When it comes to music conceived and performed while under the influence, former Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft knows of what he sings. The man once referred to in the U.K. press as “Mad Richard” spent a decade in the spotlight of his country’s pop scene, creating records that floated on a sea of ecstasy and made the world safe for lesser bands such as Coldplay. Keys To The World (Virgin) is Ashcroft’s third solo record since the Verve broke up in 1999.

MAGNET caught up with Ashcroft during a tour stop in New York City.

Keys To The World seems to have been well-received in the U.K.; it entered the charts at number two, behind the Arctic Monkeys, this year’s Britpop saviors. Now it’s coming out in the U.S., your first record here in three years. Given the lukewarm reception for Human Conditions, how do you think audiences will respond to your music now?
Ultimately, when you release your record, it’s out of your hands. I’ve said this before, but it’s an important point: The days of the Beatles, the musicians, we lost the battle in the late ’60s and early ’70s when the managers, lawyers and accountants all got involved. And then the radio pluggers got involved, and we became slaves to other people, to the suits. Because the Beatles’ biggest-selling record was also their longest record—I think “Hey Jude” was nine or 10 minutes long. So how did we get from the day when “Hey Jude” arrived at a DJ’s booth, and he just stuck the needle on it, and human beings responded by saying, “Hey I like that record, I’m gonna go and buy it,” and now? We almost have to re-engineer music back to the ’50s to sort it out. In 1997, when I released “Bittersweet Symphony,” someone gave me a call from the States and said, “Listen man, there’s this thing called ProTools”—and Jesus, I know ProTools, I mean, I had two machines in ’97 just to help me make the song—“If you don’t edit ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ yourself, someone’s gonna do it at the radio station, they’re gonna take a chunk of your music out and it won’t get picked up as a ‘play’ on the central computer.” That was almost 10 years ago, man! So when you ask me that question, I say, “It’s out of my hands now.” I made the record, I’m over here, I’m doing my business, it’s up to other people to actually feel the music and say to people and all these stupid programmers around the world—not just America, but England, Europe, all these conservative people who determine these things—it’s up to them now. I’ll do what I can, but the rest will be history.

Well, certainly since the days of the Beatles—or even the Verve—the mechanisms that move the industry have certainly changed, and not necessarily for the better.
I’m still walking a different road. It’s the same road that some of my forefathers walked, and what happens is every now and again during a guy’s or woman’s career who’s on a path like me, culture turns around and says, “Hey, there’s that guy Richard Ashcroft, he’s still going, he’s still pushing the boundaries, writing about life and what it’s like to be a human being in the modern world.” And maybe the attention will reflect on me for a while, but then the cycle will continue and they’ll move on to fads, or this, that and the other. And someone like Bob Dylan has felt like that from day one. From the time he was in Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan has been walking. And from time to time people get the epiphany and realize what an amazing artist he is—one of the greatest living American artists. You’ve got Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan, this country has created such magnificent art. The artists are still there and alive, but I don’t know whether the mechanism, as you called it, is still alive, or if the heart’s still beating. I know there are a lot of young kids who’d love to be DJs or would love to get into the music industry, but to actually keep going in this business and not have your soul stolen, well, that’s all part of the game. It’s part of the walk I spoke of. It’s very difficult in this corporate world to remain pure.

Bob Dylan may not have been the metaphor I’d have chosen for your particular walk, as you say, but let me try another one for size: Paul Weller. Paul was initially known as the guy behind the Jam, who were beloved, just like the Verve are. Then he formed the Style Council, went solo, confused people and ultimately ended up more legendary than ever, simply by sticking to his vision. People have been rediscovering him for three decades now. That shoe seems to fit.
That’s right, man, that’s exactly right. You just go on your own walk. Paul Weller’s been Paul Weller, whether he’s been in fashion or not. Music is so far beyond fashion. It’s supposed to be timeless. I’m not saying this in an arrogant manner, but I know personally what that’s like, I’ve been very fortunate—from the way people react to certain songs I’ve written, and some of them are over 10 years old now. When I played New York City the other night, I walked away with the impression that, for those people at least, those songs are still very much contemporary and still very much alive in my fans’ minds. It was a colossal show, and no one who was there will ever forget it. That alone was worth coming all the way over for. Which gives me the feeling … I mean, I didn’t even understand it at the time, but I cried on stage for the first time ever playing “The Drugs Don’t Work.” It was like I was hearing my own song for the first time. That’s not going to be a regular event, though, you know what I mean? [Laughs] It’s more like Jimi burning his guitar, where sometimes a song can hit you five, 10 years later.

“The Drugs Don’t Work” is that perfect, classic moment when—in writing about something that was intensely personal for you—the song became timeless and universal. I think that’s how the best pop music works. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you were to sit down with Pete Doherty and talk about the lessons you learned and what led you to the doorstep of “The Drugs Don’t Work.” What would you tell him?
It’s very difficult … [silence] I don’t want to add another few layers to whatever he’s already having to carry, but ultimately, sometimes you have to hit the pit—the very bottom—to really see yourself. And then when you see yourself reflected there—all the demons, all the potential and the hope—you either seize all that potential and hope, or you don’t. Period. And that’s what it’s all about: personal salvation. Music can offer that, family can offer that, life can offer that, even though it’s a fucked-up, nihilistic world. I’d rather sit around with my grandchildren, playing “Sonnet” on a piano and thinking about my life, than be on a box set, or on the T-shirt of some girl who thinks it’s cool to wear the shirt because I OD’d in a hotel. Unfortunately, death sells, but it makes money for the suits; it doesn’t make money for the corpse or for the family. It makes money for the lawyers, for the accountants, and it goes right back to what we were talking about before. I think of myself as a troubadour in the old sense of the word, you know? When I come into a town, I want to cry and laugh with that town. In New York, people who don’t even know me but maybe haven’t gone out in a while, I’ll put them on the guest list straight away so that I have this amazing mix of people on my guest list. They’re not a-list celebrities; they’re people from any city I’ve walked through. I just hope they’re with me. I’ll give you an example: When you’re in America, you’ve gotta feel America, the pain of America, the joy of America. You can’t ignore it or stay in your hotel room and look out and just assume that that’s all there is, do you know what I’m saying? So every day is a story—whether it’s my child being searched in an airport, and the security guard not even allowing my wife to hold our own child while he checks my two-year-old son, or getting on a plane and a woman telling me a story of polygamy and suicide and I’d never even met her before in my life, you know? [Laughs] I’ll put her on the guest list and see if she made it to the show; that’s what rock ’n’ roll’s about, it’s about seizing the day, not being some nihilistic idiot. I hope you got that on tape, mate. Because that’s just about all there is.

That’s a pretty powerful place to arrive given where you were when you were singing about being a cat in a bag, waiting to drown. My impression is that things really could have gone either way—that drugs had taken you to a place where you could conceive of being dead as one of the reasonable alternatives.
Any great … well, I don’t consider myself great, but the people I’ve admired in the past had to walk a very thin line between what one culture would call “madness” and another would call “enlightenment.” If I lived with the shaman in the desert somewhere out in South America, I’m sure I’d be considered an enlightened human being! [Laughs] But when you’re talking to someone who perhaps isn’t on your trip, you can sound a little crazy. And it’s funny, historically, how people like William Blake or John Lennon or anyone else you might admire creatively, at some point in their lives, they were known as being crazy. I was known as “Mad Richard” for four years in the British press. In England, it’s like the north/south divide; things are ingrained in people, a middle-class sort of, “Let’s just make him a cartoon character, because that’s where he’s got to stay. We’ve got to box him off now and keep him there, because this kid’s got too much of an imagination.” Yeah? And that’s what they’re scared of, that’s what everyone’s scared of. That’s what this neo-conservative rock is scared of, people with imagination that are gonna try to turn one person on, because that one guy might go on to change the fucking world, you know? That’s what it’s about, that’s why I’m here in America, that’s why I’m dragging my family around with me and having them searched and harassed, going through all that. Ultimately, it’s music that’s brought me here, nothing else; not money, not fame, nothing else but getting on stage and blowing people’s minds. I’m going through a personal exorcism every night.

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