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Eighteen years after they first formed as Mr. Soft, Manchester's Elbow finally came good this week when their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid scooped the U.K.'s Mercury Music Prize. Six years ago Chris Roberts met them as they toured behind their stunning debut Asleep in the Back, complete with such classic tracks as "Red" and "Newborn." Here's what they talked about. -- Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

"TELL YOU WHAT we watched the other night," mumbles Guy Garvey into the mic, while tuning up onstage between two intensely moving songs. "The Last Of The Mohicans."

A voice from the audience hollers: "With Daniel Day-Lewis?"'

"No," deadpans Garvey. "Just me and the lads."

The funny thing is that when Elbow stop larking about and go into their own tunes, the festive chuckles and amnesty-on-angst stop within seconds. As if, with a wave, the god of music has decreed it's magic time.

"Newborn," to cite one example, shifts the marrow in your bones, gives you a heart the size of a bathtub. Nobody does serious music like Elbow do serious music. It's the only thing they do take seriously and the exclusivity pays off. Asleep In The Back was last year's most durable album by a mile, and their new single – which bears the same title, though not from said album – is a comforting cut above. Elbow are the best band to emerge from Britain in years, even if they have no socks.

Garvey has no socks, he explains during the interview, because Elbow are now as busy as can be. I generously offer to bring my cast-offs to the gig, motivated by the thought that this could be the first time on human record that somebody is genuinely grateful for a pair of socks as a Christmas present.

"Please do," he says. "I would love it, actually, if you threw them at my head during the show. In the middle of an intense number. That'd be a laugh."

Of course, I don't do this: for one thing, I need my hands free for beer and fags. For another, it'd be arrogant – sacrilegious, even. There are people around who'd really appreciate those socks.

I am pointing out to Elbow that their music soothes and shakes my soul, but in interviews they seem to be more at ease trading vomit and fart jokes than getting all candid and confessional.

Garvey thinks about this, then says, "I just don't feel comfortable with preciousness, because most of the songs on that album are about real, very personal experiences I've had. So I could easily say things that hurt people I know. In order to get those songs like they are, I actually did hurt someone quite badly. It's a lot easier to be how we are now than it is to put on airs. If you talk about your deepest feelings too often, they become soundbites rather than memories. You begin to wonder if a story really happened to you. Besides, once a song's out there, it does whatever job the person listening to it gives it."

So we're not getting probing analyses and searing insights today then?

"Not for me," Garvey says. "The therapy involved in screaming your biggest fears and your worst insecurities at hundreds of people every night just leaves you so relaxed the rest of the time. I am one of the happiest people ever!"

It can't always have been thus. The songs – small-town frustrations, big-hearted pathos – prove that. Moreover, Elbow's rise to prominence has been as slow and painful as a critically-acclaimed Iranian movie. It's taken a decade for things to fall into place. In this time the Bury quintet were signed by Island, recorded their album twice, were dropped without a release when that label was bought by Universal, were royally dicked around by EMI, eventually released a single on a small Manchester label, and were then signed by V2, who finally allowed Asleep In The Back to be born last spring. Lesser groups might've given up the ghost; Elbow "carried on with the Dunkirk spirit. We knew it worked. It bore our stamp."

The dark, distressed, dextrous record, once out there in the world, soon had critics using the "Radiohead" word, though its crafted, left-handed ballads – "Red," "Powder Blue" – are spiritually more connected with Talk Talk or The Blue Nile, beautiful but bruised. Dues paid in full, Elbow found themselves undergoing endless promo tours and nearly winning the Mercury Prize. Just before we meet in a London hotel, Garvey and bassist Pete Turner have "just done 11 countries in 13 days. Hotel, plane, hotel, plane, 15 interviews a day. We started off excited, then we flagged and hit the wall. Our favorite drug of choice is sleep deprivation. That and hangovers."

After the years of misfortune, Elbow – Guy (vocals, guitar), Pete (bass), Mark Potter (guitar), Craig Potter (keyboards), Richard Jupp (drums) – don't need reminding that the hassles of success are preferable to the hassles of obscurity. Not since the "warm orange juice" moment, anyway.

"Even when we were up shit creek, we were optimistic," says Garvey. "Got it off our mothers. We were recording at Peter Gabriel's place, Real World once – cordon bleu chefs, all that. We were like: 'Wow!' Six months before, we'd been on the dole. And we were getting used to this, when one morning at breakfast someone tasted their orange juice – I'll be diplomatic and pretend I can't remember who it was – and grumbled, 'Aw, this is a bit warm.' And all of a sudden we all fell silent and went: 'Woah! Hang on! Enjoy it, you miserable bastard! We might not've signed on for the last time.' And I was right, I hadn't."

Do you ever see the people who dropped you and gloat malevolently?

"No no no, we say hello – they were just doing their job. Our vindication came because we never changed our style, did it independently and kept artistic control. We never got the 'top producer' in to take the edges off and make it sterile shit. We'd built a dialogue between ourselves over the years and it's about journeys, space, feel. A sketchbook, a scrapbook, a grainy photo album."

"Red" is one of the most affecting songs ever written about observing a dysfunctional character as they self-destruct.

"Well" ponders Garvey, "the sentiment didn't really justify how earnestly it was sung. It works, but I didn't really know her well enough to be that upset. There's too much angst in the way I'm singing it."

Oh, don't spoil it for us! "Maybe I'm comparing it to the other songs, where I got a little bit closer to the heart of the matter."

Like "Newborn," a brave, graphic psalm to love in old age? "People's attitudes to old people are crazy," says Garvey. "They're not able to defend themselves against the trendy and the young, so there are all these f--king patronizing cheap shots. We're all gonna be there. And when we do, we'll think 'Ah, I could've set myself up better here in terms of how people look and listen to me.' Which is not at all."

This year, Elbow revisit America, rehearse new material, wonder if the label's suggested date of September for a second LP is plausible. "There's no way we'll rush something to keep up momentum," says Turner. "It'll be ready when it's ready." Garvey (who produced I Am Kloot's debut in his "spare time" while mixing Elbow's) will collaborate with 808 State, and the band's worked with Andy Votel. If last year was, as Turner says, "incredible", this year will be "grand if it continues at the same pace".

"We're not out to conquer the world," says Garvey. "We just want to make music for the rest of our lives. That's pretty much the be-all and end-all.

Read more Elbow interviews and reviews at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 12,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.