As expected, the split of Liam Gallagher’s group Beady Eye has been followed by the re-formation of a classic Creation Records group – but it’s fans of Ride, rather than supporters of Oasis who will be celebrating the news that the Oxford shoegazers have reunited.
Ride are to play their first shows in 20 years in May 2015, culminating in a headline show at the Field Day festival in London on Sunday 7 June. Though the band themselves had nothing to say about their return, the statement announcing it contained two messages in the form of quotes.
The first, from David Crosby, read: “Your first band is like your first love; you never forget it, and you never feel quite the same way about any other band.” The second, from the French economist Jacques Attali, read: “In noise can be read the codes of life, the relations among men. Clamour, Melody, Dissonance, Harmony; when it is fashioned by man with specific tools, when it invades man’s time, when it becomes sound, noise is the source of the purpose and power, of the dream – Music.”
Beady Eye’s split had led to strong rumours that Ride would reunite, and when photos of giant posters for next summer’s Primavera festival bearing the band’s logo were posted to social media on Tuesday, it appeared to be all but official. Now it is official.
The band – Andy Bell, Mark Gardener, Loz Colbert and Steve Queralt – formed in 1988, and signed to Creation in 1989. A series of three EPs – Ride, Play and Fall – made them indie sensations, followed by a self titled debut album in 1990, which became the first Creation album to enter the top 75. By the time the band split, before the release of their final album Tarantula in 1996, relations between Gardener and Bell were all but non-existent.
Their previous album, Carnival of Light, had seen the two men’s songs appear separately on either side of the record. “Imagine an argument where the way you win, is by saying ‘I don’t want my songs on the same side of the album as yours,’ and it actually happens,” Bell later said. “We were allowed by the people around us to behave like total babies.”
The tension did ease, however, and in 2001 Ride came together for a one-off performance for TV, and the pair appeared together on stage in Stockholm when Gardener played there in 2003. Bell has had the most high profile career since Ride’s breakup. His band Hurricane No 1 were briefly successful before he joined Oasis as bassist in 1999. When Oasis broke up in 2009, he followed Liam Gallagher to High Flying Birds.
As is so often the case, their reputation has grown in their absence, with Nowhere appearing in Pitchfork’s Top 100 albums of the 1990s.
Ride’s tour details are as follows:
Friday 22 May 2015 – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
Saturday 23 May 2015 – Albert Hall, Manchester
Sunday 24 May 2015 – Roundhouse, London
Tuesday 26 May 2015 – Paradiso, Amsterdam
Wednesday 27 May 2015 – Olympia, Paris
Friday 29 May 2015 Primavera Sound Festival, Barcelona
Tuesday 2 June 2015 DanForth Music Hall, Toronto
Thursday 4 June 2015 Terminal 5, New York
Sunday 7 June 2015 Field Day (headlining) London
