"I'm craving for a superstar who's actually any good...We seem to have lost that kind of major-league artist who people actually look forward to their next release. Where are they?" - Richard Ashcroft, January 1, 2000.
For the answer, we'll turn to Steve Sutherland, erstwhile editor of New Musical Express: "When Richard plays NME the tracks, he rocks back and forth, issues sighs and affirmatives, punches the air, whoops once or twice, lives them again…They are magnificent. After all the let-downs, it's grand to hear a record from one of the big boys shaping up to be everything it should be, and more."
It's about time. The first significant album of the new millennium will come from the man who fronted the last great rock ΓÇÿnΓÇÖ roll band of the last one. When the Verve's Urban Hymns went global (seven million sales and still rising), it was to be the swansong for a band that had finally begun to deliver the success its startling music had always promised.
Having grown up together in the Lancashire town of Wigan, the Verve was one of the tightest knit yet ultimately volatile bands in history. Their early music came from hours of dope and speed-fueled jams and demonstrated a groove, ambition, and intensity that stood them apart from their peers.
One word that became associated with the Verve was "belief": Whether it was the people who worked with them, the journalists who wrote about them, or the fans who followed them, people always talked about this band with absolute conviction. Those who were "on the bus" never had any doubt that the Verve would be massive--however and whatever it took.
Richard Ashcroft, more than anyone involved, personified this belief. The records were fantastic, the live performances emphatic, and in public he'd tell anyone and everyone that his band was going to be huge. He said in an early interview; "History has a place for us; it might take three albums, but we will be there"
As it happens, he was spot on. Although the bandΓÇÖs second album, 1995's A Northern Soul, was a classic, full of turmoil, ferocity, and emotion, it somehow failed to connect, and in the aftermath of that disappointment, the band split for the first time.
On A Northern Soul there are two songs ("On Your Own" and "History") that began to showcase Ashcroft's emerging confidence and ability as a songwriter. For the first time, the singer was writing songs away from comfort zone of the band, and it was a collection of these self-penned tracks that formed the basis of Urban Hymns.
The band reconvened to complete work on their third album that, as Ashcroft promised, catapulted them into rock's premier league. It was, however, the success and the ensuing pressures of Urban Hymns that caused the band to split for the final time in April 1999.
For Ashcroft, the music never stopped: He was already in the studio working on songs for his debut solo album when the split was announced. For someone who had always been part of a classic band, the decision to go it alone came as a surprise to many, but for Ashcroft it made total sense.
"I think what's exciting about it is that the possibilities are endless. All the different combinations of musicians that I can now put together to make the record that I first hear in my head are incredible.
"At first it is daunting not to be working with people that you have been with for 12 or 13 years, but with anything that is final, death even, there comes a liberation, and it's about embracing that and embracing those opportunities."
Ashcroft drafted Urban Hymns producer Chris Potter to work with, and in making this album, Ashcroft feels he has pushed the technology at his disposal further than ever before, and it's been a consuming experience;
"I was confident that I was going to make an amazing record, but it was just that I could see how long it was going to take. The amount of learning that has gone on in eight years has taken the studio experience to a new level, but whether it will happen like this again, I just don't know. This is an "Apocalypse Now" kind of experience. It's a record where I have spent a lot of time after writing songs creating as much psychedelic insanity as possible. Other albums I do might be recorded in a day, in a garage, on the road, or whatever, but doing a record this way completely galvanizes your time and your life and I can't wait for it to be out there and be somebody else's."
One of the clearest facets of Ashcroft's personality is his undeniable need to make great music. For some musicians, the hunger dissipates with success or time, but with Ashcroft, it's clear that he doesn't have an alternative. "It goes back to opinions. Success? I mean, how do you get any satisfaction from this business--and it's the creative process that gives me the most. It's like any intense experience--you want to keep repeating it. With drugs it's the same, it's having the opportunity to try and make the experience even better and more fulfilling, to get a bigger high even though 90 percent of drugs are never as good as the first time. Music though, it just gets better until the fire burns out and something else takes over, whether it be money, family, drugs, or whatever."
Ashcroft has always written about universal truths: life, love, death, and everything in between. It's no different on this album.
"It's the big fΓÇôkers, basically, the big pillars of themes and torment. I can't really see a way of writing about anything else. I think there's more facets of my personality coming through now, within the nature of the music. The way it explodes, ebbs and flows, is more in tune with my personality than before, there's more love in it, I suppose. But with every song, I put myself in another personality, so you can never pin down a song and say it's 100 percent me."
The frustration of the Verve was the constant internal friction. This constant uncertainty meant that most Ashcroft-associated albums have had the feeling of a return. Couple this with the band's eventual global success and the result is enormous anticipation of the record. "I've been saying for years that 18 months with an album out is too long. I would really love to have the word ΓÇÿcomebackΓÇÖ no longer associated with my name. I'm not f--king Gary Glitter. I'm not arsed about comebacks, I want it to be a sustained period and solid body of work coming out in the next four or five years because there's so many places to go within the music; the possibilities are endless."
As the album nears completion, select people from the media and close associates of Ashcroft's have been to the studio to hear work in progress. The reactions have been universal and stunning. Months before the record is released, people are already talking about a classic album, and at a time when mediocrity dominates British music, people have finally got something to believe in.
For Ashcroft--whose wife Kate recently gave birth to their first child, Sonny--it's an incredible time. "This is the most exciting period of my life so far, amazing time. I know there is still a mixture of many things--fear, anticipation, excitement--which makes you feel alive."
