Supergrass – Richard III

March 1997 single: In It for the Money, Sawmills, UK number 2

Richard III is the second single from Supergrass’s second album In It for the Money, after the earlier release of Going Out. Parlophone issued the single on 31 March 1997. It reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart, matching the peak of Alright / Time and remaining the band’s joint-highest placing. The album followed in April and also hit UK number 2. Sessions ran at Sawmills in Cornwall with John Cornfield and the band producing. Gaz Coombes sings and plays guitar; Mick Quinn plays bass; Danny Goffey plays drums; Rob Coombes adds keys and writing credit. Most of the album was cut at Sawmills Studio in Cornwall, with John Cornfield producing in the room alongside Coombes, Quinn and Goffey. After Alright made them festival favorites, Richard III was the heavier, darker follow-up. UK number 2 put this harder song beside the lighter hit.

By 1997 the parkas and the pogo of I Should Coco were no longer the whole story. The track opens with a greasy, rough riff that sounds lifted off a garage floor. Coombes pushes the vocal through closed teeth; fuzz and basement echo thicken the frame. The title nods to Shakespeare’s dark king more as mood than plot: no hump, no horse, no monologue, just a name that matched the song’s menace. Supergrass liked that reference because it fit the tone. In the hangover years of Britpop, when many acts played safe or sad, this single stayed loud and strange enough for daytime radio and still topped out at number 2.

Production stays lean and physical rather than glossy label polish. The recording has a T. Rex stomp and the urgency of the Stooges, run through the English humor the band never quite lost. B-sides on the single packages included Sometimes I Make You Sad and 20ft Halo, proof the campaign still treated extras as part of the story.

On the single the roles stay plain: Coombes sings and plays guitar, Quinn plays bass, Goffey plays drums. Cornfield’s name stays with the Sawmills Studio tapes in Cornwall.