Ash's Tim Wheeler on playing with Coldplay: "When I went on stage it felt like I was in Heaven"

They’re no longer guaranteed real teenagers, but a quick listen to Ash’s new Ad Astra album confirms that the fire continues to burn (baby burn) as fiercely in their bellies as ever.

Indeed, this writer believes that the Graham Coxon-adorned collection is the Downpatrick trio’s finest 43mins 26secs since their debut 1977 album topped the charts on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Before this May 1996 ascent to the summit, Tim Wheeler had mitched off double maths at Down High School to conduct his maiden interview in a national publication with Hot Press’ Lorraine Freeney.

It was the first of many notable encounters with what was then Ireland’s most fortnightly magazine, as Tim recalls when we track him down to his London layer.

“Do you remember the Christmas Round Table with you, me, Joe Elliott and Sharon Corr?” he asks when we’re sat down.

What, the December 2009 one which also starred Delorentos’ Ronan Yourell, Daragh Anderson from Codes, Ciaran Gribbin who went on to front INXS after Michael Hutchence’s death and Tara McCormack from Vengeance & The Panther Queen?

“Yeah, that was amazing!” says Tim of the afternoon gathering which, if hangover serves me correctly, turned in to an extremely late night at the Library Bar in Lillie’s Bordello.

But enough of this reminiscing. Let us return to the rock ‘n’ roll present.

How did Tim, Rick and Mark end up with Blur ledge Graham Coxon guesting on not one, but two of the standouts from their ninth studio album?

“The first time we properly met Graham was when Ash were doing a tiny warm-up gig in Camden at the height of Britpop,” Wheeler, who turns 49 in January but looks at least a decade younger, tells me. “He was absolutely shitfaced, almost to the point of making out with all of us! Graham – who obviously really got his act together after that – told us how much he loved the band, which was the start of a long friendship.

“My first time working with Graham, who’s a really sweet guy, was in 2011 when myself, Emmy The Great and him collaborated on some songs for a Britpop movie, The Wanderers, which a director was trying to raise money for. Doing my parts I purposefully kept the playing simple because I wanted to give Graham the space to do what he does.

“At every step, he’s fucking around and coming up with something unusual. He can’t do anything normally. I really enjoyed working with him and thought, ‘If the opportunity arises, I’d love Graham to do something with Ash.’”

After Tim’s lengthy New York exile ended a few years ago, their paths crossed again in slightly less hedonistic fashion than they first had.

“We bumped into each other at a birthday party for Carlos from Fontaines D.C.’s kid,” he laughs. “We’ve all got children of around the same age – my son’s three-and-half, Graham’s is three and Carlos’ daughter is three as well. I had a song – ‘Fun People’ – percolating which I’d already thought Graham would be fucking great on, so I asked him and he said ‘Yes!’ I’d also started writing what turned out to be the Ad Astra title-track and was like, ‘Wow, we could have a guitar dual on this!’ It was so much fun.”

Like Graham Coxon, Tim also had a period early on when it got a bit too dark and drunken.
“It’s ironic, 1977 was No. 1 and I really wasn’t having a good time,” he grimaces. “I enjoyed making the album but then it just went fucking apeshit. I was struggling mentally with the pressure and the exhaustion and the drugs. I was only 19-years-old and I don’t think my head was processing it. All my dreams were coming true and it just didn’t feel good. Thankfully, I managed to ride that wave and started to enjoy it all again.”

In case the album title and cover pic of the lads in astronaut gear doesn’t ram the point home, Ad Astra opens with a cover of the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme, ‘Zarathustra’.

“There are definitely some Buck Rogers melodies on there before at the end of the album it blasts off into space!” Tim laughs.

As good as those Graham Coxon-assisted songs are, Ad Astra’s masterpiece is ‘Deadly Love’, which is redolent of both Secret Machines – Rick’s bass drum kicks like a rabid mule – and Motörhead’s genius take on David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’.

“Oh my god, I’ve never heard that and fucking need to!” Tim shoots back. “‘Deadly Love’ is one of my favourites and the only track to survive from the synthy record we started off making, but abandoned when we booked a tour with The Darkness. The two weren’t really compatible.”

Another member of Ash’s A-List fan club is Chris Martin.

“We’re the same age so he was eighteen when ‘Angel Interceptor’ came out, which he says gave him a kick up the ass to get a band – i.e. Coldplay – together. Every six months he’ll randomly text me saying, ‘I love Ash and miss you.’ It was via one of those texts earlier in the year that Chris asked, ‘Would you like to jump up on stage with us and do ‘Clocks’?’ which is a great song to rock out to. I was like, ‘Wembley Stadium? That’s out of the blue. Let me think about it for a nano-second!’”

As anyone who caught them in Croker in 2024 will know, Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres was the mother all spectacles.

“It’s such an immersive experience with everyone part of the light show with their wristbands,” Wheeler marvels. “They make a stadium feel very small and dreamlike. When I went on stage it felt like I was in heaven! ‘Clocks’ is the most silhouette-y song of the show with a sea of green lasers. I thought I was dead and had gone somewhere else for three minutes. When it was over I was like, ‘What the fuck was that? I wish I’d been up there just a bit longer to absorb it.’ Two days later he asked me back to do it and one of the newer songs, ‘Human Kind’, which had some guitar windmills I was able to let rip on.”

As always when interviewing Ash, I’m contractually obliged to ask whether we’re any closer to seeing their fabled horror film, Slashed?

“The trouble is we never finished it,” he rues. “We filmed a lot when we were supporting various bands in America. There’s some great cameos – Dave Grohl, Moby and Coldplay are in it. Pretty much everyone’s death scenes got filmed apart from mine. I don’t know how we’d ever wrap it up. We have been talking to the guy who did our ‘Jump In The Line’ video, Anthony Neale. Since we made Ad Astra it’s gone on the backburner again, but there may be a way of sticking some crazy Kill Bill animation on the end.”

Which is the most promising answer to a question I’ve been asking Tim for twenty years. Unless you’ve watched the credits through to the end, you won’t be aware that Mr. Wheeler plays some of the original guitar parts on the House Of Guinness soundtrack.

“That show’s an encapsulation of how cool Ireland is at the moment,” he enthuses. “I’ve known the House Of Guinness composer, Ilan Eshkeri, for years and if he needs some guitar he usually asks me. The soundtrack’s a great blending of the new and the traditional. There’s a lot of punk energy in there and cool electronic stuff too. I managed to sneak a bit of ‘Rocky Road To Dublin’ into the first episode!”

That’s only the beginning of Wheeler’s luvvy credentials.

“I did a bit of Shakespeare recently with Ralph Fiennes who put a production of As You Like It on in Bath,” Tim reveals. “There are four or five lyrics that don’t have standard music to them, so we sort of co-wrote the songs with the Great Bard! It’s fucking terrifying when someone like Ralph Fiennes is chasing you for a deadline. He’s very cool, though, and I loved being part of it.”

It wasn’t only Ralph Fiennes’ ire that Tim feared this year.

“We went out with The Darkness on their first major Permission To Land tour in 2003,” Tim concludes. “Justin was a maniac in his drug days, but is super cool now and really smart. The first time I saw them was at Knebworth when we were both opening for Robbie Williams. The Darkness only had one single out but Justin held these 110,000 people in the palm of his hand. I’d never seen a brand new artist do that before. He was an absolute master of stagecraft even at that point.

“Anyway, our intro on the tour we did with The Darkness in March was a mash up of ‘The A-Team’ into ‘Flash’ by Queen – albeit with the ‘Fl-’ removed. One of the nights I heard that Roger Taylor (father of Darkness drummer Rufus Taylor) was coming to the gig. ‘I was like, ‘Fuck, he’s going to see this and sue us for everything we don’t have.’ I was really panicking but afterwards Rufus told us his dad had loved it. Phew!”

• Catch them live in the Róisín Dubh, Galway (December 7); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (9); Dolan’s, Limerick (10); The Academy, Dublin (11); and Ulster Hall, Belfast (13). Their new album Ad Astra is out now.