Ride

Ride formed in Oxford, England in 1988 and consisted of members Andy Bell, Laurence Colbert, Mark Gardener, and Steve Queralt. Before the group’s formation Bell and Garderner were involved in musical theatre at Cheney School in Oxford, but eventually went on to study art and design at North Oxfordshire located in Banbury. They met fellow student Colbert there and recruited him to be the band’s drummer. Queralt (who was in the reggae/pop band the Spiderbacks with Bell) became the group’s bassist. The members shared a love for 60s psychedelic rock bands like the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd and the Byrds as well as 80s noise-pop acts such as Spaceman 3 and Sonic Youth; however, Ride reportedly owes it’s existence to The Smiths (one of their performances was a life-altering experience for Bell).

Ride recorded their first demo in 1988, which consisted of the songs “Chelsea Girls” and “Drive Blind”. Jim Reid, the lead singer of the Jesus & Mary Chain heard the demo and impressed by the group’s sound past it on to his manager Alan McGee. Less than a year later McGee signed the band to Creation Records. Ride proved to be one of the labels most promising acts. Within 9 months the band had recorded and released 3 EPs “Ride”, “Play”, and “Fall” all which entered the UK Top 75.

On 15 October 1990, Ride released their studio debut “Nowhere”. The album included all of tracks on their “Fall” EP as well as an additional 4 newly recorded songs. It was a commercial and critical landmark for the group, going silver in the UK and rising to No. 11 on the charts. The album has been recognized as an essential record of the shoegaze genre (a label the band often rejects) and likewise one of the greatest albums of the 90s. One of the album’s songs “Vapour Trail” has left a strong impression on popular culture as well. It appeared at No.145 on Pitchfork’s Top 200 Tracks and was also mentioned in the book “Perks of Being a Wallflower”.

Due to the hype created from their studio debut, fans were eager to hear a new recording form the band. Ride answered their audience’s demand with their 1991 EP “Today Forever”. As “Nowhere” established the group as noise-rock heroes “Today Forever” acted as an erasure for that title and saw the group headed towards a more pop oriented direction. Despite the change in sound the EP did well commercially and critically and was followed by a near-instantly sold out tour of Japan.

The band toured excessively around this time and the strain it placed on the members started to show; however, they returned with another ecstatically reviewed and commercially accepted album “Going Blank Again”. This was followed by more touring, this time alongside the brit-pop group the Charlatans.

Around the time of the recording of their 3rd album “Carnival of Light” the band was self-reportedly delving into extreme indulgence and treated their music on a secondary level. Inevitably the album received harsh reactions from both critics and the band themselves. Their next album “Tarantula” did not do much better. The band was starting to implode at this point, stemmed largely by disagreements between Bell and Gardner. The writing on the album was split between the 2 musicians, with Bell accounting for most of the material. The album struggled on the charts and was dismissed by critics, eventually being dropped by its label within 1 week of sales.

Roughly 6 years after the band’s demise they appeared in a Sonic Youth documentary and played a 20 minute jam session for the film, which was later released in 2002 as “Coming up for Air”. In November of 2014 the band announced that they would be reuniting and released a string of tour dates including gigs in Glasgow, Manchester, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and New York.