Elbow /

Elbow are a British alternative rock band. They have played together since 1990 and recorded five studio albums, the most recent of which is Build a Rocket Boys!, released in March 2011. In the UK all of their albums have made the top twenty and seven of their singles have been in the top forty. In 2008 they won the Mercury Music Prize for their album The Seldom Seen Kid. Lead singer Guy Garvey met guitarist Mark Potter at Stand College in 1990 at the age of 16. Potter asked Garvey to sing in a band he was in with drummer Richard Jupp and bassist Pete Turner. Together, the four men formed the band Mr Soft. (The name was later changed to Soft.) Mark Potter's brother Craig Potter joined the band soon after on keyboards. That year members of the band first played together at The Corner Pin pub in Stubbins, Rossendale (bordering the town of Ramsbottom, Bury, a borough of Greater Manchester). By 1997, they had changed their name a third time to Elbow, after a line in the BBC TV drama The Singing Detective. A character (Philip Marlowe) says that the word "elbow" is the most sensuous word in the English language; not for its definition, but for how it feels to say it.