An Interview with Ash - Southampton Guildhall 02/11/07
Tim greets us with "do you want a drink?"…we both take lagers…which is probably not a good idea since we've just been in the pub for the past two hours. Despite having met Ash numerous times before this is our first official interview and we're both mega nervous. The recording makes slightly uncomfortably listening at times…involving a lot of laughter (some of it particularly over the top and cringe-y), beer spilling and too much talking by the interviewers! So here we are backstage at Southampton Guildhall…hum of the washing machine in the background. Bare room…just chairs…us….and Ash….
Present: Alix (A)
Miranda (Mi)
Tim (T)
Mark (Ma)
Rick (R)
Ma: The first issue was really good.
T: Yeah we enjoyed it.
A: We didn’t offend you too much with your made-up answers then?
T: Just a bit...
A: I edited out the worst ones!
T: Well thank god for that!
A: On that note there is a piece in today's copy of the Metro saying that Chris Martin has been rubbing tea-tree oil into his scalp in order to enhance his hair. Tim, is that what you do? Did you advise him to do the same?
T: No, all I told him was just don't use conditioner and you will have beautiful shiny hair. You don't need to use tea-tree oil!
Ma: Sometimes people say that I'm going bald but it's actually a series of scars. (leans forward to show us his head)
Mi: How did you do that?
R: Falling off the bus.
Mi: Oh god, yeah.
Ma: Sometimes if there are live pictures when I'm leaning forward it looks like I'm going bald.
A: Do you ever get jealous of the fact that Tim has naturally shiny, straight hair and yours is…not quite so…? (I'm digging a hole for myself here…)
Ma: Um…I've never really thought about it (hesitantly).
Mi: Rick, what about the hat…is that the same thing?
R: Yeah, to cover up my shame
Ma: Well Rick's had ever different hair-cut under the sun so he had to move onto hats.
T: Don't judge Mark on his hair right now…he hasn't had a shower yet.
R: You'd be surprised what it takes to achieve this effect (pointing at Mark's hair)….it takes him ages.
T: It takes a long night lying in your bunk sweating out your alcohol.
R: Lovely.
A: When we were struggling for questions Miranda contacted her mum to see if there was anything she'd like to ask you.
(Miranda explains how her dad loves TOTI)
T: Maybe we've found our audience. We should have marketed it towards the older generation.
Mi: Well I've given you loonies now I'm giving you my parents.
Ma: We should go and do a tour of old people's homes.
T: Yeah. We actually did a photo-shoot in an old people's home for a magazine in like...1996. It'd be great if we could find those photos.
Mi: I had a patient when I was working on the psych wards who was a big, big fan.
Ma: Actually, there's a good thing we could talk about...there's this guy....
(the boys have a bit of a discussion about how much they should actually say...)
Ma: I'm not going to say the name or anything but we have a new absolutely barking mad psychopath who is properly doo-lally.
T: And we're not talking about Brian!
(the more specific details have been removed to protect the guilty!)
Ma: He actually is just...crazy.
A: Anyway. Miranda's mum's question is: Which venue in the world would you most like to play?
T: Madison Square Gardens. Never done it yet.
Ma: It's just round the corner from our studio as well, so…we could just walk round and do it.
T: Yeah
Mi: You could just busk.
T: Yeah, it's not quite the same!
Ma: I don't know…we could pay on the steps and say we'd done it.
R: The Budokan in Japan would be a cool one.
T: Oh yeah! That's somewhere legendary.
R: We get bigger and bigger in Japan but the Budokan stage still seems to allude us.
Ma: We've played Reading 7 times but we've never headlined the actual main stage. That's a dream of ours.
T: Good question Mum by the way.
A: Miranda's mum's other question is....
Mi: She wants to know where you buy your pants.
T: Good question. American Apparel.
R: Marks & Spencer’s…or Tescos.
Ma: G Star.
A: And not wanting him to feel left out we also asked Miranda's dad what he'd like to ask you, since he's such a big fan.
R: Is it about socks?
A: His question is: What did you want to be when you grew up when you were 5 years old?
Ma: I wanted to be a fireman.
R: I couldn't even perceive the concept of growing up then. It all seemed so far away that I shouldn't be thinking about it.
T: I'd say Indiana Jones but then that might be the year before it came out.
A: I'm sure no-one would be pedantic enough to actually look that up…
Ma: I do remember at one point wanting to be Kenny Everett which is a bit weird (cue much laughter!)
R: I admire how you said that.
T: If you grew a beard you would actually look really like him.
(Mark crosses and uncrosses his legs in an effeminate manner)
Mi: Right now, I can see it…yeah!
Ma: On the subject of socks did you notice that the Edward Scissor hands gloves were actually made out of my dirty old socks?
A: Yeah, I did! After I'd taken it off my hand and I sniffed my hand and I was like "It smells of sock!"
T: Eurgh! What were you doing sniffing Mark's glove anyway? It smelt enough!
A: I didn't sniff the glove…it was my hand after the glove!
Mi: Bryony was really, really proud of them she was like "Look at the workmanship in that…"
T: Yeah, it was very inventive.
Ma: Actually we've got a video of us dressed up, which I can send you for the zine. CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT
T: You can demonstrate the gloves…socks…
A: They did look good. I didn't realise they were plastic knives at first.
T: It's another one of Mark's artistic arts and crafts tasks.
Mi: Yesterday Alix discovered a brand of cider called 'Polaris', which is very exciting.
T: No way! We should have done a marketing tie-in around the single…we might have actually gone Top 20!
R: Drink Polaris...it'll make you go blind.
Mi: So what we wanted to know is…there's a drink called 'Ash'. What would it be like?
T: You know whenever people have like an old cup of tea and they put their cigarettes out in it…
Ma: Eurgh! What's worse is when you're on the bus, you're drinking and you're a bit drunk and someone will always have a beer bottle and use it for an ash-tray. If you're too drunk then sometimes you go to drink that and get a mouthful of ash. It's fucking disgusting.
R: You can't get rid of the taste.
T: Yeah, there's nothing worse than that.
Mi: So that's the flavour of Ash then?
T: Yeah.
Ma: The dregs plus cigarette butts.
Mi: Where do you guys see yourselves in 10 years time?
R: In an ash tray.
T: On the mantelpiece. We're going to have a collective cremation while we're still alive…for an encore at one of our shows.
Mi: You know Brian will be there recording it!
Ma: Or we might be doing an interview for Gashed number 500 or something…
A: Yay!
T: (He's clearly thought about this a lot.) And then people can buy our greatest hits with one free flake of ash from our bodies and the bronzed god Tav will be rolling around in his Mercedes in San Tropez laughing.
A: It was quite freaky...I've got a VHS of really old stuff from like around 1977 and there's this one bit when you were on MTV Hanging Out and it was like "Where do you see yourselves in the year 2000? You were like "I'll be really old then...I'll be like....25".
T: D'oh...flashbacks. Was that the one where Rick kicks his head in?
(Mark and Rick were filmed showing off their new martial art...which basically involved kicking themselves in the head)
A: No, that was the one after. The good old 'whacked'in'. Are you still flexible enough to do that?
R: Yeah.
T: He can still bite his own toe-nails...but he prefers to sniff them.
A: Who was it who sniffed their finger-nails?
R: That was me.
Ma: We were talking about this the other day, he actually got sent some weird stalker's finger nail clippings.
T: That's dark.
Mi: That's bad...but it'd be worse if it was the fingers.
A: Following on from that....What's the most insulting thing a fan has ever said or done to you?
Ma: Didn't someone shout "JAMES BLUNT!" at you once? That was bad.
T: Yeah but that wasn't even a fan it was just some street urchins in Edinburgh.
R: A fan somewhere…when we had a day off…I think it was Leeds… this guy stalked us and asked for a picture. I said "Are you coming tomorrow night?" and he went "Yeah, I couldn't get a ticket."
T: It wasn't sold out!
Ma: There was a guy…I thought this was very funny actually….it was on our Bebo…someone left a comment going on about "The bass player from Ash is a prick" or something like that. So I clicked on his profile to see if I knew him or if he was taking the piss and in his heroes bit or whatever it just went "Not the bass player from Ash".
T: What have you done?!
Ma: I've never fucking seen the guy in my life! I don't know!
I launch into the whole "I saw you here on the 1977 tour"…
A: All I said to you (Tim) was "I didn't realise you were such a short-arse". That's quite insulting!
T: Yeah.
A: That could be the most insulting thing!
T: Yeah, yeah…I get that all the time…it's brilliant!
Mi: My dad's the same height as me…he's 5 foot 4 so to me you're actually quite tall.
T: That's the trouble…you're on stage and then people think you're dead tall.
A: I was so mortified for like weeks after...and I was so star-struck, I couldn't string two words together.
T: I remember that show actually, I remember meeting people outside after that gig. Yeah...kids.
A: You were on the Big Breakfast the next day.
T: Ohhhhhh.....yeah! Jesus! Did you record that? That tapes going to be brilliant if you can get it transferred.
Ma: We were still hammered and everything on the bus.
A: Yeah, you were in the same clothes as you were when I met you sitting out there.
(a bit of a conversation ensues about the annoyance of the press instruction etc)
Mi: Do you guys ever read Leif's blog? It's getting quite a following on the Ash board.
R: On his myspace?
A: No, it's through another site now.
T: The Enforcer...his own website. His gear one is it?
A: I don't know the website but he posted a link to it from his myspace. He does a bit for each date "Got up at 10am again...so and so went wrong with Tim's rig.." All this technical stuff which I don't quite understand.
T: I should start reading it.
Mi: It's mostly really geeky though.
T: Yeah, yeah.
A: "I had to go to Maplins to buy some electrical thing..."
Mi: "I had a really nice breakfast..."... "Went to bed at ten"
A: "Did my laundry"
T: That's probably the most exciting thing...
Mi: Most of it is about laundry actually. Finding somewhere to do his laundry...
R: He googles laundries in the towns we go to….then we just follow him.
(we off on a tangent for a bit)
A: Have you got anymore b-sides up your sleeves for the rest of the tour?
Ma: We're doing a few...
R: Well not b-sides, but...
T: I'd Give you Anything and Wildsurf tonight.
(Excited gasp by interviewers!)
Ma: We haven't played 'I'd Give You Anything' since...
R: Probably the 1977 tour.
T: Proper old school.
A: Have you actually taken notice of all the posts we've had on the board about what songs you should play and stuff? Has that influenced the set-lists?
Ma: It actually has, yeah.
T: It's cool to see that people actually give a fuck.
A: I'm sure that 'Clones' has come up...
T: Yeah and 'Evil Eye'...you can tell by the reaction. It's been going down so good it's like...shit why didn't play that for the last year...
Ma: I know. The single that should have been.
T: Yeah.
A: Are you ever going to do 'Season' again at all? Or was that a one-off?
T: Yeah....just a one-off really. Trouble is it's hard...because the hardcore people will love it but no-one else will really know it. It's a tough one. We need to do our own like hardcore fan b-side show.
A: That was one of our questions actually. What are the chances of a b-side/rarities show?
Ma: We were discussing the idea of doing, like a day event which would be almost like an Ash convention. We thought....because the Astoria is getting knocked down...
A: Oh yeah, you HAVE to play the Astoria before it gets flattened.
R: It's got a year's reprieve I think, so there's a bit of breathing time.
Ma: We could do a gig and like, stuff in the afternoon before the show.
T: It’d take quite a lot of rehearsal because it would mean re-learning shit that we played once in the studio.
A: Like ‘Halloween’…wasn’t that the first time you’d played that since….
T: Yeah…in like 13 years or something.
(Miranda shows off her bruises from Leeds)
A: Leeds was really violent. Lee ended up with a fat-lip and was bitten.
Ma: It was a pretty mad crowd Leeds.
T: Did he ever consider that it might actually have been a werewolf? Just in the early stages of werewolf-ness…
Ma: Norwich was pretty mad too.
A: Yeah but it was good natured, whereas Leeds was like “I’m going to kick your fucking head in”.
(go off on a bit of a tangent again)
A: How did you feel when people were talking about Ash splitting up and being no more?
T: It was annoying because it came out of no-where.
A: You brought it on yourself!
(explain about the Isle of Wight comment)
Ma: People thought we were splitting up.
T: Yeah, that was a kind of horrible feeling actually.
A: What would a world without Ash be like? I can't imagine it.
Ma: It would be like the feeling you get when you realise that there's no god…
T:…no Santa Claus…
Ma: Recently I've become agnostic slash atheist and it was actually really bizarre…the..
R: The feeling of emptiness?
Ma: Yeah.
T: Yeah, the world would be a sad place.
A: So what do you see in the future? You'll never split up in my life-time will you?!
T: Yeah….no…definitely not. We've got a lot of ideas left to come.
Ma: We're looking forward to this whole new era of releasing stuff as soon as we've recorded it and just getting out there and doing things differently.
T: We still feel like….we've just turned 30 and it's weird like, I guess when we were young and just starting out we thought that's old…but we don't feel any different…we still feel young. Especially compared to a lot of other bands…what we've done at this age…it's so much.
A: How do you keep the enthusiasm for it? You still look like you really enjoy playing every single night?
T: Yeah.
A: How have you not become jaded?
T: Because we're so awesome! That keeps us going.
Ma: Also it really helps whenever the crowd are really going for it because you can't help but thrive off that excitement.
T: We have done gigs to like 7 people where we've been really in to it though.
Ma: There was one show in Alaska where we ordered everyone in the crowd a drink.
T: Yeah, we got tequila for everyone in the crowd and then just kept playing.
Ma: We played for hours.
A: Have your good friends Bono or Chris Martin heard Twilight of the Innocents? If so, what did they think of it?
T: I don't know. I really meant to send Bono a copy, especially since there was all the press about 'Polaris' being written at his place. I never got round to it....I've got his address. He's got a secret name to send stuff to.
Ma: Isn't Chris coming to the show on Friday?
T: Oh, yeah...I haven't seen him much recently...he might come tomorrow.
Mi: We'll be there!
T: If he smells of tea tree oil you'll know why!
Mi: The Who or Robbie Williams...do you "hope I die before I get old" or do you "hope I'm old before I die"?
T: What's the first one?
R: The Who “Hope I die before I get old" My Generation or "Hope I'm old before I die" that Robbie Williams song.......I hope Robbie Williams and Roger Daultrey both die before me.
Ma: We actually got looked after really well when we did those Robbie shows.
A: Did you actually meet him?
T: Yeah.
R: We've met Roger Daultry and Robbie Williams and they're both annoying and unpleasant and...
Ma: We met Robbie years ago in London whenever he was hanging out with Oasis.
T: When he was doing loads of coke.
A: When he was all fat?
Mi: With the bleached hair?
T: Yeah. He was nice. I saw him before those gigs at Knebworth and he was shitting himself...he was walking around shitting himself.
R: There was shit everywhere!
T: Roger Daultry is cool actually because he does those Teenage Cancer Trust gigs. He rang me up to ask us to do it, he actually put in a personal phone call which was cool.
A: You were in the Band Aid 2000 thing weren't you?
T: Yeah.
A: What was that like?
T: Pretty embarrassing! I was thinking about it the other day. The thing I didn't like about it was it seemed like The Sun pressured the who thing into doing it. Our label really wanted me to do it. I kinda got jaded about all these big events...Live 8 I thought was lame compared to the original. I think I got talked into it cos someone really wanted me to do it...I think originally he wanted me to play in a band on it, but we were on tour in Europe so I couldn't but kind of wish I had they had Paul McCartney playing bass on it and Danny from Supergrass on drums and that was done the day before so that would have been a pretty relaxed, fun session to be on.
A: So you just got to play tambourine in the video.
T: Yeah they did like a couple of takes and then they handed out the percussion...like at school. I like the original better though.
Mi: One of my dad's questions was: what is your passion in life? What really drives you?
T: Mine's definitely music....
Ma: Yeah
T: .....and my beautiful silky hair of course. I work very hard to maintain it.
Mi: Rick?
R: Round things. I really like round things.
Ma: What was it we were talking about the other day? Voles? You said something very funny about small creatures...
T: Badgers!
R: They're not a passion.
T: He also likes furry woodland creatures.
Ma: I don't know if you ever saw this but he used to have a menagerie of woodland creatures around his drum-kit and Tav got a bit pissed off...
R: They were plastic. There was a little deer called Barry Venison and a couple of squirrels.
Mi: Squirrels are great though aren't they?
R: Yeah.
Ma: Tav thought it took away from the seriousness of the show!
Mi: But you've got trees now and what better to have running through the trees than plastic squirrels?
R: Exactly. We should get into taxidermy and have some crows in the trees.
Ma: Crows would look great.
T: (rubbing his hands together) Let's go and kill some tonight...while they're sleeping. Have you ever seen 'The Crow at Night'?
(a conversation about crows, rooks and other similar birds ensues)
Ma: Did you like the smashing of the pumpkin on Halloween?
A: Yeah.
Mi: Peter.
T: No, I got it wrong. His name was actually Percevil.
Ma: We do one every year. There was Peter the pumpkin, then there was Pierre Le Pumpkin...this one was Percevil.
T: Next year we'll have Pedro, give him a Dirty Sanchez name.
A: Talking of Peters…what happened to Peter rabbit? Is he still around?
Ma: He's on a shelf at home now because he's so old and frail. He's actually falling apart. He can't come on tour because he'd just get destroyed.
R: Didn't he get trapped between the bed-head and the radiator?
Ma: Yes, his body...
T: He's got burn scars.
Ma: He does...the material is all crisp and hardened. Really bad.
T: You should get him reupholstered.
Ma: Well someone did make a new outside skin for him.
Mi: Would he be the same Peter though?
R: As long as he's still got the same cotton-y organs on the inside.
T: Same face.
Ma: Yeah, same face.
A: Okay, this is a question which we've been told to ask. What is happening in the US in terms of an album release, tour dates etc?
T: It hasn't been a priority yet but next year, or as of now really we'll be trying to get that sorted out. There will be some shows.
Mi: Play Texas!
T: Yeah Texas has always been one of our good places to go. We'll play Brian's backyard.
Ma: We'll do a b-sides only show...
T: Brian's B-side BBQ...where we go there and he has to make us a BBQ and we play. No! Brian's B-side Backyard BBQ.
Mi: Which is better...the locomotion or agadoo?
R: The locomotion.
T: Yeah the locomotion is not quite as completely irritating as agadoo, but it's up there.
(pause)
T: (laughing) The hokey cokey's the best of all though!
(we chat about Gashed and discuss ideas for future issues…and record the videos for the site…)
Then it was time for Ash to eat their dinner and for us to head back to the bar...so we said "au revoir" and headed off...leaving them to their scumptious buffet.