Hello Dad

BLOODY teenagers - if they're not whingeing about having no jobs, they're taking handfuls of ecstasy or sitting around in pubs with their tongues in each other's mouths. And they've no respect for their elders. Here's a case in point: It's two in the afternoon and a young man called Tim Wheeler (19), a member of a popular music group which goes under the name of "Ash", is supposed to be present and correct at an interview with this paper, but following the fashions of the day, he's still in bed.

The fact that he's in New York, and was engaged in an active round of social activities the previous evening, or "on the piss" as he so casually refers to it, is not a mitigating factor. The only reason he's exempt from some firm but fair avuncular, admonishments from this interviewer, is because he's a bona fide rock star - and in this business getting up at two in the afternoon is a sure sign you're going places - and there's also the tragic but true fact that even at his age, he could afford to buy and sell me many times over and still have enough money left go "on the piss" to his little heart's content.

Tim is the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter behind the band who are poised to make Irish music history tomorrow evening when their first album will enter the British album charts at number one - something which no amount of U2s or Cranberries could manage. The three piece band from Downpatrick are just about to go into a super nova phase of their career but before all that, and once Tim has got some coffee down him, they want to do their last ever interview as three ordinary Irish kids. The next one will either be in Madison Square Garden or the Betty Ford Clinic.

Ash might at least have had the decency to wait until their mid 20s before becoming rich and successful, but Tim doesn't think so.

"The age thing is a worry" he says. "Take last night - it is illegal to

"The age thing is a worry," he says. "Take last night - it is illegal to serve drink to anyone under 21 in New York, so what were we to do? After giving it a bit of thought, we went to an Irish bar and when they asked us for our ID, we just made up some story and once they heard our accents, we were OK, we got served."

I didn't really mean it in that way. "Yeh, I know."

Apart from breaking the law in New York hostelries, Ash are also breaking the unwritten rock'n'roll law that young, ambitious, want it all and want it now rock groups must originate from socio economically deprived" areas. Tim, Mark Hamilton (bass) and Rick McMurray (drums) are all nice, middle class kids, who stayed on at school to finish their education despite the fact that they were regulars in the hit parade and were being offered prestigious tours in most every corner of the world.

"It's not really an Oasis vibe," says Tim (Oasis and Ash share the same producer), "it's just that I always, and I still don't know why, had a sense of urgency about being a rock star. When I was younger all my fantasies revolved around the film Star Wars [Tim was born the year it came out and it remains, bizarrely enough, a huge influence on him] but when I reached 12, I got my hands on a Thin Lizzy record and wanted to do music instead. I really knew how serious I was about it, when I started to feel jealous when another Northern Irish band, Therapy?, started to have hit albums. We're all great friends with Therapy? but their success made me even more determined."

The three of them were model schoolboys - "maybe Mark, the bass player, was a bit cheeky but myself and Rick were dead normal," he says - the sort who actually got on with their teacher. "In fact, it was our English teacher who changed our musical direction," says Tim. "At about the age of 13 or 14, I was listening to all this very dodgy heavy metal music, like Iron Maiden and Megadeth, but one day my English teacher brought me in a copy of an Undertones album.

"When I got it home and listened to songs like Jimmy Jimmy, I realised there was so much more going on outside my limited metal tastes."

THE groovy teacher with the Undertones albums should be thanked profusely for helping shape the three minute pop classics that Ash so brilliantly specialise in. Their first three singles, Jack Names The Planets, Uncle Pat (the song that's used in the television ad which shows a group of Irish people drinking beer in Prague) and Petrol evoke so many fond memories of the late, great Undertones but also point to the heavier, more American "alternative" distorted guitar sound that is much in evidence on the new album.

"It was really strange for a time at school, because even when we were still studying for our A levels, we were having number one singles in the independent charts and touring all around Britain," he says. "We were actually quite embarrassed by it all, so we tried to hide it. I would say that 75 per cent of people didn't know, but some of the younger girls in the school who would see us being written about in music papers like NME and Melody Maker [in which they've had a sum total, so far, of five front covers] would come over and ask us for our autograph."

The battle with anonymity had nothing on the battle with their parents. "I have to say that all our parents were totally supportive of the band, but I think they were supportive of us keeping it as a hobby, and hoping we would all get proper jobs," he says. "They were clued in enough to sit us down and tell us the statistics: only one band in every 3,000 ever makes it. But they realise now how serious we are about all of this. We were also serious about finishing our studies and in fact we turned down a tour of the Far East with Pearl Jam last year because we had to study for our exams."

Northern Irish bands have a strange attitude to the "Troubles" surrounding them and Ash are no exception. Some (Stiff Little Fingers, That Petrol Emotion) directly address the political situation in their lyrics, while others like The Undertones, and indeed Ash, tend to leave it out of their repertoire.

"We've been brought up with this situation around us," he says, "and we just think: `What's the point, why should we?' when it comes to writing about the situation in the North. Maybe that will change over time."

And your own political beliefs? "I've got very strong political beliefs I'm totally apathetic. But again, that may change with time."

Coming from the Protestant tradition, what about the whole Irish identity thing? "Just before that, the thing about coming where we come from is you get sick and tired of people in Britain or wherever asking you about the tanks on the street and all of that, but when it comes down to identity and I have to write my nationality on a passport form, I put Northern Irish."

Their album is called 1977 because that was the year two of the band were born, it was the year their beloved Star Wars was released and it was also the year that punk rock broke. Before going on release at the beginning of this week, it had sold a massive 140,000 copies in advance sales and despite some heavyweight competition from Everything But The Girl and The Cure for the number one spot tomorrow, it seems that Ash have done it.

"It's mad, isn't it?" says Tim. "When I look back at the bands I loved, like The Senseless Things, I used to think that they were really famous because their album had got to number 28 or whatever. It's mad."

Take a good look at the photograph above, you're going to be seeing and hearing a lot more from these teenagers - some of you will even be buying the album and going to their homecoming gigs this summer (SFX, Dublin on July 1st, Murrayfield, Belfast on July 2nd). Before we shake his hand and wish him all the best, Tim's got a special request to make.

"My great grandfather used to be the editor of The Irish Times and we have the desk he worked on back home in Downpatrick. My father reads the paper religiously and he'll be reading this, so do you think I could say hello to him?" Go on. "Hello Dad."