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Ash Latest

NME 12 May 2001

In a corner of the dressing room there's a chocolate motorbike in a box. Nobody from a travel-dazed Ash is paying it any attention but if there's ever going to be a museum of band memorabilia, that artefact should be dunked in formaldehyde and stuck in a glass case.

Charlotte Hatherley is too busy to notice the fan's present. She crawls on the dirty floor in bullet belt and faded jeans, stoically signing posters advertising new album, 'Free All Angels'. Mark Hamilton couldn't care less 'cos he's acquired a super-slim laptop to hook him into the band's website. Rick McMurray has to get on with shaving either side of his mohican head hedge. Tim Wheeler's plain asleep on the bus.
The candy bike sits there unattended, a melting sticky brown metaphor inviting you to climb on, rev up, and strap your sense of humour into the sidecar. Ash, you see, are back at full speed, splattering Jr Hell's Angel bravado and sweet toothed overindulgence all around them.

Two months back no-one would've given Ash much chance of riding their candy mean- machine back to Number One. Neither Urban American Cool, Boyband Bland or Buckley-Yorkeesque, they were thought to have had their moment with the postDownpatrick schooldays album, '1977'. Reviews for 98's 'Nu-Clear Sounds' were carping and having spent two years writing and recording 'Free All Angels' they were broke and on the margins.
You could attribute it to the two months' unofficial previewing 'Free All Angels' got on Napster. It might be down to Joey Ramone, RIP, having a word as he gabba-floated into the perfumed punk garden. What's sure is that Ash are plugged back into the heavy-duty power lines, anticipating a chart-conquering album and gagging for 18 months of messy blitzkrieg touring, puke-happy underage fans and semi-ironic rock nonsense.

Being on the road with Ash for 32 hours fills your head with junk, bites holes in your liver and reduces your mental age by half. Remember when rock was young? If you hung out with Ash for a year you'd be too damaged to remember what rock did last night. The night before we meet them in Bristol, Ash play Milan, get the plugs pulled, then drink til the blurry hours with the owner of a certain Devil's Bar of Puerto Banus, Marbella. While recording 'Free All Angels' in Spain. they were such good Devil's Bar customers there's a cocktail named after their bassist.
While the band 'get their act together' for the gig at the Anson Rooms, their army of fans have achieved deep drunkenness and mosh-readiness. Orderly hysteria reigns even among those in the old Ash T-shirts saying 'Real Blood, Real Drugs, Real Sex'. There are puke buckets on the go in the corridors; boys stump in illustrated 'RAT ARSED' T-shirts. At 9:30pm, Tim Wheeler holds his Flying V guitar aloft, crash-chords into 'Girl From Mars' and a wall of Westlife-bating, Jamie Oliver-despising, barbed noise collides with a sea of snog, sweat, tears, and air guitar.
They can do 'intense'; they can do 'radio'; and afterwards they can do gross-out, weirdo mind-rot conversation.
"In space they have to play a constant middle C to make you feel normal 'cos that's the frequency the earth vibrates on," annouces Rick, mid-aftershow. "They've got those new car alarms out, the ones that give off an inaudible note that makes you feel physically sick. I really wanna incorporate that sound into our next single."

Meanwhile two fresh-faced prize winners flown over from New Zealand are being chaperoned by Chalotte. "Those girls are so sweet," she confides. "I feel I have to look after them. They're like, 'I want to party with you' and it just ends in disaster. We did this festival in Europe and this girl and her boyfriend came backstage and they were like, 'Right, I can drink more than you'. At the end of it she was comatose, with puke all down her top. It was coming out of her nostrils."
In recovery mood after their night in Milan, Ash Steer clear of drinking challenges. Tim happily discusses his brush with nipple-piercing (since removed) while Mark lives up to his entry in the Ash fanzine: "In Ash I like to sulk in the corner, shoot stuff up and steal from other bands' rehearsal rooms."
It's possible that the up-for-it mood among Ash is connected to their being right at the Start of a 'gruelling schedule' - 44 festival dates this summer - but there's also technique at work. An appreciation of gonzo rock'n'roll excess is evident in everything from the lyrics - "gonna blaze to our annihilation" -to the album's back cover of Tim gargling vodka in the bath, but they make no effort to scare us with the dark sincerity of their nihilism. At 24, Tim still takes his heaviness lightly.

By the magic of overnight tourbus Ash wing into Wolverhampton. Tim and Charlotte stretch, yawn, grab acoustic guitars and lug them onto a train bound for Brum and Janice Long's Radio 2 slot where they're to perform unplugged. Not much of a prima donna, Tim Wheeler. He has the rare pop ability to laugh at himself, and spends the journey reading reviews of his album, relishing the disses - "Paltry chorus!" - and reflecting on the difference in 'attitude' between Ash and Stereophonics.
"We did a gig with them in Dusseldorf the day their album went to Number One but they didn't seem very excited," he says. "If it was us we'd have been going crazy. We walked into their dressing room and they got up and walked Out! Mind you, Mark didn't have his shirt on and he'd written C- across himself and Rick was wearing a woman's blouse and we were all drunk so you can't blame them really.
At the BBC, Tim 'n' Charlotte acquit themselves stylishly while recording their Janice live' tracks in front of a select audience of the engineer, Janice's two kids and NME. "We'll do Travis' session as well so they don't have to... announces Tim launching into an impromptu stab at 'Sing'. The acoustic versions of 'Shining Light' and 'Jack Names The Planets' are things of unplugged beauty and after playing piano for 'There's A Star' Charlotte goes all multi- talented, giving a recital of Michael Nyman's theme to The Piano.
The day's revelations are not over, however. In the middle of the radio interview, Wheeler blows Charlotte's secrets wide open by mentioning that mum Hatherley, was in Carry On Camping.
"She was the farmer's daughter who got pregnant," admits Charlotte, sheepishly.
The studio goes silent as people digest what they've heard. Never mind Ash serenading the Good Friday Agreement with U2, David Trimble and John Hume. Charlotte's mum was in Carry On Camping, Carry On Girls and Carry On Loving. Now her daughter's in Carry On Chocolate Hell's Angels.

Two hours later we're back in Wolverhampton. There are issues to discuss. Like, did your mum meet Barbara Windsor?
Charlotte: "Yeah."
Was this a significant influence on your childhood?
"Yeah, we used to watch Carry On films all the time. Me and my sisters could just quote them at random. I sat on Charles Hawtrey's knee as a child. That's quite a worrying thought, actually."
Did you really have dwarves and monkeys at your LP launch?
Tim: "It was real dwarves and people in monkey suits and dog suits and Hell's Angels and dancers in cages. I got a bit of a black eye. It was my mate who got in the fight. I can't really remember how it happened. I know I stepped in, then all the Hell's Angels piled in and it was over pretty quickly."
Do you have them around cos you're into motorbikes? Or did you read the Hunter S Thompson book?
and they were really sound. But we do like Hunter S Thompson."
Charlotte: "I'm reading that I (Hell's Angels) at the moment."
Tim: "I read that quote on the back about how you pop someone's eye out. That's going to end a fight pretty quickly I reckon."
A lot of the imagery surrounding Ash is about that rock'n'roll lifestyle thing...
Tim: "I think it comes from touring. Before we started touring we weren't that bad, like Mark was pretty crazy, but once we got on tour it all came out. We kind of just embraced it. We call Mark and Rick 'The Dangerous Brothers'. Recording was pretty mental as well, though. We used to hang out at this bar called Devil's Bar in Spain. David Coverdale was in there, just hanging out with his perm. Maybe it's all from growing up with heavy metal as well."
Do you take any aspects of the metal lifestyle seriously?
Tim: "Sixty per cent seriously. Nirvana always had a good sense of irony, didn't they?"
While the eminent and the greedy scrabble after formulas for 21st century pop, Ash have again accelerated out front simply by jamming together their desire to rock with an insistence on having fun. That's fun in the Michael Nyman noodling and dressing up in dog suit sense, as well as drunkenly pummelling a kitsch rock guitar to death.
You recently said "Everyone's way up their own arse and they've lost the point." What is the 'point'?
Tim: "Just, 'Why did you get into it in the first place?'."
Rick: "Why did you get into a band when you were a kid? Because you've got freedom to do - whatever you want, and music is your dream. When they start living that it seems every band these days has a guilt complex over not deserving it, or they just hate it."
Tim: "If you're not enjoying don't f*cking do it."
What stage of your evolution does this feel like?
Tim: "I think we're just hitting our stride, really. "
Rick: "We've got ovr the bumpy stage post-'1977' writing 'Nu-Clear Sounds' in a deep depression. Now there's confidence in the band.' "
Despite the massive itinerary NME gets the impression Ash feed off the chaos and messof touring.... Tim: "We're up for it, yeah. It's like our track, 'World Domination' at the end of the record. It's a good feeling - we're going to be doing the whole world with this record."
Doesn't that song go "Gonna blaze to our annihilation"? Tim: ~"Rick reckons we're all going to die this year."
Rick: "We're going to die in Japan. There was supposed to be this huge earthquake that hit Tokyo years ago and they're still waiting for it. So it's going to be death byearthquake."

As if. Ash are looking indestructible right now. They get offered out in Wolverhampton but the assailant runs as soons as Rick tuens round in his studded poncho. Their joie de rock protects them. They bring happy concussion to the Wulfrun Hall, retreating with bleeding hands to the dressing toom to ghettoblast Prince and Daft Punk, and toast their imminent album triumph with Guinness'n'champagne'n'tomfoolery.
Real blood; real fun; real rock. Motorbikes made of chocolate.

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