The famous orchestral sound in The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” ultimately comes from a recording connected to The Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time”.

But there’s a twist.

The Verve didn’t directly sample the Rolling Stones recording everybody knows.

They sampled an orchestral version recorded by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra.

And that distinction triggered one of the most famous copyright disputes in British music history.

What exactly was sampled?

Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham released orchestral interpretations of Stones songs.

One of them was “The Last Time”.

That recording contained the sweeping strings that Richard Ashcroft and The Verve transformed into the repeating foundation of “Bitter Sweet Symphony”.

Did The Verve get permission?

This is where things became complicated.

The Verve cleared use of the orchestral recording.

But the underlying composition was controlled separately.

The publishing rights connected to “The Last Time” were owned by Allen Klein’s ABKCO.

A legal dispute followed over how much of the composition and recording had been used.

What happened to the royalties?

Richard Ashcroft lost them.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were subsequently credited as songwriters and the publishing royalties went away from Ashcroft.

Imagine writing the biggest song of your career.

Then watching somebody else receive the songwriting money.

For more than two decades.

Did Jagger and Richards actually write the famous string part?

No.

That’s another reason the case became so controversial.

The sampled recording was an orchestral reinterpretation.

The famous arrangement wasn’t simply lifted from the original Rolling Stones single.

Yet publishing law concerns the underlying composition as well as the recording.

That distinction matters enormously.

Did The Verve steal the song?

“Steal” is too simplistic.

They deliberately used an existing recording.

They weren’t pretending the orchestral material magically appeared.

The problem was rights clearance and the extent of permitted use.

That’s very different from secretly copying another songwriter.

What changed in 2019?

Something remarkable.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards agreed to give their claim back to Richard Ashcroft.

Ashcroft announced that he had regained songwriting credit and future royalties from “Bitter Sweet Symphony”.

More than 20 years after the song became famous, the dispute effectively ended.

Was Allen Klein more responsible than the Rolling Stones?

Ashcroft has been careful about this distinction.

Allen Klein and ABKCO drove the original dispute.

When the situation was eventually resolved, Ashcroft publicly thanked Jagger and Richards for their role in returning the rights.

What does “Bitter Sweet Symphony” mean?

The title perfectly describes life as Ashcroft sees it.

Beautiful.

Terrible.

Meaningful.

Pointless.

All at once.

The song focuses partly on being trapped by money and ordinary existence.

Which became painfully ironic after the copyright dispute.

A song partly about money ended up generating huge amounts of money that its writer couldn’t collect.

Why is the music video famous?

Ashcroft walks down a London street refusing to move around other pedestrians.

People collide with him.

He continues.

The visual is extremely simple.

It also perfectly captures the song.

Life keeps pushing against you.

You keep walking.

Songs with similar musical rabbit holes

If you enjoy discovering where famous songs came from, explore:

Madonna – Hung Up / ABBA – Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

The Notorious B.I.G. – Mo Money Mo Problems / Diana Ross – I’m Coming Out

Kanye West – Stronger / Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

2Pac – Changes / Bruce Hornsby – The Way It Is

Mariah Carey – Fantasy / Tom Tom Club – Genius of Love

Why does the story matter?

Because “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is almost the perfect introduction to music copyright.

A recording has rights.

A composition has rights.

A sample may involve both.

Clearing one doesn’t necessarily clear the other.

For listeners, that legal mess produced one of the greatest songs of the 1990s.

For Richard Ashcroft, it produced more than two decades of frustration.

Pretty bittersweet.