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Richard Paul Ashcroft (born September 11, 1971 in Billinge Higher End, Lancashire) is an English singer-songwriter. He is the lead singer of The Verve, an English rock band that he helped form in 1989. He is also a solo artist in his own right and he is still scheduled to resume and continue with his solo career at some point in the future, despite being busy with newly reformed The Verve at present.
Ashcroft grew up in Up Holland, Lancashire with his mother, who was a hairdresser, and his sisters. His father died when Richard was 11 as a result of a brain hemorrhage. Ashcroft soon fell under the influence of his stepfather, Doug (who incidentally was also called Ashcroft) who belonged to the Rosicrucians.
While in Up Holland, Ashcroft was an avid football player. He still closely follows his favourite team, Manchester United. He has also admitted to cheering for Wigan Athletic, since he actually played for the youth team when he was young and they are geographically the closest professional team to where he grew up. Ashcroft`s slightly misshapen nose can be credited to a broken nose he sustained playing football at school.
At school, Ashcroft admitted to having nicknames such as `spliffhead` and he was also dubbed `the cancer of the class`.
The Verve years: 1989-1999
Ashcroft formed The Verve (although until 1994 it was named simply Verve) in 1989 with his high school friends. The band members shared a collective liking for The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Raspberries, Funkadelic, and Krautrock, as well as a near-legendary appetite for psychedelic drugs. They were signed to Hut Records and became a critical hit soon after.
The band released the Verve EP in December 1992 before their first full-length album, A Storm in Heaven, came out in mid-1993. It was a critical smash and extremely popular in the underground public, but it failed to match that kind of success in the mainstream. Around this time the band changed their name to The Verve due to legal reasons. Afterwards they released an album with outtakes and b-sides entitled No Come Down in 1994.
1995 saw the release of the album A Northern Soul. Here the band departed from the neo-psychedelic sounds of A Storm in Heaven and focused more on conventional alternative rock, although signs of their early sound are still present in the record. During this time the band was named as a member of the popular Britpop movement, mostly due to the band`s friendship with Oasis rather than their music. Popularity increased, but album sales were disappointing for the band with only 40,000 albums approximately sold - distinctly average in 1995. The album is now considered to be a `lost gem` of the nineties. Tensions within the band reached boiling point, in particular between Ashcroft and guitarist Nick McCabe and the band disbanded.
From Autumn `96 to Spring `97 the band regrouped and worked on the third album. Most of Ashcroft`s songs on this album were written while he was on holiday in Bath when the band had yet to reform. It was initially intended to be Ashcroft`s first solo album. With McCabe yet to be invited back to the fold, friend of the band, guitarist and keyboardist Simon Tong was draughted in. In 1997 McCabe returned, with Ashcroft realising if it was to be an album from The Verve, McCabe would have to be involved. The five members finished Urban Hymns and the release was in September 1997. With the release of the first single off the
Biography Credit: wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ashcroft
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We`re in a malaise. What do people really believe in any more apart from sport and music?
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