Some people are fortunate enough to play in one successful band; Daniel Ash managed to be in two. Following the dissolution of gothic rock band Bauhaus, Ash and brothers Kevin Haskins & David J founded Love and Rockets in 1985. This trio embodied a slicker sound than the more arty Bauhaus, and Ash has continued to pursue his artistry with his latest group, Ashes and Diamonds.
Ash has formed a band with percussionist Bruce Smith, of Public Image Ltd. fame, and bassist Paul Spencer Denman [Sade]. In some ways, this is a supergroup, but the intention is to keep the album “honest” sounding. Fittingly, their debut record is called Ashes and Diamonds Are Forever.
“I’m all over the place,” the guitarist chuckles. “My mum’s half-French, half-Belgian, and my dad’s English. I’ve lived here in the United States since 1994; do you notice an accent?” It is admittedly more transatlantic than British. “I notice it when I go back,” he laughs. “And I jump into a cab. They say to me: ‘Are you from America?’ I go: ‘Northampton!’ But I very much still sound English in the States still!”
He’s wearing spectacles, but beyond those rock furnishings, he comes across as a humble musician. “I don’t believe in jam sessions,” he admits, discussing the beginnings of Ashes and Diamonds Are Forever. “Now, I would get drum loops and a bassline from Paul [Spencer Denman] and Bruce [Smith]. We did most of this album independently because we live in different parts of the country. Bruce lives on the East Coast, I live on the West; so does Paul.”
He coughs and continues: “So they’d send me stuff, and I’d get the headphones on. I used this cut-up method that William Burroughs used, as did David Bowie. I’d get a bunch of headlines from tacky magazines: The Sun, The National Enquirer. All the gossip mags! They’d have all the best headlines, so I’d cut them up and put them on the kitchen table [while] listening to the backing tracks. If I were lucky, I’d get a song out of it by the end of the day. All this mix and match!”
Not an uncommon method: John Lennon did something very similar on “A Day in the Life” in 1967. “Yeah, that was an example of that,” Ash nods. “‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ came from a painting with his kid. So, a similar idea, but I got the whole of the song from the headlines. Gets you started on something you wouldn’t usually write about.”
Was it a lengthy process? “We started this seven years ago,” he confirms. “This was started in 2017, 2018, and then COVID hit. So, we had to work independently. And at the 11th hour, we decided to scrap it and start it all again. We booked a studio in Los Angeles for ten days, and re-recorded and remixed everything. This was with a producer called Robert Stevenson.”
Another cough: “What I’m leading up to is that we had time to reflect and perfect everything. Because of that, I’m pretty much 100% on all the songs, but one track I like is ‘Ice Queen’. It’s different: not rock. I love the romantic sound of that track. The romance in it.”
Ash co-wrote the romantic number “So Alive” during the 1980s. “I wrote the lyric on that one,” he smiles. It has proven to be one of Love and Rockets’ most enduring tracks. “The situation with that track is we were going to do it the day before we were in the studio…” He splutters and pauses: “Well, on Friday, we had planned on Monday to do one of Dave’s songs. I had come up with just the riff and thought I had something special here. I had just the riff and the opening line. I said: ‘Give me half an hour.’ I went down into the cellar with a bottle of whiskey. It was a magic moment, because I got the lyrics in half an hour. With the help of a glass, or three!”
Ash joined his bandmates upstairs, where they set up and basically played that song.” Ash is reminded of Bauhaus staple “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” because both compositions were recorded quickly. “We played the song,” he confirms, “and I did a scratch vocal. And then by day two, we got the backing singers in. The whole thing was mixed and produced in 24 hours!”
He denies that the intention was to write a contrast to Bauhaus. “If you think about that track, it’s in the same vein as Lou Reed‘s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’. We didn’t plan it that way initially, but as I say, I was coming up from writing the lyric, and everyone locked in real-quick. We all agreed it needed female backing singers like ‘Walk on the Wild Side’. We got three girls in on backing, but you know, when you’re writing a song, you don’t know where it’s going to go.”
Morale was high in the studio. “David [J] and I were joking,” he giggles. “We said: ‘If ‘So Alive’ isn’t a hit, we quit.'” Ash says that the record company in America printed promos boasting that the album [their eponymous fourth] contained the hit ‘So Alive’. “That’s how confident they were,” he grins. It grossed the top position on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts in 1989.
Returning to Bauhaus, were they compared to Joy Division? “Yeah, because of the similarity in the vocals,” Ash agrees, suggesting that Peter Murphy and Ian Curtis shared a resonance. Curiously, both bands formed sequel outfits with the lead guitarist promoted to lead singer. “I never put that together,” Ash says. “Like New Order, yeah. Love and Rockets certainly sounds different to Bauhaus.”
He suggests that Tones on Tail, a band he formed with drummer Kevin Haskins in 1982 (revived in 2024), sounded different “again”. Ash pauses: “Are you familiar with Tones on Tail?” Pop is a fine exploration of textures. “That was the one album we made,” Ash says. “Kevin’s daughter Diva [Dompé] joined us in 2017 for Poptone. We called ourselves that because we covered Love and Rockets, Tones on Tail, and Bauhaus. We were a covers band, but covering ourselves, which was fun, but for the Cruel World gig that Tones on Tail played in 2024, Diva played bass on that.”
Returning to Bauhaus, some of the tunes, notably “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, are soaked in reggae imprints. “Well, actually more Kevin, David, and me,” Ash replies. “I don’t think Peter was so into the reggae at that point [August 1979.] It was a mixture of various influences. You can’t really pinpoint…”
He realizes there is a yarn here. “I had this riff,” he elaborates. “This haunting riff: using open tuning. I was talking to Dave on the phone the night before we recorded that song. I said: ‘I have this real haunting riff.’ ‘That’s really funny,’ he said, ‘I’ve got this lyric about the vampire Bela Lugosi.’When we got into the rehearsal studio, I started playing, and Kevin started doing this bossa nova beat. David started on bass and handed the lyrics to Peter. He started singing it pretty much as you hear it, so again, real quick.”
Acknowledging the reggae influence, the guitarist points out that there is “bossa-nova beat there.” As a teenager/young man in the 1970s, Daniel Ash was struck by British glam rock. “I was brought up, you know, the big thing that hit me at 15 years old was the Ziggy Stardust thing,” he confesses. “Life-altering. That, and T-Rex. Iggy & the Stooges. That’s basically all I listened to at the time.”
Ash had an older sibling who was “into the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks,” so this guitarist was exposed to older influences. “My two favorite guitar players are Hendrix and Mick Ronson,” he admits. “I’m not really into lots of shredding, so the Ronson thing was a big influence.”
Was he taken with Queen? “No, that’s different,” he replies. “It’s a little bit like Kiss in America; not the same thing.”
Ashes and Diamonds feature a drummer from John Lydon‘s band Public Image Ltd. “When the Sex Pistols came out in the 1970s, that was mind-blowing. On Top of the Pops, I hadn’t seen anything this exciting the whole Ziggy thing. That’s why a lot of bands came after. Siouxsie & The Banshees, the Damned [sic], the Cure. Sex Pistols are my favorite punk band.”
Primarily a guitarist, Daniel Ash has also dabbled with the saxophone. “There’s some crazy sax on a song called ‘Champagne Charlie’ on this album [Ashes and Diamonds Are Forever],” he confirms. “A bunch of sax at the end of this album.” Bauhaus favored frenzy, as is apparent on “She’s in Parties”. “That sounds polished to me,” he laughs. “If it sounds raw, great. It doesn’t sound raw to me like Velvet Underground raw. I love Velvet Underground, and it suited them to be lo-fi. I think their third album was more of an Andy Warhol vibe; he would use the cheapest cameras, simple lighting. I think the Velvets were influenced by that.”
Reed, like bassist John Cale, had a “healthy ego”, which Ash confirms is “part and parcel of being in a band. You’ve got to have an ego to want to create in the first place, as far as I’m concerned,” Ash says. “It’s tough, but if you ain’t got an ego, you won’t create anything.” Did the pandemic inspire Ashes and Diamonds Are Forever? “It only inspired the lyric to ‘2020’,” he elaborates. “That’s the only track that had an influence. The three of us recorded long-distance initially, but when we decided to re-record it, we were all in LA with Robert. Ten days to get it all done, and we finished it at 22:00 on the tenth day. Much better to do it that way.”
“The first Bauhaus album took two weeks,” Ash admits. “We used the band Crass’s studio, and then years later, with Love and Rockets, we were getting successful.” He pauses: “Not in England, Ireland, or Europe, but the States. We ended up taking two years to make Hot Trip to Heaven. We’re still proud of it, but it was commercial suicide. I remember thinking: ‘This is either our Dark Side of the Moon, or it is going to flop’. Commercially, it bombed, but we’re still proud of it.”
It contrasted the jokes they made about Fleetwood Mac‘s protracted studio times: “We ended up taking two years on an album!” Perhaps humbled by that experience, Daniel Ash takes the time to say thank you for this interview. “If the album’s successful, and there’s interest, then we’ll look at the live level,” he continues. “But if it’s not, then there’s no point going out. It’s in the hands of the Gods. We’re open to it. There’s so much traffic every day, and it’s tough to stand out.”
He’s not a fan of AI. “The concern is that it will take over,” he sighs. “Very strange, and very weird. They will be able to come up with ten Brad Pitts, no problem. Actors are talking about protecting themselves from that happening. We will all become obsolete. I haven’t used any AI in the making of the lyrics.”
Ash admits he’s been “moaning about it” but sees some potential that it could “help the human race, but it also could completely fuck us up,” he warns. “We’re just in the infancy stage. By Christmas, we might not be able to control it. The people who have made it are concerned.”