Ash’s Tim Wheeler is a happy man. Not only has he watched his band pull back from the brink of bankruptcy, he’s about to spend 48 hours partying with David Bowie and Steve Coogan in New York.
At 12 noon, it’s not looking too good. The place is downtown New York, at the edge of the financial cogs of America’s premier city. Chinatown is to our left. City Hall is behind us. City Hall Park is beneath our feet. Once block down and one block right is a flat space - maybe the size of Green Park, maybe the size of the Don Valley Stadium - covered by a protection of blue canvas mesh and grey steel barricades. Men in hard hats petrol the area, with the noise of angry electricity from industrial hardware grinding into the air. Stalls are built on the kerbside selling t-shirts and caps bearing the letters ‘FDNY’ and ‘NYPD’. Poor immigrants sell bound and glossy books concerning an autumn spectacular, concerning a story of terror. This is the place you know as Ground Zero.
It’s 97 degrees, a temperature sufficient to melt the wax in your hair and wet the shirt on your back. At the bottom end of City Hall Park is a small stage, so hot from the sun that you can’t touch the rubber boards with the flat of your hand. A drum kit and a backline of amplifiers stand ready. Two New Yorkers, prosperous with weight, sit in deck chairs at the waist-high wooden barricades at the front of the boards, reading books and sipping Coca-Cola from giant plastic cups. No one pays them any mind.
In 15 minutes time a band will perform a free lunchtime concert on the stage. The band, for all intents and purposes, are unknown on this side of the Atlantic.
The band, hungover and hot, are Ash. A quarter-of-an-hour later and things are looking better. Three-hundred people hardy any of them British or Irish, are gathered with as much interest as New Yorkers ever display, listening to a man give a speech through a microphone. The man is the area’s representative in New York’s State Legislature, and he’s speaking in praise of the businesses who chose to remain in the neighbourhood following the thing that occurred here one morning last September; businesses such as the local record shop who are staging this lunchtime concert. Listening to his warm and lugubrious voice is to get a brief sense of what threat day and its aftermath meant, not to the people who died, but to the residents who remain. And just how long will it be before September 11 falls below the horizon of New York’s consciousness. He’s right when he says that all the businesses in the area could have closed up, could have moved out to Brooklyn, to Long Island or to New Jersey. Could have, but didn’t.
And he’s right when he says this: “To celebrate the regeneration of the downtown area, we have some great music for you now. We have an international act, all the way from Ireland. They’re a great band. Please welcome… Ash!”
Ash want to ‘break’ America, they make no bones about this. And why should they? Despite having youth on their side - vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Tim Wheeler and bassist Mark Hamilton are both 25 years of age, drummer Rick McMurray is 27, Chingford-born guitarist Charlotte Hatherley is 23 - the band also have a decade’s worth of experience on their resume. They have, if you’ll allow the vernacular, plenty of puke on their shoes.
They have plenty of talent, too. Enough, in fact to sanction the release of Intergalactic Sonic 7"s, a 19-song collection of eight years worth of singles, from “Jack Names the Planets” (their first) to “Envy” (their recent released new one). It’s a release that, should you require the remainder, plays out the trajectory of precocity, development and skill that has enabled Ash to prevail in times both good and bad over the years.
All of which might come as a surprise. After all, just 18 months ago the perception was that Ash were ‘over’, following a two-year hiatus after the relative commercial disappointment of Nu-Clear Sounds, their occasionally brilliant second album. Ash just nuzzled their wounds, had a think, had a rest, sucked it up and took it in. It did sting a little, says Tim Wheeler, but it probably did them the power of good in the long term. It probably taught them a bit of humanity.
But they came back, swinging and fighting all the way. They were, says Wheeler, a thousand pounds away from bankruptcy, but their third album, Free All Angels, put paid to that. They didn’t get their faces on any magazine covers - “Yes, I do think we’re taken for granted in the UK,” believes Tim Wheeler, “since you ask” - and they had to suffer the ignominy of being placed on a festival below the likes of The Black Crowes, but, surely, for once, good music will out. People heard Ash, heard the new songs, and they came back. And then sells. Three-hundred-and-fifty thousand of them in the United Kingdom alone.
All of which means absolutely nothing for America, of course. Not a thing. It’s been five years since Ash last toured the US, and they’ve since lost two record contracts, down to the stupidity of apathy of each label. Bloodied and unbowed, and buoyed by their success at home, they’re back to give it another run. At the moment they’re the opening band on the bill for the Area:2 tour, starring Moby, David Bowie and Busta Rhymes. It’s a nice gig, but one which Ash approach with a smile, rather than with the bloodshot eyes and worry lines of ruthless ambition. But applause, and audience and a little recognition here would be nice.
“I think it would be great to find a level of success here,” says Tim Wheeler, the most talk-active of the quartet. “Actually, it would be nice to be massive here. You know, not that long ago everyone said that we were dead, and we managed to prove them wrong. And we did that by just playing our music, and doing it to the best of our abilities. Which is, I guess, what we’re going to do here. There’s no grand plan, but we have a belief in what we do, and the past that’s what has carried us through. So I guess we’re approaching this the same way as we approach everything. Which is just to be ourselves.”
There is a sense, rightly or wrongly, that a band hasn’t really been vindicated unless they ‘break’ America. Are you aware of that?
“Yeah, I do know that. And while on the one hands it’s not really true - it would be a bit of an insult of our fans in other places to say that it was - I do know what you mean. So many of our influences come from America and obviously it would be nice to be appreciated here. It’s such a fantastic country. It’s just so exciting.”
“I absolutely love it here,” says Rick McMurray. “I could live here, I could well make my home here in New York.”
Our Conversation takes place in the Metropolitan Hotel, a nauseatingly hip sleep-over on West 46th Street, half a block from Times Square, up on the white chairs and white wooden tables of the dimly-lit mezza-nine bar. The beers are six dollars a pull, the waiters and waitresses, bellboys and concierge all have the superior stance and the perfect dental work of the ’resting’ actor. They’ll gladly chase after you into the streets if you fail to leave a 15% tip.
Not that this is where Ash are staying. Two blocks north, toward Central Park, is a motel - as cheap as French fries, as they might say here - and that’s where Ash are staying. Their touring transportation, for journeys that lost hours and hours and hours, is an unassuming people carrier. They have a road crew of just two people; one to set up and bring down the backline, another to magic the sound desk into life, with all their equipment lodged into a small trailer hooked to the back of their wagon. During this interview, they keep their eyes on the time, so that they can collect their washing from an Upper West Side laundrette before it closes.
This is surprising. “Why?” asks Mark Hamilton. Because you don’t envisage a band capable of selling out two nights at the Brixton Academy schlepping around New York doing their own laundry. “Yeah, but that’s in England. We’re unknown here. Things are different.”
Mark Hamilton, at first meeting, seems a stern man: broad, tall, strong and stoic. If he likes you then he’ll make conversation. If he doesn’t, he won’t. Don’t you miss all the comforts that you have when you tour Europe? A tour bus, nice hotels? “Not really, no.” Are you finding this enjoyable? “Very much so.”
“A lot of bands from home make a mistake when they come to America,” says Tim Wheeler. “They bring over all their equipment, a dozen people on the crew, who all need paying, a tour bus, and they stay in nice hotels. And they find it to be hard work. They forget that this country is unlike any other country in the world. For a start it’s massive, Texas alone is three times the size of Britain. And it’s an inward-looking nation. Americans are not necessarily looking to be impressed by bands from outside their own country. So it can be a touch slog. And many bands come out here for six weeks, and get really frustrated by the lack of progress they’ve made. They can’t understand why, since they’re popular at home, they’re not popular here. And all the while they’ve spent half a million pounds on tour support, and the record company is saying, ‘Well, you’ve not sold any records. What was the point of spending all this money?’. And that’s when it can start go wrong.”
And you’re not going to fall for that? “No, we’ve been doing this long enough now to be able to avoid those kinds of mistakes.” Still, budget or not, Ash do manage to look the part. In Times Square it’s almost midnight, and still almost 90 degrees. Even for the committed urbanite, no matter how many times you’ve seen the image, whether in the concrete and neon or on a screen or in a magazine, it’s still a sight that pulses with immediacy. Tourists with video cameras look up at the 50-storey hotels towering above; they shoot the neon signs shining down. Coca-Cola, The Discovery Channel, Panasonic, Bruce Springsteen. Buy, watch, use, listen. Leicester Square would suffer breakdown in comparison.
Ash are having their photograph taken. Waiting by a railing is Rick McMurray. Sensing we’re from out of town, and ageing American gent, also possibly from out of town, wanders up to us. Not unkindly he says that we’re now “in the centre of the universe, you know?”
“No, we’re not,” says McMurray, not kindly. “The sun is the centre of the universe.” The man, sensing that this is not a time for pleasant conversation, drifts away, perhaps a little stung. Were you a bit off colour there, Rick? “No,” he says. “I was just pointing out a simple fact.” Apparently Rick McMurray can sometimes be like this.
Charlotte Hatherley, hanging out and hamming it up, is making David Bowie stage moves with her hands, singing the words to “China Girl”. She’s a big fan. Tomorrow she’ll walk up to him backstage and introduce herself, and he, in turn, will be gracious and friendly. She’ll return to her table physically shaking from the experience. She’ll tell you that “Absolute Beginners” got her through her “difficult” teenage years. She’ll then do a lousy Bowie impression, and look confused when you can’t work out who it is she’s impersonating. She looks thrilled when she’s told that she’s just been ‘checked out’ by a fireman. She drops to the floor and kicks her right leg, like a rock star.
How come you don’t do those moves onstage? “Because I have a guitar to play.” She smiles as it’s suggested that the guitar probably isn’t actually even plugged in, that Charlotte Hatherley is really just eye candy. “Yeah, and not very good-looking eye candy at that,” says Tim Wheeler. Tim gets a slap.
Looking at the billboards hung outside the Virgin Megastore, she fixes a picture of the baby adorning the cover of the new Papa Roach record. “Aren’t babies cute?” she asks. Are you getting broody? “Yes. Do you want to help me out?”
Charlotte Hatherley says things like this all the time, to everyone. She’ll tell you that she’s off to play with her “fanny fiddle” - “get it right if you’re going to put that in the piece” - and that she’s off to “have a quick shag with Tim Wheeler” (it would have to be, they’re back within five minutes). She’s a little sensitive to being called ‘posh’ - she gets over it if you repeat the accusation 50 or 60 times - but despite being taken from Chingford (where there’s more chance having your head taken off by a lacrosse stick than a car bomb) and despite all of the other ostensible differences between her and the other 75 per cents of Ash, of which gender is only one, if this band is a gang then she’s certainly pulling faces and making noise with the rest of them.
Which is some noise, or at least it is an hour later, 20 blocks south, down in Chelsea. The place is a spacious upmarket club called the Roxy, the occasion is a launch party for the American release of 24 Hour Party People. Steve Coogan is here somewhere, as the former Factory record boss Tony Wilson. The music is loud, the Union Flags and Boddingtons posters on the wall garish and predictable. But the drinks are free, and the barkeepers will fix you a whiskey sour so potent that you can almost see vapour trails drifting from glass.
Tim Wheeler sits at the back of the club, sipping a beer. He’s wearing blue jeans and a red T-shirt with no arms. He is fundamentally friendly as any man you could hope to meet. He speaks, when asked, of the time his band played in Belfast with U2 at a concert designed to promote the ’yes’ vote for the referendum on the Good Friday Agreement. He laughs, disarmingly, almost to himself, at how he was onstage as Bono led out the Unionist David Trimble and the Nationalist John Hume to shake hands at the end of the night, a motion of incredible symbolism. And that whenever the footage is shown, there he is, standing between them.
Tim Wheeler also believes the best song he’s written is “Goldfinger”. As for “Burn Baby Burn”, a song as infectious as a communicable disease, a profile-raising smash of a tune and easily the best single of last year, he says this:
“Well, “Burn Baby Burn” was originally just an outtake from Nu-Clear Sounds that didn’t make the album. But Mark kept saying how we should try the song again, because he liked the riff. So we dug it out, and I re-wrote the words and the chorus. But even then we weren’t sure if we were going to put it on the album or not. It might have been just a B-side or something like that.”
Are you surprised at how much significance can hang on seemingly insignificant decisions such as that? “Very much so. Especially when it comes to “Burn Baby Burn”. That song saved our arse.”
Fourteen hours later and 40 miles away in Long Island, Ash are paying the physical check from a night on the New York tiles. It’s unbearable hot. Not that half of the band would know it, asleep, as they are, on the floor of their dressing room. At the end of the night, Mark Hamilton jumped into Steve Coogan’s limousine, explaining that Ash’s car was full, and would the comedian mind if he hitched a ride with him? No problem, answered Coogan, be my guest.
Now Ash are at a beautiful all-seated amphitheatre in Jones Beach, surrounded by water and baked by the sun. But the physical beauty of the Tommy Hilfiger Theater - as the name alone might suggest - is undermined and counterweighted by an ugliness of mentality. You’re not allowed to bring in a bag, no matter what it holds, even if it holds nothing. You have to check in, and pay for the privilege, at a table, where it will be piled willy-nilly and searched for hours by helpless and hopeless minimum wage staffers at the end of the concert. Inside, you can’t buy a beer, because there is no beer on sale, or any alcohol of any description. You can buy a soda-heavy Coca-Cola for 5 Pounds, or a meat light hot dog for the same price. Or you can buy an Area:2 baseball cap for 22 Pounds.
Or a David Bowie baseball shirt for 35 Pounds. Or you can just wait for four hours until the rain comes; a storm so intense that Bowie, playing in the face of horizontal bullets of water, will be asked to leave the stage before lighting - lightning which will kill a young Brazilian boy up in Manhattan later that evening - moves in and strikes him, and us, dead.
If Ash are to leave a print on America’s imagination then it’s in places such as this that they’ll need to make friends. Today is Friday, a work day, and when Ash stride onto the stage at four o’clock, the empty seats outnumber the audience by about eight to one. Not only that, but the people actually occupying the seats - all with a specified place to sit, rather than an open access ticket - are scattered like passengers on a deserted train. There’s a few hundred people in the expensive (60 Pounds) rows, a few hundred on the first incline, a few hundred on the first balcony and a few hundred up in the nosebleeds. Elsewhere, it’s busy at the concession stand and empty in the corporate boxes.
This could well be disrupting, but somehow it isn’t. It might be that there’s evidently so little pressure playing in a setting such as this that Ash are truly able to be themselves. Or it could be that this band have been doing this so long, and are now so good, that they can rise above any situation. Whatever, with seats filling all the time and one intuitively fluent and marvellous tune following another, Ash manage to make a splash in front of three thousand people, most of whom have no idea who they are. If the band were expecting the worst but hoping for the best, then here their optimism has its reward.
“Who wants to rock?” asks Tim Wheeler, with a smile. “We wanna rock. Do you wanna rock?”
And Long Island does want to rock, as a few thousand people cheer back with surprising voice and genuine heart. ‘Wow,’ the cheer seems to say, with affectionate surprise: this band are good. They cheer after every song. And they cheer loudly as Ash call it an afternoon.
New York is impressed. They made it here. Perhaps they can make it anywhere.
By Ian Winwood