How a Sample from 'The Last Time' Cost The Verve Everything — and Then Came Back

The sample Richard Ashcroft loved wasn’t even from the Rolling Stones’ original 1965 single “The Last Time” — it was from a 1966 orchestral cover of that song arranged by Andrew Loog Oldham, the Stones’ former manager. The Verve licensed the recording for “Bitter Sweet Symphony” from Decca, the label that owned the master. But they never cleared the underlying composition, which was owned by ABKCO Music, controlled by the notoriously litigious Allen Klein. After the song became a global hit, ABKCO sued, arguing the sample was used beyond the agreed length and that the band had effectively built the entire song around it.

The settlement gave 100% of publishing royalties to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and stripped Ashcroft of his songwriting credit. For over two decades, Jagger and Richards were listed as the writers of a song Ashcroft had written himself — a fact that stung especially hard because the lawsuit also wiped out the royalties for Ashcroft’s bandmates. Then in 2019, after years of public pressure and a quiet campaign by Ashcroft, Jagger and Richards signed over their rights. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone: the band that lost everything to a sample ended up getting it back from the very people who’d been paid for it.