During the recording sessions for 'A Northern Soul', a heavy strain of Verve voodoo started to take its toll on the band. Richard had just split up with his long-term girlfriend and went missing for days without saying to anyone where he was going. He and Nick were barely communicating. The exhausting schedules and the band's obsession for absolute perfection drove producer Owen Morris to a near nervous breakdown.

Richard: "It was all about waiting for the ispiration. Feel was everything. And if it wasn't there, we'd get really, really depressed. The songs'd sound good but there wasn't that magic. We were waiting or that magic all the time. Then it'd just happen and it'd just be, ''Yes!'. But, like any experience in life, when you go really up, when you reach the peaks, the comedown is incredible. And after 6 weeks of going up and crashing down, everything you've been doing takes its toll. You start losing it."

In May The Verve released the single 'This Is Music', followed on the 3rd of July by the album 'A Northern Soul'.

In July The Verve embarked on a long and exhausting US tour and in August they came back to the UK to take part to the T In the Park festival in Scotland.

On the 6th of August, just one day after their performance at the festival, Richard suddendly told the group's manager that he had decided to leave The Verve because "" It doesn't feel the right thing anymore". After a few days the remaining members of the band decided to split up The Verve for good.

John Best : "Richard left for a while during the recording of the album, he walked out of the studio. It was an emotionally fraught time for the band. I admire Richard's integrity, 'cos it's come at a time when everyone has decided that they are a great band. Having spoken to him and knowing him, I realise it is an irrevocable decision. They're not like other bands. They're not doing it to be famous, they're doing it 'cos they're musicians. The Verve is the four of them."

On September 18 The Verve released their last, postoumous record, 'HISTORY', The single release had been scheduled long before Richard decided to quit so the words pictured on the sleeve seemed even more fatalistic, 'All farewells should be sudden'.

Richard: "I remember sitting in a hotel room overlooking the cliffs in Cornwall, and Radio One came on and it said, 'The Verve are history and this is their final single History', and I was more choked than I've ever been in my life. The total is always more than the sum and when I heard that blasting out I was gutted. I'm The Verve biggest fan, y'know... the point is, we had to split. I don't like living a lie and we had to do it. When we were recording 'A Northern Soul' we went into the scary zone, to places where it takes along time to come to terms with what went on there. I't something that went almost behind my control."

Within 2 months of the split Richard decided to form a new band and called back Simon Jones and Peter Salisbury along with a new guitarist, his old school mate SIMON TONG. In November 1995 the ex-Verve tried to record some new material with A Storm in Heaven producer John Leckie and then with A Northern Soul's Owen Morris. After a brilliant start, Richard pointed out that it wasn't working to his pleasure and set out to look for a further lead guitarist.