#BBCRadio6Music #TheVerve #RichardAshcroft #1990s
"Slide away, burn away
I read your mind"
25 years ago today The Verve released debut studio album "A Storm in Heaven"
* The album was recorded at Sawmills Studios in Cornwall over a seven week period between December 1992 and January 1993, with John Leckie in the producer's chair, and took its title from a book detailing the effects of LSD on the United States during the counterculture movement of the 1960's.
* Two decades after the album's release Leckie admitted that he jumped at the chance to produce the band as they were "one of the only bands that I’ve ever begged to work with... I just couldn’t believe what I was witnessing."
* The band incorporated a range of diverse influences while composing the music, ranging from Cocteau Twins and Can to free jazz.
* Penultimate track "Butterfly" was reportedly recorded at three a.m. while playing along with a Steely Dan sample. Drummer Peter Salisbury's percussion drew inspiration Dr. John's Gris-Gris album, while the brass section from the Kick Horns on "The Sun, The Sea" and "Butterfly" was influenced by Fun House. "The band that Virgin signed, we ditched early on", McCabe said, "... early demos were like Rolling Stones power-pop tunes. They bore no relation to what ended up on A Storm in Heaven."
* While recording, Ashcroft would often improvise lyrics on the spot – the vocal take for "Blue" was only completed at six a.m. on the day that the band's record label were scheduled to receive the album's master tapes.
* As with all of the band's releases, A Storm in Heaven features artwork designed by Brian Cannon who described in a feature on the band in Select Magazine in 1998 the inspiration behind the artwork. According to Cannon the sleeve was done "in the days when we had loads of time to do the job. In the end, this image of a journey of life almost seemed to create itself. It's four scenes - birth, youth, middle age and old age. The front cover is Thor's Cave in Staffordshire, the burning car scene is in Billinge, the cellar is in Upholland and the old man in Richard's clothes is Birkdale cemetery. The 'youth' part is the car on fire, and the band just playing chess to give off a 'we-don't-give-a-shit' vibe."
* Nick Southall's 2003 retrospective for Stylus Magazine described the album's genesis as a result of the band going “into the studio with half a dozen riffs, half a dozen half-baked lyrics and a thousand ideas of ways to reach the sky. Leckie managed to seize the controls and apply the necessary degree of restraint and maturity, guiding the band back down to earth when they threatened to fly too close to the sun.”
