Before their current status as major festival draws, and before their prior infamy at the forefront of one of music’s most misunderstood genres, some of the original shoegazers were just kids performing at their local tavern. And they’d wonder if anyone from their little British town would even get signed, let alone make it big.
As Adam Franklin—guitarist, singer, and songwriter for Oxford pioneers of the shoegaze alt-rock subgenre Swerverdriver—recalls, “I was at Ride’s first gig at The Jericho Tavern. I was at the bar and looked over, and saw a band that sounded like The Stooges. But they looked like they were 15, and had all these floppy fringes. I thought to myself: ‘Who are these guys? They’re pretty good.’”
Before Ride’s ascendence not only locally and in their genre, but arguably among the alt-rock greats, Franklin says their early momentum in the late 1980s was obvious. He remembers it being an “open secret” that Ride had not only been signed by Creation Records, but that the influential British indie label didn’t plan to release their music “until later on in 1990. So we’d say to ourselves: ‘Now we’ve got about six months to get signed too.’”
Franklin’s friendly competitive spirit was paired with both bands’ deep mutual admiration. Hearing all this, Ride bassist Steve Queralt says “it makes me smile” because he would previously go see Franklin’s first band, Shake Appeal, who “made us want to be the biggest band in Oxford.”
On top of that, Swerverdriver shared their demo with Ride singer and guitarist Mark Gardener, who brought it to Creation co-founder Alan McGee. The influence of rugged American alt-rockers Hüsker Dü and Dinosaur Jr. on Swerverdriver helped compel
