From: Jim Hobbs
| I've seen the Verve only once before - Brixton Academy
January 98. At the time I had glandular fever and could hardly move out of
bed, but despite my mum saying I couldn't go, I went anyway. I was really
emotional at the gig, the music moved me, but I was dissapointed that I
nearly fainted from exhaustion and not bing able to eat for 3 days.... but
enough of that jizz. So on to Wigan then: Me and my mate Charlie missed the quarter to 4 train from Manchester (the first in a series of disasters that night!), so I was dead pissed off cos I thought I would definitely miss DJ Shadow (apparently he didn't play anyway). The next train was an hour later... when we finally got to Wigan, we got a taxi the 3 or 4 odd mile journey to Haigh Hall. HAd a good old chin wag with the driver about the location of Upholland and basically slagging Wigan in general... Haigh Hall itself was a *really* beautiful setting, I'm no nature lover but it was hard not to appreciate the place. As we walked along a neverending path to the entrance we could hear an announcer come on stage - it sounded like it was the first thing that had been sadi all night, so that cheered me up as I thought I would still get to see DJ Shadow (no such luck). Entering the arena was kinda mad too... the stage was set at the bottom of a gradual slope with an amazing backdrop of Wigan, spread out before us in all it's splendour (ahem). Forgive my ignorance but just who was the old guy who looked like John Peel with a seriously amusing voice. Was it John Martin or summat? I guess having 33,000 laugh at you isn't the best feeling. Nah, to be honest some bits of his set was okay.... the music sounded a little early Verve-esque at times. After that treat (!) the DJ for the evening played "Dry The Rain" by The Beta Band, which was a result. What seemed like *ages* later a strange long-haired man stumbled onstage. Puzzled looks were exchanged but when Justin took the stage along with that old guy on guitar with short hair, we realised it was Beck. Me and Charlie weren't really that excited about seeing Beck, I'd seen them before at V97 and at a Later with Jools filming. However, the crowd seemed to really get into it, there was an almighty surge of the crowd towards the front of about 30 metres, I kinda felt sorry for the people down the front. I thought BEck's set was fantastic. Beck's DJ though nearly stole the show though as the band went off for 5 minutes allowing the DJ to showcase his fucking amazing skills... mixing and scratching like a right bastard, I was astounded by it. Then Beck took the stage again and they played a few more tunes and left the stage. It was then the turn of the Verve. Me and Charlie managed to get *right* to the front of the arena. I couldn't believe how close we were. There was like 2 people in front of us and then the barrier. Fantastic! The Verve took to the stage to estactic applause and crashed into "This Is Music". The next hour and a half were truly brilliant and well worth the £23 and hours of queueing to buy them. Personal favourites were Weeping Willow, BSS, and History. A bit disappointed they didn't play any older stuff, there was just a few off ANS and the majority from UH, but it was still all gorgeous. Although a lot of the crowd were wankers, I mean what sort of twat pays £23 to see The Verve and spends most of the night picking fights? That pissed me off a little as right down the front about 3 fights started, but generally the rest of us were good natured, helping each other get up after the next surge where everyone ended up falling over and getting trampled! My gig ended with me crowd surfing to COME ON! and it felt great. However what wasn't so great was missing the last train, due to Wigan Council's fucking inadequacies of planning the gig. For fucks sake did they not think that 33,000 people would be trying to get out at once? The gig finished at 10:35pm and it took about an hour to get out of just the arena. MY last train was at 11:24pm (yeh, that sounds sensible. How about laying on some *extra* trains!?) so by the time we got back onto the main road it was like 5 minutes till my train left and there were no taxis in sight to carry us the 4 miles back to the station. The first train the next morning was 06:22 so me and Charlie ended up spending the night in Wigan, and all I can say is that it is a SHITHOLE. We must have walked about 15 miles that night, reminiscing to when I was 9 and went to Wigan Pier, this time it was 3am and pitch black, but still a laff. God the things to do in Wigan at 3am to amuse yourself are very limited. We survived the freezing cold night and I finally got back to my Halls in Manchester at 8am. I mean it was quite funny I guess that we missed the traina and got left stranded but I wouldn't want to go through it again. The only cool thing was that I met some guy whose brother is in The Beta Band, how random is that!? Anyway, if you've got this far in the post then you deserve a medal... all I can say to thiose non-believers is that you had to be there to experience it all... RICHARD ASHCROFT IS GOD! |
From: Andrew Duggan
| Thought I'd weigh in with my Haigh Hall story. It was interesting to compare and contrast my story with the others who've already posted. As somebody has said there were a few arseholes (or snidey gits as RA put it) who paid 20 odd quid to get pissed and have a fight in a muddy field but the majority of the crowd were good natured. I spent most of the night stood just to the right of the mixing booth and the other thing I noticed was that I seemed to be the only person singing the songs off ANS. I guess you have to expect that when a band 'cross-over' but it was a bit of a let down when they first walked onstage and RA shouted "This is Music" and everybody cheered but didn't know the song. The band sounded superb (or maybe 'in fine fettle') and that's the main thing. The 12 minute wall of sound of BSS was amazing, as was the extended Come ON. I especially liked the dig at Vauxhall (who really did steal _that_ rif to ride the Verve wave) just before BSS. The program did seem a bit empty with the cancellations and maybe somebosy could tell me just how pissed that John Martin geezer was. Did anybody actually do that Mexican wave he was after? Beck was good though, I didn't expect him to dredge up I'm a looser, but he did and the crowd loved it. As has been said Beck was maybe out cooled by his DJ who managed to get an ordinary record to play 'eye of the tiger' and 'smoke on the water'. Words fail me - I'm off to get one of those white polo neck tops. All in all a top gig and the Verve were amazing. The slight tarnish on the day was not provided by the weather, which was a bit crap, but by the dickheads who can't resist the opportunity to get completely pissed up and miss the whole thing. I'm off to suck some strepsils now - yelling come on prior to the encore took its toll. |
From: Tim
| What a let-down this was. I got there early, thinking that as it is a huge gig there would be seperate 'pens' at the front to segregate the crowds, but after queuing for 4 hours and rushing down to the front to secure our space in the pen, we were shocked to find that 30,000 people would all be crushed together. Madness! Anyway, John Martyn was fabulous and I really felt for him as a lot of the crowd were morons and started booing. What they don't realise is that without people like John, there would be no Verve. He's a fantastic guitar player and you can see where Nick McCabe gets inspiration from! Most of the crowd seemed to be 14 year old UH bandwagoner Cast/Oasis/Blur fans, more intent on getting their faces on the TV screens than enjoying the music and so John only stayed for 3 songs, which was a shame. Dj Shadow and James Lavelle were absent so Beck was next, and put on decent show for the crowds. I was very near the front and it was downright dangerous. I'm seasoned gig-goer and i've never seen anything like this before. 30,000 people surging forward and crushing the people at the front. I saw people being dragged out screaming, or un-concious. And this was before the headliners came on!. When Verve took the stage we were right on the barrier at the front but it was bedlam. People were screaming to be taken out, and security were constantly hauling petrified kids out. After a couple of songs it became ridiculous. The person next to me became so crushed they passed out, and my friend couldn't breathe and started being sick. I couldn't beleive it. In the end we had to be taken out before we died. In the process the security people removed my glasses for some reason and before i'd got my breath back to ask for them I had been herded out of the side door, practically blind. No matter how strongly I protested to stewards, none of them were prepared to get my glasses for me and some were downright offensive. In the end I had to listen to the rest of the set, as I had to wait by this side door for my glasses, my view obstructed by a huge fence. What I heard sounded pretty good. Not enough from ANS though, and a couple from ASIH would have been nice. When the gig finished I reminded the stewards and they said they'd forgotten, and anyway I should go home and write to lost property! The prospect of driving 200 miles, half blind didn't thrill me too much so I persevered. About an hour after the gig had finished, I finally met someone who'd help me. I'd given up with the security officials and instead an Ambulance volunteer offered to help. Within 10 minutes of asking him he re-appeared with my glasses, which looked as though they'd been sat on. They were completely wrecked! I'd driven 200 miles to see the greatest band on earth, play the gig of their lives, but instead had a nightmare. Anyway, i've written to the record company but don't expect to hear anything... |
From: Victoria Segal (NME)
| "We've been saving it all up for this moment right
now," shouts Richard Ashcroft, his voice splintering with emotion. "Eight
fucking years and here we are." Oh yes. Here they are. No-one could deny
that tonight, The Verve are making their presence felt, all eight years
crammed into one significant show. The Mayor Of Wigan has come out in
support of them, announcing even he - and he's 61 years old, you know -
likes 'Urban Hymns'. The boys in the button-down shirts and punch-up boots, the kind of kids Richard Ashcroft probably spent a Wigan lifetime ducking blows from, they love The Verve, too. The few die-hard indie kids who remember a time when it was just them and a copy of 'A Storm In Heaven', they aren't so proud that they're going to miss their band's day of glory. From the BBC cameras filming the show with the urgency usually befitting royal weddings, to Nick McCabe's little daughter, sitting on her beaming grandad's shoulders, validation has been granted to The Verve. This is how it is now - they have nothing to prove, and accordingly, everything to lose. No-one believes that they're hapless star-sailors floating peacefully through some warped inner galaxy any more - you don't sell six million albums and remain languishing on the shelf marked 'Bloody Impossible Dreamers', that's for certain. Yet the cautionary tale of Oasis - disintegrating in a splurge of self-belief and half-digested fame - must cast a shadow over The Verve. Organising such an enormous gig is dangerous enough, as subtle an attempt at epoch-defining as tattooing 'Zeitgeist' on your head - but the danger multiplies when it's a hometown show. It just demands accusations of hubris, an open invitation for thunderbolts to streak down from the sky. There's a very thin line between triumphalist crowing and sharing the moment. This is undoubtedly an audience packed with personal associations - kids whose brothers were the year above Richard at school, who know someone who was Nick McCabe's dinner lady. From a local paper perspective, it seems like a tribute, a thank you, handily forgetting that for all the good times, there have to be bad. That this is a time for vindication as much as generosity, for the success stories to rewrite the unhappy endings of the past, laying waste to all those who failed to believe as hard or fast enough. Most of 'A Northern Soul' seemed bitter, disappointed: "I was walking to the train /This boy won't come back again" sang Ashcroft on 'Stormy Clouds', hardly a sentiment sending fond glances to his hometown. These might be Northern Souls finding their way home, but now they're here, pumped full of fame, home might not be enough to hold them. Despite largely ignoring or harassing JOHN MARTYN, The Verve's attempt at musical instruction for the young, the audience here would do anything to share in this moment of victory. Bizarrely, that means watching BECK from the other side of a Sahara-sized aesthetic gulf. The only dainty foot he puts wrong here is supporting The Verve - it's not quite right that this glossy US hipster should be in a field, for a start, and every old cultural stereotype is undermined when you realise it's the American on speaking terms with irony and the British contingent who are utterly serious. Yet from the second he appears in his tight leather trousers and hyacinth bob, he flips Wigan's wig, informing the crowd, "Y'all look like you're ready to be sexed-up," and generally being such a showman, Barnum & Bailey would be dismantled their big top in shame. It's all too easy to see Mr Hansen as some disposable art cherub; after all, he's ever so pretty, sending the audience cooing with delight like girlfriends with baby pictures, and he's been overexposed to the point you'd be forgiven for thinking he's been churning out band-clones off the coast of California. For all his ubiquity, the cultural antibody he sent flooding through pop's bloodstream, he still seems very far out tonight. It's not just the way he subverts those decrepit old festival codes - charming the sun out of an overcast sky, asking the crowd to move back because people are getting crushed, but more importantly because, "This is the kinda jam y'all need some elbow space for." Maybe it's because of the almost operatic trill of 'Loser', a song that sounds vacuum-packed fresh despite being four years old, or the bleak and bruised harmonica blues of 'One Foot In the Grave', an autopsy performed on a still-living Dylan. Maybe it's the new song he insists is called (a tribute to quaint British idiom, this) 'Diamond Bollocks', a diseased cha-cha-cha. Or maybe it's just the way his falsetto and feather fan dance send out signals that have even the butchest Gallagheralikes blushing and shivering. Tonight, everyone is Beck's special lady. And the strange thing is, no-one even thought he was their date. The headliners offer a different kind of togetherness, an empathy that stretches beyond a glance across a crowded room. What Beck doesn't realise is that as he highkicks his way through 'Devil's Haircut', a huge gang of people are kicking down the perimeter fence. Bottles are thrown. One offender is pinioned to the ground by six policemen. Security paranoia breaks out. No-one would do this for Beck. This is The Verve's constituency, and as Richard materialises on stage like a fury, arms flapping, mouth contorting in his magic incantation 'Come on!', it's easy to see why. From the opening 'This Is Music', raw and raging, to Richard's gleeful trouncing of TV's swearing and smoking rules, this is a show of fierce defiance. It's soon clear that any bloated hubris has been quickly deflated - there's no tedious indulgence, no 37 minute versions of 'Slide Away', nothing to make you feel that this is a vicious e ndurance test as punishment for all those copies of 'Gravity Grave' left languishing in chart return shops all those years ago. Richard might look as if he's ready for a fight, but this audience aren't the enemy - he's just checking they're onside, that they love this music enough. Unlike, oh, Oasis, say, there's still a gentleness at the heart of these songs, a sense that to belong you don't have to be like the band, just unlike the people that harm them. 'Space And Time' admits as much, the words, "I just can't make it on my own" hovering over 33,000 people all too happy to offer a shoulder to cry on. There's no mistaking Richard for Everyman, though; rapt, one hand in the air like he's missing a bible, he's testifying up there, pulling the prophet trick of seeing something no-one else can see, yet encouraging belief. For all the undeniable anthems - the translucent purity of 'The Drugs Don't Work', the incipient hysteria of 'History' - the songs also take a step beyond. It's unsurprising that tonight focuses on 'Urban Hymns' - not only because of the Manics' like old-fans-new-fans divide, but because those songs need more space to unfold. Less specifically personal, they fit a vast audience - the oilslick surge of 'Catching The Butterfly', the small epiphanies of 'Velvet Morning', the venomous tang of 'The Rolling People'. By now, 'Bittersweet Symphony' should be as pallidly commonplace as an Athena postcard, chewed up by the world of radio and advertising, yet the moment those iconic strings pitch in, it's given a whole new charge. "This song has been stolen," says Richard gravely beforehand. "This is a song for the people. This is a modern day blues song." It's this communication that saves The Verve - no longer lost on their own mysterious planet, nor yet beached on some exclusive desert island, they give fresh credibility to the messy idea of unity through music. Forget all the inevitable bleating about Spike Island and Maine Road, all those precedents creakingly wheeled out as validation, as 'classic' perspective. Thankfully, tonight never deliberately set out to grab at history - instead concentrating on taking another little piece of the hearts and memories of those singing along with 'Bittersweet Symphony'. Before 'History', Richard declares: "It's about love. It's about you lot making this one of the greatest days of my life. Come on!" As long as The Verve reach out like this, the people will keep on coming. No stormy clouds here. Just new horizons. |
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