Richard’s return

Onstage at the Ambassador, Richard Ashcroft and his band are in the middle of performing ‘New York’, a track from Ashcroft’s two-year-old debut solo album, Alone With Everybody, which for this tour has mutated into an extended, acid-house tinged rock freak-out. Ashcroft crouches down on his knees and pours himself into the lyric, wanting to make every word count – “I’m almost dead and buried/The day nearly done/But I want to keep on going/I’m gonna kiss the sun in New York…”

It’s one of the highlights of a gig which marks Ashcroft’s return to the live arena, this being the opening night of a new tour in support of his second solo offering, Human Conditions. The song also neatly summarises much of what I had discussed with the singer in the quietness of his dressing-room several hours earlier; the cathartic howl that marks much of the best rock ‘n’ roll, the perceived contradiction between the happy family man operating in an art-form which has traditionally prized youthful revolt over mature, considered reflection.

But maybe the latter day stereotyping of Ashcroft as a contented husband and father peddling M.O.R. soft-rock is somewhat misplaced. Even a cursory glance at his CV gives the impression of a restless, maverick talent, an artist determined to follow his creative impulses to the last. This, after all, is a man who by his own admission suffered “psychosis” during the fraught, drug-fuelled recording of the Verve’s second album, and who broke up that same band even after they had recorded one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed rock albums of the ’90s, Urban Hymns.

However, in person, Ashcroft is nothing at all like the wracked soul one might have been led to expect from the spiritual and emotional yearning that courses through his music. Looking tanned and relaxed, he is business-like but unfailingly courteous and polite.

So, let’s dive in at the deep-end here. In a dismissive, two-star review of Alone With Everybody several years ago, Q writer John Harris – in fairness, one of the most percipient music journalists around – wondered if what he felt to be the album’s lethargy could be ascribed to “the fact that domestic bliss rarely leads to earth-shattering rock music.” This comment was emblematic of the critical reception the album had generally. Do these criticisms cut any ice with the author of the songs?

“There’s a song on Alone With Everybody called ‘Brave New World’,” says Ashcroft, rolling a cigarette and settling down beside me on the sofa in his dressing room, “and after the chorus – “Sitting at the table hearing songs/Wishing I was able/Wishing I was stable” – the next section to me, sonically, is like the scream of the mind when it’s wishing to be stable.

“Contentment to me is a space that, if I was a Buddhist, then fair enough, I’d wave my flag and say I was content. But I mean, ‘contentment’, it’s like, what the fuck are they talking about? I’m just trying to get to be a better person for my wife, my son and the people around me.”

Ashcroft’s search for new musical horizons after the Verve has led to some singular collaborations, including contributing vocals to DJ Shadow’s single for the UNKLE project, ‘Lonely Soul’, and guesting on the ‘The Test’ on the last Chemical Brothers album. Up there with any of those tracks, however, is the song which closes Human Conditions, ‘Nature Is The Law’, a beautiful number which features some trademark harmonising from none other than resurgent pop-genius, Brian Wilson.

“The music I sent him, to me it was sounding like an Aaron Copland thing,” he remembers. “The only way I can describe is that it was like old American folk music, it sounded like the prairies, like a John Ford western – these are the things I’m seeing. And to get it back after Brian spent a day in the studio, and to hear his chant, going “Oh, ah, oh, ah”…it sounds like the guys with the axes, it sounds like the old chain gangs. A different generation, a different place, but somehow the same place. And that’s the beauty of music.”

Legend has it that the recording of the Beach Boys’ great lost album Smile was the beginning of the end for Wilson, as he struggled to realise his skyscraping musical ambitions amidst spiralling drug intake and a keen sense of competition with the Beatles. Is that sort of all-consuming drive something Ashcroft can empathise with?

“When you’re making records,” he replies, “you do start hearing melody in everything, because you’re so locked in the pattern of creating music. It’s like when you play chess a lot, you start making decisions like a chess player, y’know? And with music, it gets so deep into your soul.

Bono has often expressed the opinion that the reason bands break up as they move into their 30s is that people get comfortable, and don’t want the hassle of having to justify their viewpoints on a daily basis. Was this the case with the Verve?

“I think it went a lot deeper than petty arguments,” sighs Ashcroft. “It’s mental states of mind, it’s many, many different things. And also – like any relationship – it isn’t just one instance, it’s the ten years before it, it’s every single thing that’s happened. What I believe about bands is that they’re a wonderful dream to have when you’re 15 or 16 years old, and, with a few exceptions – U2, REM, the Chili Peppers – a lot of bands actually stay together out of fear.”

It could also be argued that a lot bands spend far too much of their careers vainly trying to recapture the creative spark which ignited them in the first place. This seems like an apt time to mention Oasis, with whom Ashcroft plays a couple of gigs next month. There’s a perception that the last few records by the brothers Gallagher are of vastly inferior quality to the first two.

“I just believe it’s a state of mind,” he shrugs. “I believe that there’s the same amount of good tracks on each of them, like stand-out, fuckin’ killer tunes. It doesn’t matter what people say about them when you’ve got a record like Definitely Maybe, or (What’s The Story?) Morning Glory, when you’ve got that legacy and that potency at one period in time, you can get out there when you’re 55, if you want. Because there’s gonna be people who’ll wanna fuckin’ go there, and it’s not about re-enacting, it’s about communion, and that’s what rock ’n’ roll is about.”