The A to Z of Ash on CD

Can it really be 18 years since Ash burst on to the scene? They tell TONY CLAYTON-LEAabout the fame, the crash-landing, the move to downloading – and the move back to a label, and to CDs

WHERE DOES the time fly to? It only seemed like yesterday when a teenage band from Downpatrick calling themselves Ash were hurtling out of the traps with the kind of uncommonly commercial guitar pop that hadn’t seen the light of day since the demise of The Ramones. But “yesterday” is actually 18 years ago. Consider the fact that all three original members of Ash (Tim Wheeler, Rick McMurray and Mark Hamilton) were still, quite literally, in nappies when U2 first formed, and you’ll have some idea of how young Ash as a band were when they first started to perform.

“Well, it’s our 18th birthday in May,” says 33-year-old Tim Wheeler, Ash’s singer, guitarist and main songwriter, “and it just doesn’t make sense to me that so much time could have passed. Whenever I think about it I know it doesn’t seem real because I still feel so young – probably because I actually am! So it’s a weird dichotomy, because the way some people look at us is not the way I feel about us.”

Back at the start, when the band members were in their mid-teens, just after taking their O-levels and with A-levels looming – and while they were negotiating with parents and headmasters to allow them to tour in the UK – there were no such issues as plans or ambitions. “It was an unconscious thing of following a dream, to be truthful. We can make it, is what we felt.

“I remember being asked many times – I suppose because we were all so young ­– where did we see ourselves in five years’ time. It felt like such a loaded question, almost as if they were really asking, what are you going to do when all of this is over?

“We didn’t, of course, have an idea where we would be. We just hoped that we’d still be making great music. I mean, when an interviewer in 1964 asked Mick Jagger how long he would continue in music, he answered perhaps another six months. Meanwhile, 40 years later . . . So, you know, you can never plan.”

In 1996, Ash's debut album proper, 1977, made them instant stars through hit singles Goldfingerand Oh Yeah. UK and European tours were sell-outs, America was calling, and the band's propensity for causing a ruckus was increasing. Teenagers being teenagers, however, meant that sex, drugs, booze and parties were hitching a lift alongside critical and commercial success.

Wheeler confesses to being a victim of youth's innate arrogance as well as a sponge for excess, which effectively crash-landed the band via 1998's follow-up album, Nu-Clear Sounds.

The notion that their fans would be with them for life was soon swept aside when the heavier musical direction of that album proved to be, Wheeler admits, “a jarring shock”. He says complacency had set in perhaps too quickly, and that the ready availability of earthly pleasures was taking its toll.

“It was a hard lesson,” reflects Wheeler. “We were faced with our future, or lack thereof, and it didn’t look good. That’s why I retreated to my parents’ place, got my head together, rehearsed in the garage that we had started in, and wrote songs for a year. It was a survival technique as much as wanting to buck the trend for bands to start off so well and then peter out after the second album. I knew there was a chance that we could survive if great songs could be written.”

And indeed they were, as the band's third album, 2001's Free All Angels, was released to critical and commercial acclaim. Justifiably regarded as Ash's treasure trove (it spawned five hit singles, while one of them, Shining Light, was deemed good enough to nab Wheeler an Ivor Novello award for Best Contemporary Song), it proved beyond doubt that Wheeler's prodigious talent for melody lines was not just instinctive and very often inspired, but that he was seriously good enough to make his skills look ridiculously easy.

And still the skills remain, even if the band has set up shop without the assistance of a major label. Following the lack of "performance" of their most recent studio album, Twilight Of The Innocents, they were dropped by their label.

“We had worked on that album harder than any of our others,” says Wheeler, “but it didn’t get on radio, and so the plug was pulled the week before it came out. It was a heartbreaking experience, and we figured there has to be another way to get the music to the fans”.

Cue addressing the problem of distribution and awareness of their music across the internet, a cyber avenue that Ash had been quite nifty at using since 2000 (when, prior to the release of Free All Angels, they re-established their fan base via a tour of small venues voted for by fans online).

Two years ago, the band took the step of announcing that, for them, traditional methods of releasing albums was over. “We adapted in order to survive. We felt the old system of releasing records – although there was a kind of security in it – was becoming redundant. The way I listen to music has changed from the time I got an iPod, and it has also for millions of others.”

IN SHORT, ASH WANTED to get their fans to become excited again, “which is why last year we came up with the idea of releasing singles digitally every two weeks for a full year. We wanted to build a sense of anticipation again, and we’re definitely seeing it with our fans – we really are constantly surprising them every two weeks with a different song. It’s a cool experience and they feel like they’re so much more a part of the band/fan thing.”

The result has been a veritable wonderland of new material that treats guitar pop intelligently, and with great attention to detail and simplicity.

In a show of solidarity with both the Luddite and those unfortunate enough to have such a thin broadband link that the downloading experience is like listening to music with a forbidding stutter, Ash has also released the first 13 songs as a physical CD, A-Z Vol. 1.

“You have to be flexible about these things,” says Wheeler, all business-like and pragmatic on what might be seen by some as an about-face.

This particular digital business model is still in its relative infancy, he admits, but “it’s definitely working in certain parts of the world, Japan for instance. It’ll break even, we hope, and subscriptions are steady.” And the creative juices are still swirling around? Certainly, the 13 tracks on the new collection thrum with energy and pop music smarts.

“I reckon that as a band we’re still young and vibrant,” remarks Wheeler, “and that we have loads more creative mileage in us. It goes against what people expect from a band that has been around for almost 20 years. These days, people expect a brilliant debut album, and then, almost automatically, expectations dwindle. It’s a bit of a fight, but I’m trying to prove that our best is ahead of us.”

A-Z Vol. 1 will be released on CD through Atomic Heart Records on Monday, and online via ash-official.com