Elbow
Alternative / Rock
Mark Potter (guitar), Richard Jupp (drums), Craig Potter (organ), Pete Turner (bass) and Guy Garvey (vocals) met, ten years ago, at sixth-form college in Bury, north Manchester. Outsiders in a run-down, narrow-minded town, they bonded over U2, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. And formed a band, Soft. For a while they played, what Pete calls, "chilled funk", and were, it's generally agreed, "shit". Relocating to Manchester itself - most of the band getting work at local underground venue The Roadhouse - they changed their name to Elbow ("the most sensuous word in the world," according to a nurse in Dennis Potter's television-series, 'The Singing Detective') and began to evolve a new sound, wherein driving organ, star-kissed guitars, Guy's fallen-angel vocals and tough grooves were merged into (sometimes eight-minute long!) songs. Songs that owe as much to 60's folk and prog-rockers King Crimson - "We've described ourselves as prog-rock with no solos," offers Guy, unapologetically - as they do the quicksilver melodic rock of The Stone Roses, or funk influences like Sly Stone.
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