“No Ducking, No Petting”

Meet Ash: under-21 Number 1 pop stars. “We’re not worried about a thing,” they tell “Uncle” Howard Johnson.

They’re a bit of a mess. Tim Wheeler and Mark Hamilton - both 19, both members of Ash, both terrifically hungover - are making tentative steps towards coming to terms with another day. Careering around London with a bay of loose change and a desire to drink themselves silly had been a splendid notion last night, but at 11 am things aren’t looking so rosy. Still, at least they’re here. The band’s third member Rick McMurray has been forced to surrender to his senses and is currently struggling to get rid of a Class A hangover in his hotel bed. It’s a sick sight, apparently. Though not as sick as last night… “He was diving into every girl’s make-up bag and smearing all kinds of stuff all over his face,” grins Wheeler, shamefacedly, “It happens all the time, part of Rick’s drunken routine. I suppose he’s just an exhibitionist.”

Wiser head on older shoulders will shake indulgently. When the news is that your debut album, entitled 1977 (the year Wheeler and Hamilton were born) and a collection of 12 feisty tunes that mix and match pop, punk and rock with total aplomb, has shifted 165,000 copies and is currently holding Alanis Morrissette and The Cure off the Number 1 spot in the Big Boys Chart, then alcoholic idiocy seems a entirely appropriate response.

“I’m a dedicated rock’n’roller,” deadpans Hamilton. “There are times when I think that we may be going too far - and I definitely worry about Rick because he’s really close to becoming an alcoholic - but then I just go, Fuck it. I don’t care. I’m going to go out and I’m going to get fucked up.”

“Everything’s got so much momentum now that’s too late,” concurs Wheeler, seemingly secure in the knowledge that things are crazy, entertainingly and quite possibly scaringly out of control.

Seven years ago, anything so wild seemed way out of Wheeler and Hamilton’s league. They had met as first years at Down High School in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, after Hamilton’s dad bought a new dental practice in the town. All the boys in school loved Iron Maiden, bought all the videos and wished they too could wear over-tight trousers and do onstage battle with a not-very-scary monster.

“Metal was very fashionable at the time,” explains Hamilton. “I had the patches on the jacket, the works. Bands hate to own up to things that aren’t cool now, but I’m not ashamed of it, after all we were only 12.” Within a year, the legion of would-be superstars had been whittled down to Wheeler and Hamilton only. Furnished with a couple of pointy looking guitars, the duo set to work. “We picked things up pretty quickly, just the two of us sitting in my bedroom,” explains Wheeler. “We never bothered doing covers because we wanted to do our own songs - and we thought we were brilliant.”

Sadly, the rest of Downpatrick began to differ. With a line-up of Wheeler on vocals and guitar, Malcolm King on rhythm, Hamilton on bass, Gareth ‘Cookie’ King on vocals and 17-year-old Andy McLean on drums (“He couldn’t play but we kept saying look, we’ve got a man playing the drums”) the terrifically named Vietnam took on local youth clubs and the school halls to the disastrous effect. “We were the laughing stock of the town,” admits Wheeler. “We tried to be metal but we weren’t good enough. The vibe was ‘the more complicated the better’. It was… awful.”

The souls of the aspiring riffmeisters were saved when Nirvana’s Nevermind was released in 1991, eloquently explaining that rock music could survive quite happily without spandex while offering the added bonus of being easier to play. Vietnam was, not altogether surprisingly, doomed.

With a drum machine stolen from school, Hamilton and Wheeler radically rethought their approach, writing six songs that they still hold in some esteem before deciding to record them for the princely sum of £70, the result of weeks spent starving at dinner times. Drummerless, Wheeler managed to persuade Rick McMurray and possessed of a kit, the ability to keep a steady beat, a pair of cowboy boots and a cut-off Aerosmith T-shirt, to sit in on the day-long session which produced the group’s first demo.

By the end of the summer McMurray had stuck around, the unfavoured footwear was gone and a twelve song demo was in the can, funded to what can only be referred to as ‘A Substantial Bout Of Thieving’. “We had a deal going with the guy in the school tuckshop,” explains Hamilton. “He’d give us two or three quids worth of sweets and a fiver in change everyday. We were so bad! Over the course of a year more than a grand went missing and it was a really big deal, the police was called in and everything! We had to deny all knowledge.”

Wheeler is by now squirming in his seat. “If our old headmaster reads this he’ll have us in court next week. He’s still upset about it. The next years prices were doubled to make up the shortfall.” Armed with the knowledge that crime does pay, a snappy name chosen at random from a dictionary and somewhat sceptical parents at the wheel of inadequate transportation, Ash began 12 months of weekly gigs in Belfast’s least salubrious bars, playing with the same bands to the same 30 people with the sometime bonus of playing with touring acts like Ride and Babes In Toyland at a venue called the Limelight. A 13-song again illicitly funded demo titled Garage Girl finally found its way into the hands of radio plugger Steve ‘Tav’ Tavener in London, who forked out 300 quid for Ash to record a 7-inch single, “Jack Names the Planets, which suddenly found its way all over Mark Radcliff, John Peel and Mark Goodier’ shows at Radio 1. It was February, 1994. Hamilton and Wheeler were still only 17, McMurray but a year older. “It was a weird time,” recalls Wheeler. “Tav was over their trying to manage us and our parents were going, You mean, you think they’re actually good? The next thing we know there are lawyers from our record company trying to give us like a couple of thousand each, and my mum and dad are thinking. This is outrageous!”

Juggling studies alongside such minor activities as recording the Trailer mini-album and touring the UK with Elastica put Ash under some hardly unexpected pressure. Some dealt with it more effectively than others. While McMurray had already chalked up straight As for History, Politics and English (“He’s a genius,” says Wheeler) and was at Belfast University studying History and Politics, Wheeler was coping admirably enough with English, Maths and French. Hamilton, however, was struggling. As “Kung Fu” - the first song produced by their close confidante, Oasis man Owen Morris, and featuring the infamous Cantona leap on its cover - was hurtling up the charts, the lanky bassist was busy cracking up: “I loathed school, didn’t want to be there, the pressure was getting to me and I got really sick.”

There is an awkward silence. “I went a bit mad. I took too many drugs and ended up in hospital. You know when you freak out on acid and you wake up the next morning and every thing is… OK? Well, one night I was still off my tits from the night before and it just didn’t go away. It started in February ’95 and by September I was still fucked up. I went to psychiatrists and shrinks, all sorts. It was scary… I nearly died. I’m still on the rebound… and I don’t know. I don’t wanna talk about it.” Only the arrogance of youth can explain by the wanton disregard for personal safety that Hamilton is already showing so soon after an all-too-close for comfort brush with death, but you can’t help but worry for the boy.

With “Girl From Mars” stopping just short of the magical top 10 and last single “Goldfinger” reaching Number 5 with embarrassing ease, Ash’s stock is rising so fast that they exude a confidence that’s unsettling in ones so young, especially now that A Levels are safely stockpiled - even Hamilton managed a B 1n Art under those trying circumstances.

“It feels good,” agrees Wheeler. “After “Girl From Mars” got to number 11 everyone wanted to re-release “Kung Fu”, but we don’t need that. I can write the songs, I’ve proved it. Halfway through recording the album we scrapped a load of stuff because we were writing better material. I’m not worried about a thing.” Indeed not. A photograph on the sleeve of 1977 shows Wheeler, arms aloof and legs akimbo, framed triumphantly by a full length window. “That was the 25th floor of the Time Warner Building at Rockerfeller Plaza, New York. It’s just good old me taking on the world.”

With a skin so pasty it’s almost translucent and his tiny, almost brittle frame barely moving, the man doesn’t even look like he can tackle the coffee in front of him this morning. Mind you given the upward curve he’s currently navigating with astounding ease, you wouldn’t bet against him.