Originally published in Uncut’s January 2007 issue (Take 116). Interview: Stephen Troussé Richard Ashcroft seems to have been definitively caught in the public imagination by the iconic video for The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”: the swaggering, leather-jacketed loner, striding determine...
What’s your favourite line of poetry?
Mike West, Letchworth
“They fuck you up your mum and dad”. I am a Philip Larkin fan, yeah! I’m not a massive poetry reader, but Larkin is great and Housman, William Blake, all those. But I’m not good at memorising. I’ve got so many lyrics to remember – that’s the problem!
During my coma, my family played “Sonnet”, “Bittersweet Symphony”, “Lucky Man”. I came out of my coma knowing that during my comatose state, I was hearing dang fine music. Do you believe that music can heal?
Joey Dennis, Austin, Texas
I hope he’s feeling good. He’s actually the second person who’s come out of a coma after being played our songs. There was a girl in Italy, too. Without a doubt, music is a healer. I’m not saying I’m like a shaman! But if someone’s in a melancholic state or a depressed state, you don’t want to put something on that’s totally positive. You can play melancholy to melancholy and it cancels it out, soothes the mind. The creative process for me is about staying alive, keeping sane, keeping on a level. Without it, I’d go a bit crazy.
Your voice has come to the fore in recent years – have you had any training?
Jay Shandle, via email
No training, no. I think you can either sing or you can’t. What’s incredible is how few people can. And now there’s this thing – Auto-Tune. You just press a button and everyone’s in tune, but it doesn’t mean they’ve got soul. You listen to Elvis – he didn’t write his songs but he got into them to the point that you believed that Elvis owned that song. Those kind of voices have always influenced me.
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