Richard approached former Stone Roses guitarist JOHN SQUIRE during a party but was immediately turned down as Squire was already making plans for his own band, 'The Seahorses'. He also tried to contact ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler but it didn't work.

On March 14, 1996 Richard was invited by Noel Gallagher to appear as special guest at the OASIS show in New York City, where he played 3 songs on acoustic guitar, 'Drugs Don't Work', 'Space and Time' and 'Sonnet'.

Richard: "It charged the batteries. But it was never going to be anything more, I only did 3 songs. It was lonely as well. It just showed me that I'm not a solo artist. I felt so alone up there."

After 18 months of fruitless recording sessions with variuos producers Richard, out of frustration, finally picked up the phone and asked Nick McCabe to rejoin the band.

Richard: "A lot of things happened that only the people in the band will ever know about. The break-up was basically about having to stop something before it went beyond any possibility of ever getting it back. Emotionally, me and Nick needed a bit of space between each other. But I got to the point one year ago when nothing other than The Verve was gonna do for me. I needed the secret element. I needed Nick McCabe."

In the first weeks of 1997 The Verve officially reformed with its original line up, keeping Simon Tong as keyboard player and second guitarist. Nick immediately joined his bandmates in the studio with producer Chris Potter and started playing his new guitar parts over the existing recordings.

In April 1997 the re-born Verve announced the dates for their first british tour in 2 years, all of the 5 gigs sold out in a few days and some of the venues had to be upgraded. On the 12nd of June, just 2 days before the first concert in Sheffield, the band was forced to call off the tour as Richard contracted a viral infection.

On the 16th of June, The Verve released their first post-resurrection single, 'BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY'. The track went straight to number 2 in the UK and stayed in the charts for more than 15 weeks. It entered the Top Ten in many other countries such as Italy, South Africa, Arabia and Sweden, becoming the song of the year and a worldwide anthem making The Verve the sensation of the moment.

And then The Verve curse struck again when Allen Klein, former Rolling Stones manager and owner of the copyrights on most of the Stones' back catalogue, claimed 100 per cent of the royalties of 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' for sampling the string section from the Stones' 'The Last Time' arranged by Andrew Loog Oldham.

Richard :"Basically we took a piece of strings that were arranged by Andrew Loog Oldham who did a strings album of Stones' songs. He stretched it so it doesn't even sound like the original song, and we took a bit of string and a bit of bongo and... built... the fucking symphony around it. "

On September 29th The Verve released their 3rd album, 'URBAN HYMNS'. It immediately reached the top of the UK charts where stayed for many weeks selling more than 2 million copies worldwide.

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.