The bittersweet story of Bitter Sweet Symphony', the song that put an end to 'britpop' and which the Rolling Stones appropriated

When the video for

, by The Verve, was released on June 11, 1997, in which a man walks down the street alone complaining that "this life is a bittersweet symphony", it was instantly realized that this song was destined to make history.

At a time when music channels were still relevant, it was broadcast incessantly and brought the band led by Richard Ashcroft (Orrell, United Kingdom, 50 years old) to the top of

at a time when that movement was giving its last .

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After hitting the ceiling with the Oasis concert at Knebworth the previous summer, with Blur veering towards

American-influenced

and The Prodigy with

, the hegemony of those sounds associated with

was one step away from falling.

, with all its majesty, its existential reflections, its ambition, its haughtiness, its more than six minutes of duration and its iconic aura, was the last great anthem of all that history, the swan song of

Without a doubt, the video clip influenced.

Actually, its director, Walter A. Stern, wanted to pay homage to the

, from Massive Attack, another definitive anthem of the nineties, which had the same structure.

But, in this case, Ashcroft's attitude not only showed a sense of stubbornness as taken to the extreme as a joke, but also an exacerbated individualism very typical of the time, with the protagonist completely oblivious to everything that happened in its environment.

There were many interpretations of the video, some as curious as the one in which the protagonist stops to let a car pass with tinted windows, and which is said to have been a tribute to his friend Noel Gallagher.

Oasis started their career opening for The Verve, then did the reverse when they became famous, and the frontmen of both bands had dedicated songs to each other (

and

) on their respective 1995 albums. It also spawned a mythomaniac route for fans, who could emulate the route as if it were their own Abbey Road.

This one, by the way, was actually circular, along Hoxton, Purcell and Crondall streets, in East London.

The experimental cult group that found the songs

The Verve had been founded in 1990 in Wigan, a city in the Manchester belt and famous for having been the site of the Wigan Casino, the Vatican of a movement called

in the seventies.

They, however, emerged linked to the

Sound and the style known as

, with some first albums delivered to atmospheres of dense, saturated and psychedelic guitars.

After releasing several EPs and two albums (

in 1993 and

in 1995), the creative and ego conflict between guitarist Nick McCabe and the vocalist, who wanted to get away from the more experimental side, led him to dissolve the group.

It wasn't the first time he'd done it, nor the first time he'd reconsidered.

He knew that he had an ace up his sleeve that could change things, and that to complete the mission he needed his usual groupmates.

Bitter Sweet Symphony

was the advance single from

, a third LP for which the band recruited as producer Martin "Youth" Glover, a member of Killing Joke and The Orb who was becoming one of the most renowned technicians in pop. British.

This is closely associated with one of the great gossips that dazzled the British press at the time.

Ashcroft had raised his girlfriend, Kate Radley, to Jason Pierce of the band Spiritualized, and they had secretly married two years earlier.

She was still a member of Pierce's group, which simultaneously released another of the year's most acclaimed albums, the desolate

.

The group The Verve poses in Minneapolis, in November 1993. Jim Steinfeldt (Getty Images)

“Actually I wasn't the first option, before they tried a couple of other producers.

I came to the recording recommended by Kate”, recalls Youth from the house-studio that he currently owns in the Alpujarra of Granada.

"And that's where my life changed.

I had already worked on some successful albums, like

, by Crowded House, but

is one of the best songs ever recorded, it is still appearing on many lists of all kinds.

There are very few pop hits that sound like that."

Some consider The Verve to be a one-hit band, but that's far from the truth.

In fact, and although it is the theme that has transcended popular memory, it only reached number 2 in sales in the United Kingdom.

His next single,

, was the only one of his career to reach No. 1. “The thing about

is that Richard came up with all these amazing songs.

He had left behind the improvisations of

that characterized the band and came out with more concrete pop songs.

Even their B-sides were better than the best tracks on other people's albums,” says Glover.

"Owning that material made it all so easy, so my biggest challenge as a producer was to let the songs fly, to do them justice."

The controversy with the Stones

But the work with

was intricate and almost traumatic.

It was Richard Aschroft's idea to build his unmistakable string sound through a

of

, by the Rolling Stones, although not its best-known version, but another included in an orchestral album by its producer Andrew Loog Oldham, leading to one of the most talked-about intellectual property lawsuits in pop history.

The group The Verve, in the sea.

Getty Images

the

The original was just five looping notes, and the song was released before the Rolling Stones office approved it, as The Verve's record label thought there would be no problem.

Big mistake.

Seeing that the success of the single grew like foam, Allen Klein, the manager of the Stones, went to ruin their lives.

The Verve believed that they would share the rights between them fifty percent, but the shark Klein (who is said to have left the lawyer's office with a smile worthy of a movie villain) got 100%.

All authorship of the song was credited to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Andrew Loog Oldham, despite the fact that the Stones' vocalist and guitarist had contributed absolutely nothing.

The musicians of The Verve were not the only victims:

The recording was a goldsmith's job, as Youth recalls.

“Richard didn't believe in the song at first, there was a version prior to my arrival and I encouraged him to try recording it again”.

The producer emphasizes that the

by Loog Oldham is not so noticeable in the final version, since it is hidden between almost fifty layers of instrumentation.

“I persuaded a string section to play the melody over the top, with new arrangements, without Richard knowing, at a time when he wasn't in the studio.

I knew it would be worth it, even if he got mad,” he says.

On the appropriation of the subject by the Stones, he affirms that “it was very unfair.

It is true that we reproduced the same melody and the same arrangements, it can be understood as a version.

But Richard wrote a completely new lyric and deserved more credit."

He ironically declared that

was "the best Rolling Stones song since

” after, at the Grammy Awards ceremony, it was presented as a composition by Jagger and Richards.

The worst of all was not only that the Rolling got all the credit and the economic benefit, but it was their manager who also had all the power to manage the synchronization of the song in commercials and movies.

When he allowed its use in a Nike campaign, Aschcroft flew into a rage.

Urban Hymns

was a huge success at all levels and that year The Verve packed all the big venues in which they performed, but the thorn of the authorship of their emblem song remained so stuck in the vocalist that it deeply depressed him.

The band did not last much longer together, and in 1999, its leader announced its dissolution with a phrase that would have been worthy of Morrissey or the Gallagher brothers: "It is more likely that you will see the four Beatles together on stage again than to TheVerve”.

But in 2007, they came back again, for a couple of years recording a fourth album and doing another tour.

The last one so far.

However, Aschcroft began a solo career in the new century that enjoyed considerable commercial recognition, especially at the beginning, but always under the long shadow of

.

New idols like Chris Martin renewed their impact among the following generations.

At Coldplay's Live 8 mega-event concert in 2005, their leader invited Ashcroft on stage to cover the song with him, after presenting it as "probably the best song ever written."

The leader of The Verve did not stop fighting for his authorship, until the story ended with a happy ending.

In 2019, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards agreed to revoke their rights, and acknowledge that the song was by Richard Ashcroft.

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