Operation rock and awe starts here..

It’s precisely 10 years, two months and 13 days since Tim Wheeler bunked off school to tell hotpress about Ash’s debut vinyl only single, ‘Jack Names The Planets’.

“I’ve always wanted to be a musician, ever since I was 12,” he enthused to Lorraine Freeney who, displaying Mystic Meg-like abilities, predicted that there was only one place him and his pals were going to end up and that was on Top Of The Pops.
Lorraine has since moved to the States and got herself a proper job in publishing, but Wheeler remains at the helm of the biggest rock ’n’ roll phenomenon to ever blast its way out of Downpatrick.
That he’s enjoying every nanosecond of it is evident from the way he’s tearing round Dublin’s über-posh Westin Hotel like a hyperactive kid who’s been mainlining sugar.
“We’ve always had fun in Ash, but recently it’s just been one amazing thing after another,” Tim grins before darting off to nick a chip from newly goateed drummer Rick McMurray. When he eventually returns – “Sorry ’bout that but Rick made me wrestle him for them!” – it’s with bassist bandmate Mark Hamilton in tow. Another member of the Impossibly Happy Musicians Club, he concurs that, “The places we’ve been and the people we’ve met this past year have been fucking incredible.”
If Ash are excited now they’re going to be positively wetting themselves in a few days time when they go to see George Lucas at his Skywalker Ranch in California.
“We’re not really supposed to talk about it,” says Wheeler mindful of the wrist-slapping he got last month when he divulged that, “We got contacted by the head of Lucasarts in the UK, she knew we’re massive Star Wars fans, and she hooked it all up. I think it could be about a computer game he’s making, or it may be some soundtrack work. They’ve got Ewok Lake there, so we’re gonna throw stones in it!”
And to think that Thom Yorke prattles on incessantly about how shite it is to be in a band.
“Me and Rick were watching him at the NME Brats and, basically, he just shrugged when he went up to get his award,” Mark Hamilton volunteers. “If it’s that much of a chore, why did he bother his arse going? That sort of ‘we’re too good for this’ attitude really pisses me off.”
It’s nothing that a dark alleyway and a length of lead piping can’t sort out.
“Spot the person who’s been watching The Sopranos!” Tim laughs. “I’ve had moments where I’d rather be a dustman than sing in a band, but then you get a call saying, ‘George Lucas wants you to come to his house’ and you remember that it’s the best job in the world. The first time we made it onto his radar was probably when Ewan McGregor, who we’d met a few times, asked us to play at the Phantom Menace wrap party. I looked up while we were doing a cover of ‘Cantina Band’ and there were George Lucas and Kenny Baker standing together watching. I don’t know how the fuck I kept playing!”
While Wheeler agrees that “going to Skywalker Ranch is the best thing that could ever happen to me besides being in Star Wars itself,” there’s something which floats the Hamilton boat even more.
“The ultimate for me has been hanging out in Los Angeles with Dave Grohl and him being really supportive. He probably thought I was a weirdo at first because I was too awestruck to say anything, but you soon realise that multimillionaire ex-Nirvana drummer or not, he’s a really down to earth bloke who hates all the rock ‘n’ roll bullshit.”
“Apart from the bit where you get to live in a huge mansion overlooking LA and invite half of Hollywood to your Halloween party,” Tim interjects. “We drove up in a stretch limo with me dressed as Robin The Boy Wonder, our agent Steve Strange as Batman, Rick as The Grim Reaper and Charlotte – typecast as ever!– as a witch. The most surreal bit was being greeted at the front door by Jack Black in an Incredible Hulk costume. We were the last to leave which is what happens if you invite Irish people to drink in your house!”
As if two super enthusiastic rock ‘n’ rollers wasn’t enough to be going on with, this is the cue for Charlotte Hatherly to tell us to budge up on the sofa because herself and Rick want to sit down.
Wearing the same diamanté-trimmed top she’s has on four hours later when Ash take to the stage at the Temple Bar Music Centre – “It’s my bling-bling look!” – she’s equally as effusive in her praise for the Foo Fighter-in-chief.
“He’d just finished the One By One tour and is really good friends with Nick Raskulinecz, our producer, so he was round the studio a lot while we were recording. Looking through the control-room window and seeing Dave Grohl air drumming along to ‘Clones’ was too fucking weird! You start off saying, ‘I’m not going to bring Nirvana up’, but of course you can’t help yourself! As it turns out, he doesn’t have any problems talking about Kurt and that other stuff which is a huge deal in America at the moment because of his 10th anniversary. Nirvana were a big deal here, but in the States they’re a religion.”
“We were in the same studio that Nirvana used for Nevermind, which was a bit overwhelming at first but then it just became a place of work,” Tim Wheeler resumes. “It was really fun because Nick’s this in your face School Of Rock-style character and Rich Costey, who mixed Muse and Audioslave before he did us, is a half-communist, half-Satan worshipping geek.”
I’m sure Mr. Costey and his lawyers will be very flattered by the description. Top bloke he may, but Dave Grohl was the cause of Tim getting into serious trouble with his mum.
“I wanted to get this tattoo done,” he explains pointing to the Phoenix from the flames on his right-arm, “so Dave hooked me up with an Irish guy, Rory, who was originally from Kerry but now lives in San Diego. It took five hours and nearly gave my mother a coronary when she saw it!”
One assumes that Mr. Grohl has been under the needle himself.
“He’s got a huge one on his chest, and a bunch of tribal stuff covering some crap tattoos he got done when he was younger. I didn’t blub once, but one of our caterers, Stuart, has half of his second-name written on his knee because he was in too much pain to get it finished off.”
Ditto a friend of mine, Kevin, who was left with what looks like a semi-erect penis on his shoulder after exiting a Cork tattoo parlour prematurely. Ash’s collection of A-List celebrity chums also includes Chris Martin who may have been booted off the new Streets album but was more than welcome on the cover of the Buzzcocks’ ‘Everybody’s Happy Nowadays’ that Tim & Co. have recorded for Shaun Of The Dead.
“It was Tim who became friends with him first when they went skinny dipping together in a Norwegian fjord,” Mark Hamilton says, conjuring up a none too pleasant mental image.
“We weren’t naked,” Wheeler protests. “A load of us were hanging out after a festival and decided at four o’clock in the morning to go for a swim, as you do! It was great until I got stung to fuck on the feet by a jellyfish.”
Did he follow medical procedure and get somebody to piss on them for him?
“It wasn’t that sort of company. No, I just hopped around the place going, ‘Shit, that hurts’, very loudly!”
I don’t want to be rude about one of Ash’s friends, but Chris Martin strikes me as being only slightly less of a whiny puritan than the aforementioned Thom Yorke.
“Chris doesn’t do drink or drugs but only because he’s mad already. I’ve never known anybody go from total self-confidence to complete paranoia like he does - ‘We’re making the greatest album in the world ever…hang on, no, we’re shit!’
“You were talking about the ‘kid in a sweetshop’ thing,” Tim continues, “well, Chris has been a big Ash fan since he was at school and was over the fucking moon when Shaun Of The Dead director Edgar Wright – who also happens to be Charlotte’s boyfriend – asked us to do ‘Everybody’s Happy Nowadays’ together. My falsetto’s okay, but the really girly bits are his.”
Excuse me a moment while the news that Charlotte Hatherly’s being squired by a man who’s not me causes my entire world to cave in. When he’s not hitting Buzzcockian high notes on their behalf, Chris Martin can be found starring in Ash’s very own celluloid gorefest, Slashed.
“Him and Johnny are absolutely fantastic in it,” says McMurray switching into Barry Norman mode. “They play these two detectives who are meant to be FBI but, because of their accents, sound more like Sherlock Holmes. Dave Grohl, Jimmy Nesbitt, Moby, Ben Kweller and Matt Sharp the comedian are in at as well, so we’re going to have to finish it off and get it edited down. The continuity’s non-existent because we’ve been doing it on and off for two years, but otherwise it’s a work of art that’s up there with the Alfred Hitchcocks and Roman Polanskis of this world.”
Although not quite the Motörhead tribute album that was predicted in some circles, Meltdown is a far more abrasive affair than its Free All Angels predecessor and Ash’s best chance yet of conquering America.
“We wanted to make a big, live-sounding record which having done what he’s done with Queens Of The Stone Age and the Foos is very much Nick’s forte,” Charlotte proffers. “I don’t think we’re The Darkness but the fact they’re doing so brilliantly shows how big a swing there’s been back to rock. Tim was saying that for the first time since 1996 Ash are fashionable, which means there’s an opportunity to be heard by people who aren’t already your fans.”
Talking of fans, Davie Bowie’s security team will have to guard against a crazed female stalker when he headlines the Sunday night at Oxegen.
“Oh my god, we did the Area 2 tour in the States with David Bowie and I don’t how I just didn’t jump on him,” Hatherly confesses. “His security were never there early enough to know that we were playing, so you could sense them thinking ‘Who the fuck’s that girl who’s down the front every night and then wandering around backstage during the day?’
“I finally plucked the courage up to say, ‘Hi, I’m in the first band, Ash’, and he said, ‘Oh, I haven’t got to see you much because I’ve just got a new baby and I’ve been flying in every day from New York.’ I was all nonchalant for a minute or two and then blurted out, ‘I’m a really big fan!’ Tim says we might be on before him at Oxegen which would be fucking excellent!”
What was her first Bowie moment?
“Embarrassingly it was when he got crucified for doing ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert. I was only 12 or 13 at the time, so I thought, ‘Wow’s he’s interesting!’ and went to record shop the next day and looked at his section – 20 albums! I randomly picked out Space Odyssey not realising it was his debut and then bought the rest pretty much in sequence. It gave me something to escape into for a couple of years, which was good because my parents were splitting up and I needed the distraction.”
So while her mates were arguing over which member of Big Fun was the most dreamy, Charlotte was reveling in the multifarious delights of Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane.
“Yes and no,” she winces. “I was into loads of pop stuff as well – Bros, A-ha, Brother Beyond. My taste was in my arse back then!”
Prior to Charlotte’s hobnobbing with David Bowie, Rick had the rather more dubious pleasure of meeting his mate Lou Reed.
“The conversation consisted of him saying, ‘You’re from Ireland, do you know Luka Bloom?’, me going ‘No’ and him grunting as he walked off. I’ve had moments that were more magical.”
Remembering his previous anti-Westlife tirades, I think it would be remiss of me not to ask McMurray about Bryan McFadden’s departure from their ranks.
“One cunt down, four to go,” he mutters darkly. “Didn’t somebody spot Mr. McFadden wearing a Nirvana t-shirt in an attempt to show that he’s now the anti-Westlife? Ask him what his favourite Nirvana album is and I imagine the response would be The Best Of…”
Sticking with cuntdom for a moment, who’s the biggest see you next Thursday that Ash have come across in their travels?
“Mark E. Smith was a complete obnoxious twat and, indeed, a cunt,” divulges Tim to a chorus of band approval. “We were actually doing an interview in a bar on the Portobello Road when he walked over and started ranting on about how we owe it all to him.”
“Do you remember the Irish journalist, Leo Finlay, who died a few years ago?” Mark inquires. “Well, we did a benefit gig for him which The Fall headlined and Mark E. Smith reckons it’s that rather than the four or five hit singles we’d had which kickstarted our career. I wouldn’t have minded if he’d been funny with it, but he was really drunk and belligerent.”
Thankfully, not all of the rock elder statesmen they’ve met have been so obnoxious.
“Almost as good getting to go to Skywalker Ranch was Brian Robertson from Thin Lizzy coming on stage in London and doing ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ with us,” Wheeler gushes. “He’s still so fucking shit hot and a lovely guy as well. We’re going to ask him to…no, I’m not supposed to say that. Rewind tape!”
Spoilsport!
“I gave him a copy of Free All Angels when I bumped into him one day and next thing he was round my house showing me how to play a load of Lizzy songs on guitar. Mark was a bit insensitive and said, ‘Right Robbo, do you want a drink’, not realising that he’s on the wagon! He had a wee sip of Jameson and left it at that.”
One of the most moving things I saw last year was witnessing the backstage meeting at Metallica’s RDS gig of the Hawkins brothers and Phil’s daughters, Kathleen and Sarah Lynott.
“I hooked The Darkness up with Jim Fitzpatrick who then introduced them to the girls. Actually, I’m going to have to have a fight with Dan to decide once and for all who’s the biggest Lizzy fan.”
Coming to you soon on Sky Sports Box Office, the Downpatrick Destroyer vs. The Lowestoft Lamper. Ash may be a spandex-free zone, but they’re not without their murky heavy metal past.
“We had a band between the ages of 12 and 14 called Vietnam, which was the laughing stock of the town,” Tim admits ruefully. “The highlights of our set included ‘Wolf Scream’, ‘Heart Attack’ and one about a Stephen King book – always a rich seam inspiration for metal bands! An abiding fear of mine is that somebody’s got a tape of us which will get stuck up on the internet.”
The address to send your embarrassing Vietnam demos and live recordings to is hotpress.com, 13 Trinity Street, Dublin 2. American radio being as genre obsessed as it is, where does Wheeler see Meltdown fitting into the scheme of things?
“It’s tough. A lot of their rock radio is really fucking heavy, with Foo Fighters probably the poppiest thing amongst it. I’d absolutely die if we got lumped in with the likes of Good Charlotte who are basically Busted.
“A band who’ve done great and I wouldn’t mind being lumped in with are Queens Of The Stone Age. Josh (Homme) and Brody (Dalle) came round once and Mark impressed them with his chilli pasta. There were habaneros in there so it was really hot.
“Another thing that could work in our favour is The Pixies having a come back. We’re hopefully doing a bunch of dates with them in America, so I’ll finally get to meet Black Francis.”
Did Tim hear that Glen Hansard, Mundy, Paddy Casey and Jerry Fish got to hang out with him last year at Whelan’s.
“No, I didn’t. Bastards, that’s four more people I’m going to have to fight!”
With Ash in such top form at the moment, you wouldn’t bet against the little fella!

Ash’s Meltdown album is released by Infectious on May 14. You can also catch them live at Oxegen on Sunday July 11