absolutely. I'm surprised one doesn't exist. Yeah, there's got to be a B-side or something. Yeah, that's the B-side to the drugs that work is we like drugs. Yeah, the flip side. You know, it's the other side of the coin. I, it's so the video does get me thinking about like Liam Gallagher,

Jarvis Cocker, you know, Damon Allburn, like the archetypal pompous beanpole British rock star who just as soon kill you is look at you. Like, are you relieved that we are fewer of these smart-ass jerks in pop music and rock music now, or do you secretly miss all these jerks? Do you remember there was that story in the wintertime about that group of people that got stuck in an English pub with an oasis cover band? Yes, yes.

That sounded idyllic to me, to be totally honest. It's an idyllic, like, if you were ever to be sent to hell. Just hypothetically. Yeah, just hypothetically, if you were to go to hell, that's the hell I would want to go to, because it feels bad but also nice. Like there is, like, there's a menacing aspect. And I watched this video a couple of times to, like, get myself back into the, the verb

spirit, to get the verb within me. Yes. And there's this menacing nature to, like, like you said, the sort of beanpole English guy, there is this sort of menacing nature to them where, like, he's got very piercing eyes and unkempt hair and those, like cheekbones, he could cut you with those things. It's violent cheekbones. They've always got an ill-fitting leather jacket regardless of who they are. It's like, it's all part of the luck, you know?

And it just feels like, I've been beat up before. And I just know, I just know when it's coming. And whenever I watch this video, I was like, you know, if this was me, if this was me, this is probably how this ends, you know, I run into this. He bumps into me. And then if like, because there is a moment in the video where the one woman confronts him. Right. The driver of the car, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's stressful. He absolutely no. It's a very stressful video. I'm sorry you watched this multiple times early. in the morning. I have ruined your day. I kind of like the song. Like, I do like the song. I mean,

it's a beautiful song and that orchestral section is really nice. I like knowing that Richard Ashcroft actually kind of hated the song until the orchestra part, the part that lost him, all the royalties to the song. When that came in, he was like, oh, I like this song now. But I guess before, when he was working on this record, he didn't really like the song and didn't really want to do it because they had switched producers. And they really had to convince him to do it. And then when the orchestra came in, he was like, oh, I get it. I want to do this song now. So the part that ensured that he made no money until 2019, that's the part of it he liked. It is a very complicated combination of like, the song doesn't work without the sample, but the song is so much more

than the sample, right? Like, you can see both sides of it. You can see, like, we need all the money from this because obviously it's driven entirely by this sample. But like, there's so much piled on top of it and all of it is him. It's a, it's a weird. as far as the history of like songs causing huge legal problems for people like this is just a way more complicated situation than like blurred lines or whatever yeah or like paus boutique or something like that you know which is like you know like another like 90s sample disaster when we kind of didn't really know what we were doing either like and you would almost not know like if i was unaware you know if i was to hear that song now i would never know like oh there's a complicated legal battle behind this repeating orchestral section that's actually an orchestra cover of an old Rolling Stone song. Like, it's such a road to walk to get to why he didn't make any money for so long. I think he may be the only person in history who owned that record in the first place, right? It's not like everybody was like, oh, that's the Andrew Oldham Orchestra right there. Like, it's the only reason anybody knows about that record is this song.

I can't wait for the Andrew Oldham Orchestra Purists to hear this. That's right. And to lash out angrily that you would stare suggest that not a lot of people owned that weird seven-inch that you probably bought from a guy. The ugliest corner of Reddit. Right. Yeah. You just got to buy that out of somebody's trunk, I guess. I believe Chris Martin once declared Bittersweet Symphony to be the best song ever written, which actually makes a lot of sense to me. Has Coldplay come the closest to making music like this in the past 20 years?

Or has anyone come close to making music? like this in the last 20 years or so. I mean, Coldplay also in the en route genre of music videos. You know, they play in the same sandbox for sure. I mean, definitely. I think you're right. I'm trying to think of other, because we kind of like got bored of the whole Brit pop thing.

We did. And especially this like real over-dramatic British guy sort of genre. We've really narrowed it down to just Chris Martin. Right. It's like, we only need one of these people and you are it. it's like, but that's it. Like, that's just, you're, you're the only one now. It's like having five copies of the same book. Like, eventually, we just need one. Like, you're doing the same thing that these other four guys are doing. We don't need Travis. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we don't need train anymore.

We'll just, we'll just, we will cycle everything down to its purest form, which is Chris Martin from Coldplay. There we go. It's the end all, be all of everything. I'm thinking about other on-root videos now. Does what's my age again count for you or is there too much? Okay, all right. I would say they're masters of the genre because I feel like, I think when he did two has a couple of those guys. And, you know, and same as Green Day had a couple. And I'm trying to think of the ones that people presented to me. But definitely this one and the Massive Attack one were definitely two huge ones in that thread of, you know, videos of people go in places.

And then, of course, people were like, well, Chris Morton made the yellow video. I don't want to be in your mentions, honestly. It's not like a terrible place to be in general. I do wince whenever I see the verve described as a one-hit wonder, like that's sort of objective. true in terms of, like, they have no song anywhere near as a chart or, like, influence, you know, consideration. But, like, I really love that record, Urban Hymns as a whole. Is there any way to assess this band without over-fixating on this one song? Well, it's hard when you have a song that's that big, right? And I think they probably didn't

realize because that song, that album, Urban Hymns has, what, four singles that, like, that cracked the charts. There's, we like drugs, of course, and then there are other songs. Yeah. Yeah. We like drugs. We're okay with drugs and the drugs are gone. You know, as far as, like, calling them a one-hit wonder, you know, like, they've got four, that urban hymns has four singles. Right. You know, they all, like, did really well. They all charted really nicely. They all, you know, they cracked atop, whatever. I can't remember how old. But they all charted for sure. Like, the drugs don't work, I think was probably the second pick is single from that album. So, like, they're not a, they have a one-hit album. But they, you know, they were popular. They were so popular in the UK. they were like the touring, they toured with smashing pumpkins a lot. Like, they were going concerned for a while.

But like, the one-hit wonder thing is always so funny to me because, like, there are some bands that are legitimately one-hit wonder. It's kind of a one-hit wonder, you know, but like, not to bring it back to the band. No, please, yeah.

I'm glad you said it. Not me. Yeah, that's fine. The American, the verve, I feel like, is Marcy's background. Exactly.

I don't know. It's, it depends on your definition of, do you think there are one-hit wonder? No, that's, I guess what I'm saying. I guess like from a chart standpoint, no, I'm looking at this record right now and like lucky man, which is a great song as like a hundred thousand plus plays, right? Like I even, you know, we like drugs almost has a hundred thousand. Like I, it's people clearly like other songs on this record. I think there are one hit wonders where like only one song ever resonated at all. And there are one hit wonders where one hit is so far. above everything else that like it's there's like a disproportionate thing where like we don't give enough respect to the verve's other hit singles because they just weren't as big a hit as this one. There's a difference to me, I think. It's like the blur effect, right? Like you could say like,

because song two hits so massive that you would say like, oh, blurs a one hit wonder. We're like, no, they had other songs that charted, but played in North American radio. Like, you know, it would be different if they never hit overseas with anything but song two. And same for the verb. You know, Those other songs did play on some stations. Like, not every. The thing is, like, especially because I grew up in the Yukon, so we really only had access to so much, that song was the only one that ever played on the radio because it was so massive that it cracked that.

Like, if it's cracking markets literally in the middle of nowhere. In the Yukon, that's when you know you've made it. Yeah. If you're played on a grocery store in the Yukon, you've made it. Congratulations. You did it. You cracked it. You figured it out and you made it.

The Verve and Fastball are the two biggest artists in the Yukon. This is good. To this day, yeah. To this day. To this day. I always think about Oasis, like, how sheepish they are almost in saying, like, we really wish we'd have broken up, you know, after Wonderwall, after Nebworth, you know, after morning glory, you know, they made however many albums they made.

Like, the Verve, I think the next Verve record is 11 years later. Like, it's 2008. And it's like a comeback record. And if you liked it, fine. But, like, they didn't follow up Bittersweet Symphony really. And I always wonder what effect that has on this song. If they'd have made five more records that were okay but nowhere near as good with that devalue Bittersweet Symphony, or is there value in going out on top like this?

Is it better, it's the is it better to burn out or fade away? Exactly. Applied to songs and not people. Exactly. I think you're, I think you could be on to something there. You know, like had they continued to make sort of like middle, you know, like pretty good records that were like not great, but you would listen to it and you knew some guy that's super into it.

Always one guy. There's always some guy that's super into something, you know? Like you can always trust some guy to be out there waiting for his time to strike. Exactly. But I think and partially just because, and it is almost that like, and I hear what Oasis is saying too, like if you have a song that is so massive, like Bittersweet Symphony was so huge. that like it's really how would you create anything in the wake of that you know like how do you follow that up like how do you possibly it's so much hype to live up to that i can imagine just being like

i don't want to make anything else because everything else will pale in comparison to this thing that i have made that is like the purest form of of what i want to make and i think those guys also didn't like each other which also they did not yeah i don't think they were sitting around like what should we do now like they were just they just fought with each other until they broke up, you know, and they still, you know, can't stand each other, even after reuniting or trying to. Yeah. It's a hard, it's a hard thing. Like, would I have loved to see what the verb would have done next, maybe? But now they get to live in infamy as they're not the verb pipe. They're the verb. They're the other verb band. Exactly. I screwed them up once on this show,

like way, way earlier, and I still feel bad about it. I got to go back and take that out. but I don't remember, I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I'm still very embarrassed. It happens all the time. Thank you. Okay, I feel better now. Nico, this has been wonderful. Thanks so much for talking. Oh, I'm so happy to be here.

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks so much to our guest this week, Nico Stratis. Thanks as always to our producers, Jonathan Kerma and Justin Sales. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now, without further ado, here's the verve with Bittersweet Symphony. We'll see you. next week.