Richard Ashcroft Interview

Richard Ashcroft spends much of his time balancing precariously on all fours playing Twister if truth be known, and try though I might to tear him a way from the subject for a moment to discuss his new album, Alone With Everybody, his surly lancashire highness insists on showing me a few of the moves he thinks are going to be getting the attention this summer.

"You really have to be barefoot and on your toes for this move. It's all in the way you arch your feet. Don't flatten your sole. Most people tend to think you have to be tight and in control for this move...but it's all about letting go. In fact, Twister itself is all about letting go. It's both it's ethos and it's tactic. If you're not willing to let go..then you're not going to get twisted. Ian Maculloch told me that, and he's right. Twister is as much about letting go as it is about twisting. Try it".

And so we continued the interview, shoeless, sockless and locked in a tangle of tussled, mangled limbs. I asked him about his mode, and Richard stretched his right arm under my crotch onto the floor:

" I'm a million different people from one day to the next. That's why twister is a game I can play alone. Alone, you see, but with everybody. That's where I got the idea for the album. With Twister you can never be excluded. The colors on the board represent the facets of my personality. None of which I can escape. None of which I can really and honestly reconcile..that is....wholely. I spin the wheel and wherever it lands. That's the colour I am"

So if I spun the wheel and it landed on green...what would that mean to you?

(stretching his left arm over onto his right) Green represents the lover in me. The lover of expression. The lover of woman. The lover of lovers. The lover of the love of the loved.

The old Beatles track?

Yeah. Love it. It's the person in me that most likes to love and to be loved...to be green and to be greened.

And yellow?

That's the person in me who takes the books back to the library and tape records Corrie, Modays, Fridays and Sundays.

What about Corrie on Wednesdays?

On Wednesdays I'm red. The embodiment of all evil. The embodiment of all things red.

Yeah, but you want to know come Friday what happened on Wednesday, surely?

(almost prostrate) But on Fridays I tend to be blue. Bluey-purplely ...it's kind of uneven. But that mode is smooth..y'know? It's where everything is bitter sweet? You could throw boiling tar over me on Fridays and I wouldn't budge an eyelid. On Wednesdays I'd be fucking livid..because on Wednesdays I'm bloody red...the embodiment of all things red...

Like Postboxes?

Yeah dude, and Thomas the Fucking Tank Engine. Ever wondered why that fucker's red? Cos he's one mean fucking engine, man. He's shit passionate about these trains man, and some shite mother hairbrain in a suit comes along and just kicks up his fucking times. Trains need schedules..man, trains need times...and it's a sign of the fucking times, man...there ain't no knowing when the next trains comin'. He's red becasue he cares. He's red because he dares..

Its a fair point, Richard. A fair point. Alone With Everybody. What about the album. Is this a schedule conscious release? Is this album because Richard dares? Because Richard cares? Or because Richard wants room enough to sound even more like Neil Diamond than usual?

(trying to move his knee up to his nose and curl his arm under Crud) It's no use trying to deny it. I'm a fairly passionate person. I have a belief not only in myself but in everybody else who would like to believe in me. In the song C' mon People I'm not only talking about being somekind of visionary, I have a vision of the people seeing me as a kind of visionary. You see, I'm passionate about the people. I'm as passionate about the people being passionate about me as I am about myself. I have a fucking belief in the people. And they have one in me.

It's interesting you say that Richard, and you may correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a suggestion in the way you promote yourself through your music...and this possibly spans the last 8 years or certainly the last few albums....there's a suggestion that you are not entirely reluctant to have your face splashed over everything from album covers to promotional material.

You're right, and they're quite imposing are'nt they?

Would that be you trying to say that something ugly can also be beautiful...that even something so mainfestly abhorent, so distorted and so traditionally......how shall we say...remote can also cut though the demographics to be recognised as something close to poetry, as something so perfect as say...a sonnet?

Yeah sure, why not. I also look cool in black and white. It's really me trying to say I can pull just about anything off. But it's as much a tribute to the ugliness of all people as it is a tribute to the ugliness of Richard Ashcroft alone.

And yet for all that confidence, that consistancy of purpose, there's an element of isolation..of distrust in the album title. Is that an indication that there's a certain polarity...a certain paucity in your readyness to embrace the public sphere. Would you say that that embrace also repelled in the same instance?


Yeah. But that would be like saying something is bitter sweet, yeah. And I wrote a tremendously successful anthem around that very premise.

In fact to further our analogy, you could also say you wrote that song.......and that you didn't write that song. There's another polarity. Another kind of tension.

(now nervous and palpably edgy) Look. Are we playing this game or not?

I'm just curious as to discover why such an obvious visionary didn't have the foresight to see such an obvious copyright libel levelled against them. Or was this simply a demonstration of your polarities..of the tension between cognition on the one han..

Look, fuck polarity.... (pointing to the board) ..you're supposed have at least one hand down on one of the colours...and it's clear to everybody here that you haven't...

Everybody Richard. But we're alone.

(pushing me off the board and taking it away into the bathroom) Yeah everybody. Everybody here thinks you're a tosser...everybody here thinks your silly....that you're stupid. You're stupid you are. Reallly really stupid. Stupid bastard. Stupid tosser.God, you're so stupid you are...(locking the dor to the bathroom) and I'm not coming out for ages.

Thanks for your time, Richard. And I think you'll find Thomas the Tank Engine was actually blue..

(crying) not on Thursdays he fucking wans't.!!!

But Richard is just letting go. It was a bitter-sweet experience..