News Archive

Before Ash get back on the festival circuit and head over to Japan and Australia, they will be asking Russell Lissack to dish the dirt on his time touring with Ash!

To submit your questions email them to info@ash-official.com and title emails RUSSELL.

Ash frontman Tim Wheeler has been speaking to coldplay.com about Ash’s horror movie ‘Slashed‘ and how http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Martin and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonny_Buckland came to appear in the movie.

Good afternoon. A few years ago, Chris and Jonny were persuaded to star in Slashed, a horror movie made on the road by Northern Irish band Ash. The film never saw the light of day and has since become the stuff of legend. But now, Ash have decided to use some of the footage for the video of their new single, Binary, which is out this week. We called up Ash’s frontman Tim Wheeler to find out more about Slashed and Coldplay’s role in it.

Hi Tim. How did Chris and Jonny come to be in Slashed?
We were on tour with Coldplay, doing a lot of support slots in America in 2002. When you’re a support band, you’ve got a lot of free time, so we decided to make a slasher movie on the road. And then we kept meeting so many interesting people and getting them involved. It was kind of amazing how much fun we had and how many people wanted to join in on the action. Dave Grohl is in it too.

Did you think Chris and Jonny were good actors?
I thought they were incredible! They really showed us up. They brought an air of professionalism to the whole thing and they were really game for the laugh of it. Later on in the film, they get totally doused in blood and they were absolutely fine with it. They were both really funny as well. It’s good to see their comedy side.

Why has it taken so long for Slashed to appear?
Well, we never quite finished it. I guess in the end, I was meant to get killed and our manager was meant to get killed, but I think we just ran out of time and energy. And because we never completed it, it didn’t make sense to put it together. But since then, YouTube has come into existence and it’s perfect for something like this, so we figured we’d stick it on one of the videos for one these 26 singles which Ash are putting out this year. It was kind of like, if we don’t do it now, we’ll probably never do it.

Are you still friends with Chris?
Yeah, we’ve been pretty close friends for a while now.

And you’re a fan of Coldplay?
Oh absolutely. I’ve always loved what they do.

Did you see Coldplay on the Viva tour?
Yeah, I saw them in Belfast. I always seem to get a nice shout-out when I go and see them! Chris has been known to play Shining Light sometimes too – I remember he did that when I went to see them in Kentish Town once. That was a real buzz.

He does seem to be a genuine Ash fan.
I think so, yeah. He talks about hearing Angel Interceptor when he was 18 years old. He realised that we were the same age as him and he says he was intensely jealous and didn’t actually want to like it, but then couldn’t help himself! I think he said he saw us play at the London Astoria in ’97. And I remember Will said that when they were at university he sat around trying to figure out how to play Goldfinger, which has got some quite tricky chords in it. Then, when we met them a few years later, we just really connected.

Doesn’t legend have it that you met them on the street?
I think they walked by me when they were recording up in Highbury, but they said they didn’t have the guts to talk to me then! Haha! I think we met properly at a festival in Norway in 2001, when I got talking to Chris. Then later that night me and him and a bunch of people went swimming in a fjord at 4am and I got totally stung on my feet by a jellyfish! After that night, we became really good mates.

And you’ve even collaborated with Coldplay.
Yeah, I played guitar on 1.36, which was one of the B-sides of The Scientist, and then Chris sings on Everybody’s Happy Nowadays, a Buzzcocks cover we did for the Shaun of the Dead movie. He’s also on one of our B-sides, called We Don’t Care. And we’ve toured a lot together. So, yeah, there’s a lot of mutual love there, I think.

Chris and Jonny do work well as a screen double act.
Absolutely. I think their role in Coldplay is very much like Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. You can tell those two really love each other. There’s a lot of affection there. They’re sweet guys.

And there’s more to come from them in Slashed?
There is. I don’t want to give the plot away too much, but both of those characters meet a very gruesome end!

Do you think they have careers ahead of them as horror movie actors?
Oh, I think they’re more versatile than that – I wouldn’t restrict them to slasher B-movies. Or, in the case of our one, more of a Z-movie!

Andrew Johnston, a freelance journalist based in Belfast, interviewed Tim Wheeler a couple of weeks ago for the News Letter, a regional daily paper in Northern Ireland. Andrew is an old friend of Ash from the very early days and helped them get some of their first shows, and his old band played with them loads of times.

The interview, titled ‘Fire that still burns at the heart of Ash’, looks back at Ash’s entire history, as Tim explains how it felt being on tour with Elastica whilst still at school, and how the band have evolved now they are in their thirties.

You can read the full interview here.

Ash were in the BBC studios yesterday morning pre-recording interviews for 6Music. The band were interviewed for The Breakfast show with Shaun Keaveny and Music Week with interviewer Matt Everitt who the band know from his time druming in Menswear

The Music Week interview goes out this Sunday, September 7 between 1300-1400. Later in the day (about 1700) it will then be available on their podcast which you can download for the following 7 days after it’s broadcast.

The Breakfast Show interview goes out at 9.10am on Monday, September 8.

Ash have been speaking to BBC Radio 1′s Newsbeat about their plans for the rest of this year and early next year. The band confirm that they remain committed to a promise not to release any more albums, despite having more than enough new songs, instead they will concentrate on single track releases because as frontman Tim Wheeler explains “the way people listen to music has changed”.

Tim adds that “It’s been very freeing being away from the album format and not thinking, ‘Oh, this track has to fit with that track’. We’re just trying all sorts of crazy stuff. We’ve got one album worth so far but we want to get a double album worth of stuff.”  Drummer Rick McMurray also spoke of this new freedom suggesting “I think we have to go for it. You don’t have to ignore some songs because they don’t fit in with overall picture.”.

The band gave the example of a new currently untitled song “We’ve also got a great disco song that Mark wrote, we’re not sure what it’s called yet but it’s really different for us.”

Tim Wheeler also explain the meaning behind the title of the new song the band have playing live all summer called ‘Ichiban’. “It’s Japanese for number one, it’s just a fun upbeat kind of song and its great to play live so we’ve been playing it at all the festivals so far”.

The new songs should start to emerge around Spring next year.

Also in the interview it is mentioned that Ash’s former label is about to re-release a deluxe edition of their debut album ’1977′ in September, this will coincide with the two gigs the band are playing in London where they play the entire album in full. Wheeler said: “It’s a bit of nostalgia, we released it nearly 12 and a half years ago.”

Ash bassist Mark Hamilton spoke to O2 Making Waves during the bands 2007 December tour in Dublin to find out what it’s like to be back on the road, those rumours about this being their last ever album, and the bands plans for 2008. Catch Ash on O2 Making Waves at podcastingireland.ie.

If you head over to the official Ash website you’ll notice that there is a new interview with frontman Tim Wheeler, in which he reveals what Ash have been up to since the album was released in July and what’s to come over the coming months.

Interesting is the revelation that the band have been recording B-Sides for an upcoming EP due around the time of the bands UK tour in October

We’ve been recording B-sides recently, working on a bunch of tracks, maybe to go with ‘Twilight Of The Innocents’ for an EP around our tour. And then the plan is to get in the studio early next year and start bringing out singles, as of about March.

Tim also comments on the B-Sides to the upcoming single ‘End Of The World’, and explains the history of the demo recordings on the 7-inches.

One’s called ‘Seventh Circle’, which fans might know as an old song called ‘Singapore Song’. Bootlegs of that have been floating around for years. I think it’s actually one of my best songs, but it’s just never quite fitted on any of the albums. Then there’s ‘Wasted On You’, which is a rocker from the album sessions. And the other one is ‘Statis In Darkness’ which I wrote a while ago with a string quartet. It’s another great song, actually. Pretty depressing, but beautiful at the same time.

And then on the 7-inches we’ve got the first version of ‘Palace of Excess’ back when it was called ‘Suicide Girls’ and also ‘Shattered Glass’. They were the first things we did in our studio. We ended up totally re-recording them, but these versions show the direction the album could’ve taken. We were trying to do it fully live, with one guitar, bass, drums and vocals. So they sound a lot rawer.

Ash frontman Tim Wheeler was interviewed recently by Glenn Savage for ‘The West Australian’. Tim speaks openly about the bands desire for change after the ‘Meltdown’ world tour ended, moving to New York City, the writing and recording of the bands final album and the bands future plans.

‘We’ve reached the end of our contract and we’re just a bit sick of the frustrating slow process of albums. We plan to release downloadable singles on a more spontaneous basis to keep everything fresh’