The Verve's festival fever

21-07-2008 13:15

The Verve reformed so they could play festivals.The veteran indie rockers are doing their first-ever round of festival headline slots this year.The Verve - who reunited a year ago - have been getting rave reviews for their performances, which have so far included the Glastonbury and T in the Park festivals. Speaking backstage before his performance at T in the Park, guitarist Nick McCabe said: "Doing festivals, more than anything else, was what got us all excited when getting back together was first mooted. That was kind of where we knew we could make sense and Glastonbury was vindication of that."The Verve have already broken up twice, once in 1995 and again in 1999. The second time they split soon after achieving commercial success with their third album 'Urban Hymns', resulting in the band never properly touring the album.Bassist Simon Jones added: "We never got to play those big slots at festivals that we - and lots of other people - always thought we'd be really suited to. So to do a whole summer of these sort of shows is amazing."The band has been praised for the way their present sets balance experimentation with their more successful songs. Lead singer Richard Ashcroft has said the band are: "one of the few bands who can jam without sounding like [American middle of the road rockers] Lynyrd Skynyrd on a bad night."