John Tavener – The Protecting Veil
This is a record that got me through quite a difficult point with The Verve. I was expecting my daughter at the time and we were recording A Storm In Heaven at Sawmills in Cornwall. It was pretty remote. We'd polished off a bottle of wine at dinner and we were smoking quite a lot as well. I just needed to go and get my head together for an hour before I went back to making the record and this was the album I listened to. I see it as a very ecstatic and comforting record. And I've played it to people since and the reaction seems to be, "This is terrifying!" But I really don't see that at all. To me it was just disappearing into something for an hour that was heavenly and ecstatic, which was exactly what I needed. I was conflicted and worrying about my future – whether I was doing the right thing. For a long time I had this feeling that what I was doing was a complete joke and I'd be exposed as a charlatan. There was a general sense of paranoia – that working class thing. Lots of people around me were saying get a proper job. My thinking on the whole thing was that it was all going to end rather badly, which wasn't really conducive to being creative. The album was a freebie from Virgin, and it had a huge comforting effect on me.