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(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n
Sun 15 March 2026 7:00, UK <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are afraid to use the word spiritual,\u201d ex-Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft<\/a> said in 1998, shortly after his group\u2019s third album, Urban Hymns, had shot them to international \u2018it\u2019 band status, adding, \u201cI\u2019m a firm believer in songs coming from an infinite pool, and you have to be in a certain state of mind to get them.\u201d<\/p>\n As was often the case at the time, Ashcroft was speaking specifically about the origins of the song that, in retrospect, could be considered the final glorious moment of Britpop: the massive, transcendent mega-hit \u2018Bittersweet Symphony\u2019. Listeners who hadn\u2019t been clued into the Verve beforehand, which included most of America, were dumbfounded at how a young band could emerge seemingly from out of nowhere with an anthemic song that instantly sounded like a classic, up there in the \u2018Hey Jude\u2019 or \u2018You Can\u2019t Always Get What You Want\u2019 territory.<\/p>\n If you bought Urban Hymns on CD and had a peek at its liner notes, the answer seemed to present itself: \u2018Bittersweet Symphony\u2019 was credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, suggesting it must have been some obscure Rolling Stones B-side that Ashcroft and his mates dusted off. That explanation made a lot more sense, but of course, as would be well documented over the ensuing years, it wasn\u2019t true. The Verve had indeed used a small sample from an old orchestral cover of a Stones song (\u2018The Last Time\u2019), but the song was otherwise a wholly original creation of the band, plucked out of the creative ether by Ashcroft during one of his legendary \u201cvisualisation\u201d sessions.<\/p>\n The frontman personally defined visualisation as \u201cbeing able to construct the future, to somehow have an influence over the future\u201d. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a concept that many athletes use to imagine themselves succeeding before entering into the field of competition, but it\u2019s a slightly different process when the visualising moves from a physical manifestation into a creative or artistic one. In his youth, he had been heavily influenced by his stepfather, a former practising mystic in an ancient secular order known as the Rosicrucians. It sounds like an improvised backstory for a character in Spinal Tap<\/a>, but indeed, Richard used to train with his stepdad, trying to use the power of the mind to heal football injuries or predict the future.<\/p>\n \u201cI used to know when a song would be on the radio,\u201d Ashcroft claimed, \u201cI\u2019d have the tape player lined up. It may not have been a song around at that moment; it might have been a song done five years earlier. But I seemed to have the knack to find it straightaway when it came on the radio.\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, when he was leading a rock band of his own, Ashcroft applied these old visualisation techniques as a way to breathe his own songs into existence. In the case of his biggest hit, there wasn\u2019t a specific melody or lyric that got the ball rolling. \u2018Bittersweet Symphony\u2019 emerged by following a feeling; one that actually started somewhere closer to a Clint Eastwood movie.<\/p>\n