Cosmic Riffs and Stellar Hits
Ash Can Still Rock It
By Fred Spanner
“God knows what we’ve got in our back pocket at the moment.”
Ash. Northern Irish legends. Teenage misfits turned rock heroes. Since exploding onto the scene in the 90s with their riotous blend of catchy riffs, cheeky lyrics, and sheer attitude, these lads have been making music that kicks ass and refuses to grow up. From their 1977 anthems to the present day, Ash prove that you can stay loud, messy, and brilliant, even decades into the game. Rock ’n’ roll doesn’t get much more fun than this.
Hot on the heels of their critically-acclaimed album Race The Night, the lads are about to release Ad Astra, the second album in the ‘Fierce Panda trilogy’. Loaded thinks it’s their best yet.
Tim Wheeler and Mark Hamilton stopped by to chat with us in the Loaded Lounge, after spending the previous six hours signing 2,000 personalised albums. Time for a break, lads.
Tim: The last time we were interviewed by Loaded, we bumped into Mark E. Smith. I seem to remember that most of the interview was just us having an argument with him.
I remember an interview you did with Simon Mayo, just after Ash burst onto the scene around 1995. You were asked what you were doing. Can you remember what it was?
Tim: Was it homework?
I’ll give you a point for that. You were studying for your A-levels. I thought you were either really grounded or had very strict parents.
Tim: Haha. Yeah, I think things were really coming to a boil just as I was finishing my A-levels. We recorded Girl From Mars in March 1995, and in the last few months of the summer, I was doing loads of Australian phone interviews, and getting boxes upon boxes of CDs coming over from Warner Bros in America, who we’d signed to.
I was trying to study, knowing that things were about to kick off. I thought, I’d gone this far, I might as well finish my exams, then two days after they finished, we played Glastonbury. A few weeks later, we were in the top twenty, and then we headed off to Japan. Life was never the same. It was crazy.
Mark: Our parents still didn’t realise it was going to be a full-time job. It wasn’t until Girl From Mars was on Top Of The Pops that they saw it was real.
Tim: There were lawyers and record company people coming over when we were finishing the last year of school, but it was still to be proven that it was going to work. I guess we didn’t have a clue, because we didn’t know anyone else this had happened to.
I remember applying to universities, just in case, just to keep everyone happy. I did a music course at the University of London. I took albums with me and some copies of the NME. They were like, “Why are you here? This is what we’re training people to do, and you’ve already done it.” They said they’d have me, but I didn’t go.
What was your Top Of The Pops experience like?
Tim: I remember one of our mates’ mums talking about Mark throwing himself around the stage a lot. She thought he must be on drugs, and said she felt sorry for his mum. I remember a local news station going to film Mark’s parents watching the show.
Mark: Appearing on that show was a big indication that it was happening. I think it was also our first experience of that screaming teenage girl thing. As well as doing the rock stuff, like being on the cover of NME, Melody Maker and Kerrang, we also got covered by lad’s mags like Loaded. We were all over the place.
But then we got into Smash Hits and the screaming teen girl thing started, and that moved over to Japan, where there were swarms of folk there too.
You were happy with the screaming girl thing then, as opposed to Edwyn Collins, who famously told them to stop screaming because Orange Juice weren’t “that kind of band?”
Tim: Yeah, we went along with it. Actually, Edwyn was in the studio mixing A Girl Like You at the same time we were doing Girl From Mars. He was quite fatherly to us. Kind of sweet, really.
There were girls flying all over the place in the Burn Baby Burn video. Cheerleaders, mainly. Was that a nod to Nirvana?
Tim: Yes. The director wanted to get something that was high energy: basketball, cheerleaders, and rock. I suppose that whole high school gymnasium thing was very ‘Nirvana’.
Mark: Also, the director had an idea that the song and video could have translated well in America. I think he wanted something that would work well on American TV.
Tim: I do remember we played the Smash Hits awards, and we got the cheerleaders in to perform with us. In rehearsals, I was told there was one bit where I had to stay on my mark. I completely forgot and decided to take two steps back and look cool instead during my guitar solo.
In the meantime, a cheerleader was doing backflips right across the stage, and she smashed into me at maximum velocity. We ended up in a heap on the ground. I felt so unprofessional. Luckily, neither of us got properly injured. When it came to the live show, I stayed rooted to the spot.
You’ve toured with The Darkness. I’m guessing they were fun times?
Tim: In 2004, it was at their ‘peak carnage’ stage, and at our peak partying stage. It was a stage when whatever Justin’s craziest whim was, they’d make it happen. At one point, he decided he wanted to fly over the audience, playing a guitar solo, riding on the back of a white tiger. They made it happen, at a huge expense.
There’s definitely a crossover between The Darkness and Ash fans.
Mark: Sometimes when you go to gigs, you see some of the fans not going in early to see the support band. Every time we’ve played with The Darkness, it’s been packed.
Are you ever starstruck?
Tim: Every time I see Dave Grohl. We saw Nirvana play in Belfast in ‘92, and we got Kurt and Courtney’s autograph. A few years later, our PR agency was the same as some of our favourite bands of all time: Pavement, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Beastie Boys. So many brilliant bands. We were just one step away from Dave at that point.
I think the first time I met him was doing the Christmas cover shoot for Kerrang. There was me, Dave, and Brian Molko. He was so cool, and it was at that point that I was able to tell him about meeting him before. He always has some great stories. At one point in the 80s, he was thinking about moving to Northern Ireland. We’ve met him loads of times since, but every time, I’m always a bit starstruck.
We went to Dave Grohl’s house for a Halloween party once. Jack Black welcomed us at the door, dressed as The Incredible Hulk. Dave was a wizard, our agent was Batman, I was Robin, and Mark was Jason from Friday the 13th.
Mark: I was always a big Sonic Youth fan, and I got introduced to Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. I didn’t know what to say. I was completely starstruck on the spot. I just stood there for about five seconds and then ran away.
You currently hold the (joint) record for the band that’s played the most times at Glastonbury.
Tim: Yes, we hold it jointly with Van Morrison. When we played this year, it was the first time we’d done it in fifteen years. Hopefully, time is on our side and we’ll get a chance to hold the record outright at some point. We also hold the record for the youngest headliners.
When Billie Eilish first played, they were saying she was the youngest, but then they changed it to the ‘youngest female’. Mark is actually the youngest person to headline Glastonbury.
While you were rocking it up at Glastonbury this year, I noticed on social media that one of your partners was shopping for Super Noodles.
Tim: Ah, yes, that was Rick’s wife. That post went totally viral. It was like, “I was offered a ticket for Glastonbury, but here I am in Home Bargains.” I felt really bad for her, ‘cause it was a glorious year.
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.
Tim: It really is. I’m not sure there’s anyone else who’d rather be at Home Bargains than Glastonbury.
I’ve lived off Super Noodles through some tough times in the past, and you guys have hit some difficult moments in your long musical journey. How have you guys managed to stick together?
Tim: We were all friends from school, so I think that helps. We’d been through quite a few ups and downs early on, points where it was difficult. The music industry was really cutthroat back in the day, and the moment you were dropped by your record company, that was pretty much it.
We had a tough second album, when the whole Britpop era was fading out, and we were just hanging in there to try and get a shot at a third. We stuck it out, and luckily, we had another number one album. We had a rocky couple of years when the pressure was very much on, and we might have had to call it quits.
We were too young to be ready to give it up at that point. It all happened so intensely with the first album being number one. I remember thinking that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have at the time, and I really wanted another go. We’re just a group of really united people who still get a buzz out of doing it.
It’s fun looking back at the big anniversaries, but we prefer to look forward and work on new material.
You seem to be churning out the tunes at a rate of knots these days.
Tim: Record companies used to let us go off for months and camp out in the countryside somewhere to make the next album. It’s very different now. We’ve got our own studio where we can chip away at things. The most essential part is coming into the studio with ideas and kicking them into shape. That’s when we decide what songs are worth working on, and the whole thing gets knocked into shape.
That part of it is always very exciting, and it’s been a constant for us right from our early days. That bit hasn’t changed at all and is the most essential part, I think.
Mark: The most exciting part is when we’re starting a new album and we’ll have between forty and seventy sketches of ideas. They’re just snippets. We get together and listen to them all to try and decide which ones we should start working on. We’ll find something to hone in on if we think it’s really strong.
Tim: We end up with an A-list, B-list, and C-list, although sometimes you’re too close to it to know if it’s any good or not, so getting feedback from the rest of the band is important. When you actually play the song, it takes on a life of its own.
Mark: Sometimes you can record the demo in a certain way, and when you start playing it with the band, it sounds completely different.
Tim: Some of our best punk songs have started out as really crappy ukulele demos. These little jingly, jangly bits. But by the time you speed it up and put the full power of the band behind it, you’re like, “Oh, hang on. This is a cracking tune.”
I heard there were a couple of cracking tunes left off the last album, which thankfully have made it onto Ad Astra.
Tim: Yes. Give Me Back My World was written during COVID. It was very raw, and it kind of spilt out in one go. We just had to change a few of the lyrics over time. We ran out of time to finish it for the last album, and it still felt a bit too close to COVID at that time.
We finished it in time for Ad Astra, and our manager was like, “You idiots. This is a banger. You always miss the best ones!”
We actually finished Which One Do You Want? for the last album, but it didn’t fit at all. We changed the mix slightly for Ad Astra, and everyone was thinking it was great. God knows what we’ve got in our back pocket at the moment.
It’s not the greatest time to be releasing an album, is it, what with all the big names dropping one at the same time? Even Robbie Williams has done a runner with this Britpop album, now to be released in 2026.
Tim: I think we’re up against Taylor Swift. I mean, we once took on Janet Jackson and beat her to number one, but I think this might be different. To be fair, Taylor Swift will have about seven albums in the top ten that week. We’re not really competing in the same way as in the old days.
Graham Coxon features on the new album. How did you get him involved?
Tim: There was a Britpop coming-of-age film being developed for Netflix, and they were trying to raise funds to get it made. I was asked to help write some songs for the fictional band, and Graham was asked to play guitar on them. When Graham came into the studio, he was amazing. His creativity was incredible.
I met him again at a Waeve gig, and he was talking about the tracks we made for the show. Then, at the time I was writing Fun People, I thought that Graham would be great for that track. It took a while for me to pluck up the courage to send it to him. Around about that time, I was also writing the track Ad Astra, and I thought he’d be fucking great on that too.
In the middle of putting the track down, I got a call saying my son had dislocated his shoulder, and I had to go to A&E. Graham was such a pro; we got the rest done in two minutes, then we both ran out of the door. It was quite mad.
My favourite track from Ad Astra is Hallion. This is a Northern Irish slang word, I believe?
Tim: A hallion is like a bit of a hellraiser. If your kid’s a bit wayward, they can be described as being a bit of a hallion.
Mark: Or a liability! But hallions can make for a good night out.
Tim: I can’t wait to play it live.
Catch Ash on tour.
Ad Astra is out on 3rd October.
