June 16, 1997 will forever be immortalized in music history as the day Radiohead welcomed their third and most influential album, OK Computer, into the world. But its long shadow often covers the release of another great album by a different innovative UK rock band: Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space. And while these two 20-year-old albums might have enough in common to seem like natural counterparts (i.e. Spiritualized supported Radiohead on their 1998 North American tour), Ladies and Gentlemen has a far deeper connection with another album that also turns 20 this year: The Verve's Urban Hymns.

Spiritualized has always been and forever will be Jason Pierce. The gaunt, straggly-haired Spaceman as he was called, formed the band in 1990 as Spacemen 3 was crumbling from the result of his acrimonious relationship with paper-thin bandmate Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember, a 24/7 shades wearer with a bowl cut. A lot of it had to do with two songwriters going in different directions and likely drugs, but the presence of Pierce's then-girlfriend, the Calvin Klein-modelesque Kate Radley, was also to blame. According to Kember, Radley put a strain on band relations by following the band around wherever they played, be it the studio, rehearsal, or gigs. Once the band imploded, Pierce recruited the remaining S3 members, sans Kember, for his new band, Spiritualized. After the release of their debut single, "Anyway That You Want Me," Radley joined the band on keyboards, adding a face to Pierce's muse for songs like "I Want You" and "If I Were With Her Now." After joining in 1991, Radley became as synonymous with Spiritualized as Pierce, appearing in all press photos, sometimes just the two of them. They appeared as a match made in the heaven he so often referred to in his music.

From their beginnings, Spiritualized and The Verve were celestial brethren. Both bands formed in 1990, undoubtedly with a mutual love for Pink Floyd's The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and an appetite for drug-taking: Jason "J Spaceman" Pierce founded Spiritualized from the ashes of his previous band, heroin-championing trance rockers Spacemen 3, while Verve (then without a "The"), led by the charismatic Richard "Mad Dick" Ashcroft, was a gang of teenagers that enjoyed trippin' balls on LSD. They each jammed eternal, though with distinct styles: Pierce favored extended, pedal-heavy drones, while Verve conceived loose, reverb-soaked grooves. Following the release of Spiritualized's debut album, Lazer Guided Melodies, and Verve's debut single, "All In The Mind," in 1992, the two bands toured the UK together. For the next couple of years, the bands seemed to follow a similar path, on course for cult worship.

The Verve had surpassed Spiritualized and entered the big time, but their success was not what caused a rift between the two bands. Instead, it was due to a personal matter. That same month, The Verve released A Northern Soul, Richard Ashcroft married Kate Radley in secret. Yeah, you read that right: Ashcroft, not Pierce, married Radley. This bombshell was kept under wraps until 1997, but for two more years, Radley was still an active member of Spiritualized. In fact, just days after the wedding, Spiritualized headlined above The Verve at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

In 1995, Spiritualized added "Electric Mainline" to their name for some reason and released the magnificent Pure Phase, an album of transcendental, cosmic R&B designed to "play loud 'n' drive fast." Verve, meanwhile, was forced to add "The" to their name, thanks to a lawsuit by the record label of the same name. Unlike Spiritualized Electric Mainline, The Verve would stick. They too released an album, A Northern Soul, which followed up their 1993 debut, A Storm In Heaven. Moving on from their early cavernous psych-rock, A Northern Soul was a game-changer. Led by Ashcroft's emotive voice, Nick McCabe's virtuosic guitar work, and Oasis producer Owen Morris' larger-than-life production, The Verve moved into a whole new stratosphere: the mainstream. Although the album is carried by a spirit that is equal parts Floyd and Zeppelin (see the rumbling low-end vibes of "Life's An Ocean" or the ecstatic rave-up "This Is Music"), it was the ballads, "On Your Own" and "History," that helped them crack the Top 30 and reveal Ashcroft, now referred to by Noel Gallagher as "Captain Rock," as one of the UK's most compelling songwriters.

Neither camp has ever been forthcoming about whether Ashcroft was the cause of Pierce and Radley's romance ending. Maybe that's for the best, to let this dog lie and just enjoy all of the music that seemed to be a result of such an ordeal. But in these pre-social media times, this incredible love triangle story managed to transpire without details leaking to the press. Fifteen years after it happened, Ashcroft offered up a rare candid moment to Sirius XM, even accepting blame for her leaving Spiritualized. "I was supporting her band," he said. "I saw this girl jump off the stage with these boots on, this beautiful little skirt. I'm like, 'Wow! Who's that? She's gorgeous.' And I'm just so lucky that she was intelligent as well. Such a bloody bonus, guys out there! You really should go for that. But I was very fortunate. People should check out her band, she doesn't play with them anymore. I probably ruined that!"

The loss of Radley romantically seemed both devastating and inspirational for Pierce. Normally, he would let the songs just come to him, but when he sat down to begin writing Ladies and Gentleman in the summer of 1995, he amassed 14 songs in 11 days. According to then-bandmate Sean Cook, Pierce had been doing heroin, which he seems to corroborate on "Home Of The Brave": "Sometimes I have my breakfast right off of a mirror." Other lyrics like "There's a hole in my arm where all the money goes" ("Cop Shoot Cop") and "Just me, my spike in my arm, and my spoon" ("Think I'm In Love") insinuate that he was consuming the brown stuff intravenously. Even for a guy who named an album, Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To, this seemed like a pretty shocking admission.