Completely out of the blue, the QM writes:
I’d long known that The Verve lost all their Bittersweet Symphony royalties due to allegedly ripping off the Rolling Stones’s Last Time. But I could never figure it out, since I don’t think there’s anything in LT that sounds like BS.
Then I finally found out that the accusation was that The Verve used “too much” of a sample from an orchestral version (I’d say more an adaptation that a version) of LT.
Thanks to YouTube I found the orchestral original. “Too much” of a sample is, shall we say, a massive understatement.
and answers a question I hadn’t asked, but had wondered about for a long time. How cool is that?
4 Comments
Wow, that’s cool. I never knew about the controversy but it’s no wonder the Verve faded into obscurity after losing the profits from their one semi-hit.
Well, I dunno - they’ve put out a ton of albums, haven’t they? And I thought most of what was on Urban Hymns was good. I think that it’s just that the wretched music biz doesn’t know how to sell spacerock in the US, just shitty nu-metal and rap.
Other than disliking that song, I never really listened to them…but I remember being annoyed at the time by the junkie chic aesthetic of the lead singer, and of the simultaneous existence of the Verve Pipe which was all very confusing.
I don’t recall seeing a junkie chic aesthetic so much as a guy who was really, really skinny and really, really ugly. And yeah, I never really listened to them much, but did buy that one album. The liner notes had thumbnails of all their other albums, and thus my assumption that you can be popular in your native England without anyone knowing who you are over here.