8 hours ago
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Tim Wheeler, Mark Hamilton and Rick McMurray are the founding members of Ash. School friends from Downpatrick, County Down, they started out as a covers band called Vietnam in 1989. As Ash, their debut full-length album, 1977, went to No 1 in 1996. Shining Light, from 2001’s Free All Angels, won them an Ivor Novello award. The group have released nine albums, three of which feature guitarist Charlotte Hatherley. They are releasing a 30th anniversary edition of 1977 on 16 October and are on a world tour, including the UK and Ireland, until December.
Tim (in the centre)
This was the start of a crazy ride. I was 18 and in the back of the van in Tokyo on our first tour of Japan. As we drove towards the hotel we were swamped by fans, just like Beatlemania. That night Mark put his head through the hotel wall and a lampshade was smashed. We ended up paying £800 in damages at checkout.
Mark and I met when we were 11. We realised we both loved heavy metal and computer games, and decided to start a band. I knew he was a bit of a nuts person, but he was also super solid and a good friend. Rick was in the year above. I’d see him in the corridor and thought he was an odd-looking dude. He had long curtain hair, large glasses, Jane’s Addiction painted on his school bag, and on non-school uniform day he’d wear cowboy boots and an Aerosmith T-shirt. We met backstage at the school play and decided to get together and jam. Rick transformed what Mark and I had built into a decent-sounding band. That’s when everything changed.
The summer when Girl from Mars came out, we finished our A-levels, played Glastonbury, did Top of the Pops, and performed to a packed-out tent at Reading festival. The band blew up, but the experience of being a pop star was quite tough. I was exhausted from all the touring and promotion, and felt like I was losing my mind. I spoke to the guys about how unhappy I was, and we tried to slow down the schedule, but it was impossible. I felt this weird dichotomy: my dreams were coming true but the pressure was too huge.
In spite of how overwhelmed I felt, it was still fun playing the gigs and there was always a lot of carnage. We used to call Mark and Rick The Dangerous Brothers. There were a few years where if one of them was on it, then it would be a big night for both. In Switzerland, we’d been drinking for eight hours, and Mark climbed on top of a trailer that was the size of a doubledecker bus. He walked off the back of it by accident and woke up in surgery having his head sewn together – he tried to fight the doctor as he thought someone was pulling his hair out. Mark also broke both his feet jumping off a balcony. For the rest of the tour he self-medicated with gin and buckets of ice after every show.
Nu-Clear Sounds, our next album, didn’t do as well as 1977. The Britpop party was ending, and there was a danger of getting dropped. I went to stay with my parents, and Mark and Rick were back with theirs, too. We started rehearsing in the shed where we first started. Around this time, in our early 20s, we began to grow up a bit.
When I meet other bands, they’re often shocked that we don’t hate each other. We’ve never wanted separate dressing rooms, and we’re a lot less headstrong about decisions than we used to be. What has remained is the buzz we get when we have a new idea for a song. In that moment, we’re teenagers again.
Rick (on the right)
This captures the point where we were flung from school corridors to Japan and Glastonbury, meeting Oasis, and realising this dream was about to become our reality. In retrospect, I had to play a character so I could deal with the bewildering nature of the moment – I was always goofing around and didn’t want to take anything massively seriously. When 1977 came out, things became more fraught. We got totally burnt out, then felt the opposite side of the coin when Nu‑Clear Sounds was released.
Over the decades, the thing that has never changed is our attitude towards each other and how we feel about the band. We still care so much. Experience has mellowed off our rougher edges, but fundamentally we are the same people, with the same attitudes. As for our partying days, I still enjoy going out, but I completed drinking six years ago. I got sober. Everyone else still has a few beers; it’s not a dry bus. But I’ll just have a sniff. As in, I’ll sniff the bottle of whiskey.
Our relationship is defined by those formative years at school together. We are extremely lucky that we started out so young – that we were school friends before our egos even started to form. Even though we all live in separate places, when we all come back together it’s like we’ve never been away.
after newsletter promotion
Ash are a weirdly functional family, and Tim and Mark are probably the most driven people I know. Their work ethic and their dedication are amazing. That’s the secret to why we’re still here.
Mark (on the left)
It was a culture shock to go from rural Ireland to Japan. It felt like stepping into Blade Runner. That’s gum I’m pulling from my mouth.
Our manager would egg a lot of my bad behaviour on, because it made sense: the shows and the music were shambolic, so I should be, too. I also liked the madness of touring as it was a distraction from my own chaos. Before the band properly began I’d had a breakdown, and I was definitely still in a fragile mindset when Ash took off. Self-medicating was the only way to deal with how I was feeling. A lot of the time I was spiralling badly, but if you took away the attention, adrenaline and fun, then I was doing much worse. The worst times were when we had days off, when I had to come down and sober up. That’s when the psychological issues would kick in. It wasn’t until my mid-20s that I properly felt stabilised.
After the success of our first album we were being pushed to make 1977 Part 2 by the record company. If you tell a bunch of teenagers what to do, they’re going to do the opposite. When Nu-Clear Sounds didn’t do so well, we realised we had to be smart to play the charting game again. But we had integrity: we didn’t want to comply completely as we weren’t happy with how we’d been marketed in certain places. In France, we were being pushed as an actual boyband, the implication being that we were manufactured and no different from Take That. It was mortifying as we have always been DIY, from recording our own demos to putting posters up.
The biggest change in Ash was when we all started having kids. There was one specific morning where I woke up and was hungover, and I had a little toddler to look after. I hated being in that headspace. I’ll still drink, maybe a margarita or one or two whiskeys, but even then I regret it as I want to function for my family the next day.
We’ve never had any inner-band rivalries as we only care about Ash. Part of me is always motivated by the sense that we created this thing, and the thing has never been truly appreciated. So we’ll keep going – kicking and screaming – until we’ve proved everyone wrong.
