Ride

With their vast oceans of shimmering guitars, Ride became a key band in the British shoegaze scene of the '90s. Singer/guitarists Andy Bell and Mark Gardener, bassist Steve Queralt, and drummer Laurence Colbert were schoolmates at Oxfordshire School of Art & Design in Oxford, England in 1988 when they formed the band, playing their first gig at the school at the end of that year. In due course Jesus and Mary Chain singer Jim Reid ended up hearing Ride's first demo. He alerted Creation Records founder Alan McGee, who signed the band to his label. Creation put out a trio of EPs by Ride in 1990: Ride, Play, and Fall. Each of these made a modest showing in the U.K. pop charts, which was big news for the resolutely underground-oriented label at the time. But that year also brought the band's first full-length album, Nowhere, which landed at No. 11 and definitively marked Ride as major players in the British indie scene, not to mention heroes of the shoegazing set, even though the band members themselves were never comfortable with that tag. Ride's second LP, 1992's Going Blank Again, made it all the way to No. 5, going Gold, and the single "Leave Them All Behind" became the group's only Top 10 hit. But even though they were reaching the peak of their success by this point, the band was beginning to burn out a bit. By the time of the John Leckie-produced 1994 album Carnival of Light, Ride was approaching things from a different angle, distancing themselves from the shoegaze sound. Like its predecessor, the record reached No. 5 in the U.K., but it received a drubbing in the press. Ride was beginning to implode during the recording of their fourth album, due to internecine squabbling and conflicting impulses about the direction of the music. Not long after Tarantula's 1996 release, the band was no more, and the unloved album died a quick death. Bell became the bassist for Oasis from 1999 to 2009. In 2014 Ride got back together for some shows on both sides of the Atlantic, which eventually led to the 2017 album Weather Diaries. Two years later, This Is Not a Safe Place appeared, putting the reformed Ride back into the U.K. Top 10.