Oh, those lazy, hazy days of summer 1996, when the world was young, love was in the air, and Oh Yeah was playing on the radio every five minutes. It only seems like, oh, two years ago when Downpatrick band Ash were in the full flush of youth, finishing off their A-Levels and stomping all over the UK singles charts. Tim Wheeler, Mark Hamilton and Rick McMurray had just released their chart-topping album, 1977, and it went straight into the UK charts at Number One, a bit of a first for an Irish band's debut.
Whatever happened to those innocent times, when rock'n'roll belonged to the kids, and Ash were the new adolescent icons on the block? What became of the band's boyish Star Trek obsessions, their puerile passion for Bond and Bruce Lee? Whatever happened to the teenage dream? I'll tell you what happened: it woke up, smelled the coffee, and suddenly realised it needed a shave.
I'm sitting with Tim Wheeler in Dublin's Russell Court Hotel and discussing Ash's "mature" new album, Nu-Clear Sounds, which is released on Monday. Wheeler sits self-consciously in the couch opposite me, looking like a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster's office to answer charges of gross classroom misbehaviour. Short, fresh-faced and slightly shy, it would be easy to mistake Wheeler for just another wannabe pop star: young, dumb and full of bum fluff. But we know better - Tim Wheeler is one of the big boys now, a fully-formed rock'n'roll hero with a half-dozen hit singles, a mould-breaking debut album and numerous world-straddling tours behind him. This kid has seen more, done more and experienced more in the past five years than most of us squeeze into a lifetime, yet he still has the wide-eyed demeanour of a young buck about to start off on a big adventure. A life less ordinary? Wheeler has lived it already, and I have to remind myself that the fidgety young fellow before me is all grown up now. The last time we met was at the Heineken Hot Press Awards in Belfast in April, when Ash walked away with Best Single Award for their 1997 hit, A Life Less Ordinary. The title track from the movie starring Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz, Ash's ninth single raised the stakes quite considerably, gaining the band a wider audience and even getting them heard in Hollywood. "It was kind of a weird single for us," says Wheeler, "being involved in the film and all that. It was a real intermediate point between the two albums - it's not on our new record. But it was a nice to have another hit and keep things going until the new album was ready."
Wheeler, however, is sceptical that A Life Less Ordinary might have lifted Ash out of obscurity in the US. "Actually, the movie was a total flop in the States," he laughs. "The whole movie was directed towards the American audience, but it just didn't happen over there, which is quite strange. I think they changed the ending three or four times, which is a bit mad."
No such muddy thinking clouded the recording of Nu-Clear Sounds, Ash's self-assured sophomore effort. There are no songs about kung fu or secret agents on this new album, no aimless excursions into the metallic morass, and no silly hidden tracks consisting entirely of vomiting noises. Nu-Clear Sounds knows exactly where it's going and it knows exactly how to get there. Ash's debut album was the sound of a young band in the first heady rush of stardom, a wild, reckless cocktail of pop, punk and heavy metal, played by three imaginative boys with an untidy bedroom full of ideas. The band had just finished their A-Levels, but before they had even handed in their exam papers, stories of drinking, carousing, and general rock monster conduct were splashed all over the British music papers. Burnout beckoned.
Two years later, however, the force is still with Ash. They've reached the post-grad stage of rock stardom and now they're cramming for an even harder exam: the rock'n'roll longevity test. Their weapons? A sharper song-writing style, a harder-hitting delivery, and the surprise recruitment of guitarist Charlotte Hatherley into the boys' own world.
It would be many a young boy's dream to join Ash and live the rock'n'roll fantasy, so imagine the universal envy when Ash chose ex-Nightnurse guitarist Charlotte Hatherley to become the new girl in the group. Hatherley's arrival not only threatened the male egos among Ash's fan base, it also aroused female fans' anger; she was seen as the cuckoo in Ash's nest, the scarlet woman who inveigled her way into the boys' locker room. "It came from me, really," says Tim. "I think I just felt a bit restricted, and I'd always fancied that Thin Lizzy thing of having two top guitarists in a band; you can do so much with it. I wasn't getting any space on stage. I wasn't enjoying it because I had to concentrate so hard on singing and playing lead guitar at the same time."
Hatherley made her debut with Ash when they headlined last year's V97 festival in Leeds, and she quickly went from temporary recruit to permanent draftee. Tim has had plenty to keep his mind occupied since then: the band were special musical guests at a Star Wars prequel party thrown by George Lucas, and in May this year they played a high-profile show in Belfast's Waterfront in support of the Good Friday Agreement; Wheeler, Hamilton, McMurray and Hatherley were joined on stage by heavyweight guests U2, John Hume and David Trimble. How grown-up is that?
"That was amazing. I'm very proud we did that," beams Tim. "It was just a week before the referendum, and there was a lot up in the air at that time. There was a lot of tension, and the news was focused on the `No' campaign. I think it was Bono and John Hume who came up with the idea to do a gig just to emphasise the positive." And what was it like being on stage with the old boys of Irish rock, not to mention the grizzled leaders of Northern Irish politics? "It was cool. We played for 45 minutes, and then Bono and The Edge came on and we played Don't Let Me Down by The Beatles. I got to play guitar on One, which was great. I wasn't a big fan of U2 when I was younger. I was more into heavy metal, but I've always liked that song."
Younger fans might sneer at Ash for getting into dad-rockers like U2, but Ash have always been about great pop songs; the new album is still firmly rooted in punk, metal and classic pop, and the current single, Jesus Says, draws on Tim's passion for The New York Dolls and The Velvet Underground, the same influences which would have driven a young, glory-hungry Bono years ago.
"Young" isn't the currency the band is trading with any more, but nor is "mature". "I don't like to use the word `grownup' with this record, because I think that sounds boring. There's stuff on it that's quite passionate. It's darker and more heavy. I think it's just a move on somewhere."
