30 Fascinating Facts About Elbow That You Probably Didn't Know

28 May 2019, 2:16 pm EDT By Ruby Karnick

Elbow, with a total of seven studio albums released, and seven accolades to their name, was first formed in Cury, Great Manchester, England, in the year 1990, and currently consists of Guy Garvey, Craig Potter, Mark Potter and Pete Turner. Here are some interesting facts about the English rock band:

All of their seven studio albums, along with their B-sides compilation "Dead in the Boot," have reportedly reached the top 15 of the British album chart.
The band composed and recorded "First Steps," with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the NovaVox gospel choir, which was the BBC theme for the 2012 London Olympics.
The debut studio album "Asleep in the Black," released in May 2001, came in four different versions - the 12-track version, two 11-track versions and a 10-track version.
Though the said album was the first to be released, it was not actually the first album to be recorded, as an album's worth material recorded was scrapped by the band, when they were dropped by Island Records.
Their debut album "Asleep in the Back," was listed as one of the best 50 albums of the year 2001 by Q magazine.
It was reported that the song "Asleep in the Back" was originally not on the eponymous album, but was later added on in the album as a bonus track.
The title of the band's second album "Cast of Thousands," is said to be a reference of the song "Grace Under Pressure", whose refrain was recorded live at the Glastonbury Festival in 2002.
At the age of 16, Garvey met Mark Potter in 1990, while both were attending Bury College, following which Potter asked Garvey to sing in the band "Mr Soft," with drummer Richard Jupp and bassist Pete Turner.
After a few gigs, the band name was shortened to just "Soft." Mark's brother Craig Potter also joined the band on keyboards. This final line-up played their first gig together at the Corner Pin pub in Ramsbottom.
The band's name was changed for a third time to "Elbow," in the year 1997, which was reportedly inspired by a line in the BBC TV drama "The Singing Detective" in which the character Philip Marlow describes the word "elbow" as the loveliest word in the English language.

They first signed with the Island Records and recorded their first album with producer Steve Osborne at Real World Studios. However, they were dropped in a mass cull, when the Island Records was sold out to Universal.
The band's sixth studio album "The Take Off and Landing of Everything," which first had the working title "All at Once," then the title of "Carry Her, Carry Me," is officially the band's first chart-topper, having debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart.
Their first album "Asleep in the Back," was said to be written over the course of six years, and contains six rerecorded tracks from the Real World Studios sessions.
The band’s debut album was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize and earned the band a BRIT Award nomination for Best New British Band.
The band toured Cuba in the year 2004, during which they played songs from both the first and second album, "Asleep in the Back" and "Cast of Thousands" at venues in and around Havana.
It was reported that a larger portion of the tour was filmed by British documentary maker Irshad Ashraf. The said short film was shown at film festivals in the year 2004, but remains commercially unavailable.
For their third album "Leaders of the Free World," which they self-produced at Blueprint Studios, the band teamed up with video artists The Soup Collective to produce an integrated music and video DVD.]
Their fourth studio album "The Seldom Seen Kid," earned the band a Mercury Music Prize and two Ivor Novello Awards. The band was also named the Best International Band at the Meteor Awards in Dublin on March 17, 2009.
The second single "One Day Like This," from the album "The Seldom Seen Kid," which won the Ivor Novello award for Best Song, was placed at number 41 on the NME's list of "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years."
The said album, which was released by Fiction Records, debuted at number five on the UK Albums Chart, the highest charting position of the band's career until then.

The first single "Grounds for Divorce," from the fourth album "The Seldom Seen Kid," which won the Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song, was featured in a TV ad for the video game "Left 4 Dead."
The same song was reportedly featured in the trailer for the 2008 Coen Brothers film "Burn After Reading," and was also featured in a promo-ad for the 6th season of the hit TV-show "House."
A version of the second single "One Day Like This," without the lyrics, was reportedly featured as background and theme for the BBC's coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games.
In July 2011, their fourth album "The Seldom Seen Kid" is said to have reached No. 59 from their spot of No. 103, in the album's 159th charting week, making it one of the few albums to have charted for more than 3 years.
The same album, which earned the band the Best British Group at the 2009 Brit Awards, was included in the book “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.”
The follow-up fifth studio album "Build a Rocket Boys!" which was well received by the music critics, debuted at the number 2 on the UK album chart with first week sales of 78,177 units.
It was reported that, Garvey revised some of the "The Take Off and Landing of Everything" album's lyrics, after ending his relationship with his long-term girlfriend, journalist and novelist Emma Jane Unsworth.
In fact, it was Unsworth who had suggested the title of "My Sad Captains" from a line in Shakespeare's play "Antony and Cleopatra."
The said album "The Take Off and Landing of Everything," marked the first time, in the band's entire career, where the members did not write the album together as a group, but composed songs separately and brought it to the attentions of other members when it was almost complete.
The most popular Britain's arts series "The South Bank Show" aired a 60-minute documentary about Elbow in November 2009, on ITV, with footages from the band's live performance at Manchester Evening News Arena.