It seems you’ve been questing for something the entire time you’ve been in music. Not to be too mystical or put too fine a point on it, but do you feel like you’re closer to finding whatever you’re seeking?
No, you’re right, I am. I guess I have been [laughs], and musically there’s always been a quest, and I’ve answered some if not all of those things. But of course I’m a typical artistic guy in that I’m doing these things and in the back of my mind I’m already thinking, “Oh, there’s more yet to do.” Definitely, I’m in a much more spiritual place the last few years, and I don’t know quite what to believe, but although you can’t see things there are energies around all of us. Ghosts, too, they’re all around. And they’re not necessarily phantom, terrible things; a lot of those things can be guidance or comfort.

Beth Orton told me once during an interview—she lost her mother when she was young—that she very clearly believed in ghosts, that her mother’s presence in the afterlife was actually quite a comfort to her. She told Beth when to pour tea, interjected in conversations. Part of it sounded nutty, but part of it, I got.
Absolutely. Very similarly, the guy who introduced me to music was my uncle, and he died at quite a young age as well. And he was the guy who was playing me Beach Boys and turned me on to music. That was a major loss for me. But 20 years on, I realize that he was helping me to play the guitar. I’ve always felt that there was some other guidance there. It’s also somewhat strange to be working, during Ride and now with people like Jack Riley, who made some of those records I first listened to as a kid.

Did the Ride box set (2000’s OX4) give you some new perspective on those songs? Do you still listen to any of that?
Yeah, and I love them. I can’t say I listen to them a lot, but in the same way that maybe I’ll go back and play a Smiths record, I’ll go and listen to a Ride record here and there. And it’s strange, because when I hear it—although it’s just me, and the guys—it doesn’t seem like me at all. It’s funny, I can never hear that stuff objectively. I mean, I’ve never “gone to a Ride concert,” of course, we’ve played them. So it’s strange to see your own thing in the same way you see other people’s. Time and distance allow you to hear it all fresh again—and then you realize that Ride just captured something fantastic. There was a naïveté about it, a real passion about what we wanted to do. We were a band that held onto its integrity, at the end of the day, at the expense of sales and probably driving certain record companies a bit mad by not playing the game at all. But integrity’s key in this business, and I hope that we can look back at that and hold on to it.

Well, once you start chasing something, it’s the beginning of the end, at least artistically.
Exactly. I feel now like how I felt about the Ride thing. We made music, there was no real master plan about it. We went so far as to play a few shows, then there was a record contract. I keep my expectations really low now, because then you’re continually surprised by whatever comes and feeling good about things. As soon as your expectations are too high about anything, you’ll be disappointed. I don’t know what will happen with this; I mean, maybe nothing at all! Maybe lots of people will buy it, maybe none. I’m going to enjoy playing shows again on the BRMC tour.

How did you make the connections with the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Rinôçerôse?
With BRMC, it was basically the bass player, Robert Turner: His first gig was a Ride gig that he came to with his dad, I think. We’d read a few interviews, a few really nice pieces when he said things like “that was the day my life went from black-and-white to color.” Then the next thing was them requesting that maybe I could do a little guest spot with them. And it didn’t work out for a little while because I was in France and all over the place, and at a certain point I was in England and they were playing Brixton Academy, and I supported them on stage with Goldrush for the BRMC version of “Leave Them All Behind,” which was a bit odd but kind of fun! They’re great guys, I like them a good deal. And they had links to the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Anton (Newcombe), whom I’ve known for many years.

He’s certifiable; a nut. In a good way, of course.
Yeah, but he seems to be able to make a go of it most of the time. [Laughs] He’s doing a right good job of it ... I haven’t actually heard [BRMC’s] new album yet, but people say they’ve taken quite a bold move into the blues and they’re changing and evolving as well. Which is great, and their influences are ours, in fact, one of them was my own band! [Laughs] We were very influenced by My Bloody Valentine when we started but became our own thing, and I’m sure that’s what they’re doing now.

Rhino is releasing a big boxed set called The Sire Records Story—of course, that was your guys’ first label. Did you ever meet (legendary A&R man/label founder) Seymour Stein?
The first time we met Seymour, it was kind of odd, we were playing in a pub in North London. (Creation Records chief) Alan McGee had just started to talk with Seymour, who was then interested in Primal Scream and was only just hearing about us. Seymour arrived looking completely stricken by fear because he’d just spent an hour being raced around the M25, which was then a new motorway that orbits London. It’s like a racetrack, really, and in fact, those were his first words to us: “Geez, the M25’s just like a racetrack!” And one of our road crew at the time had a Velvet Underground T-shirt on and Seymour piped up, “Yeah, I was just with Lou Reed the other day,” and we were like, “Wow, that’s pretty cool!” We knew a lot about him anyway because of the whole thing with Madonna.

We really couldn’t have asked for a better label and people to be associated with—Alan McGee and Creation here, and then Sire. I have no bad words to say about any of those people because they were fantastic labels to be involved in and very much all about the music. And Seymour, bless him, when we realized that Ride was over, he did his bit to stop that from happening. There were several three-way conversations between me, Seymour and Andy, trying to pull us together. [Stein] would cite the differences that Simon and Garfunkel had back in the day.

So did I get anything wrong in the MAGNET shoegazing story, now that you’ve had a chance to read it? It probably read as though it was mostly filtered through Andy’s perspective.
No. I think you were right on. As far as Andy and me were concerned, it was like a great love affair; there was a lot of love between us. Ride did some amazing things. What made those things great was that there was an intensity around it, and you just couldn’t keep that going, could you? Like any great love affair, it was great while it lasted, and then it comes to a breaking point. I think it’s good that Ride stopped when it did. I think some other bands should’ve stopped around then, too! [Laughs] Things just become really boring. It got pretty stupid at times but that’s rock ’n’ roll, isn’t it? We fell out for a little while, but soon after that, he came around to buy an amp off me and things looked fine. There were forces around us trying to keep us together when I think we just knew, ourselves, that the chemistry had changed, we were pulling in different directions, and it was just over. That causes a lot of stress; the relationship’s going wrong but there’s all these people around you going, “Well, you’ve just got to stay together and sort it out” when you know it’s gone. What we did is all there, it’s recorded, it’s on disc. And that’s our story. We didn’t have a lot to say when we first started, I mean, what do you say? “We’ve just come out of art school and we’re just starting to make some great music.” It’s all a bit more interesting to read about now, anyway.