The English rock band The Verve experienced a breakthrough in 1997 with one of the best-selling albums in UK history, which featured the track “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” based on a Rolling Stones original that landed in hot water.
Formed in 1990, the band went through lineup changes, internal struggles, and more before releasing their album Urban Hymns. The album would become their biggest claim to fame thanks to the popularity of “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” which became an international hit. It landed at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 4 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
The song received multiple certifications and was tagged by Rolling Stone and NME as Single of the Year and was nominated for Best British Single at the 1998 Brit Awards. Its success continued when it was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Song and named one of the greatest songs of the decade.
The Verve were at the top until they weren’t, due to how the track was created. “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was based on “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones that they released in 1965 as their first original song. As the track was a hit in the UK, the band’s manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham created an orchestral cover of it with the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, written by David Whitaker.
According to reports, the Verve songwriter Richard Ashcroft heard the orchestral version and thought they could turn it into their own hit. In 1997, the band negotiated rights to use a six-note sample of the string riff from Decca Records, who were copyright holders of the Rolling Stones. As a result, the band thought they were in the clear and developed “Bitter Sweet Symphony.”
Unknown to them, they overlooked a major aspect of the song’s copyrights. The Verve failed to get permission from Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, who had rights to their songs pre-1970. “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was already released when they noticed the issue, but Klein refused to grant them a license for the sample. It resulted in a lawsuit between the Verve and ABKCO Records and led to the band relinquishing all royalties for the song.
The Verve’s bass player, Simon Jones, said, “We were told it was going to be a 50/50 split, and then they saw how well the record was doing. They rung up and said we want 100 percent or take it out of the shops, you don’t have much choice.”
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were also given songwriting credits, with Ashcroft having bitterly joked that “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was the best song the duo wrote in 20 years. The controversy around the track wasn’t something that Jagger pushed for, as he once commented, “I’m out of whack here, this is serious lawyer shit. If the Verve can write a better song, they can keep the money.”
In 2019, Jagger, Richards, and Klein’s son ceded the rights to Ashcroft, who had received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors. At the ceremony, he said what they did was a “truly kind and magnanimous thing” and called the Rolling Stones the “greatest rock and roll band in the world.”
Related: 1962 Pop Song, Written by Carole King for Her Babysitter, Launched a 17-Year-Old Singer’s Career
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