Tim Wheeler From Ash Reflects On 30 Years Of ‘1977’

Ireland’s favourite power pop trio ASH, finally return to Australia and New Zealand to Celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of their iconic debut album, 1977, by performing the album in full. Released in 1996, the album’s title references both the decade the band members were born in and the year Star Wars first hit cinemas. 1977 has sold more than two million copies worldwide and was written, recorded and released when most of Ash were still only nineteen. A cinematic punk-pop soundtrack to binge drinking, chasing girls, youth and frustrated adolescent idealism, the album fused power pop, glam rock, post-grunge and Britpop into a loud, melodic and exuberant sound.

It struck a chord with the hearts, minds and hormones of a generation of like-minded teens, delivering a run of singles including Girl From Mars, Kung Fu, Angel Interceptor, Goldfinger and Oh Yeah all of which reached the UK Top 20 and helped cement Ash’s reputation. The thirtieth anniversary celebration of 1977 will give Ash fans the chance to relive the album that featured “hit after honey-topped hit” and Britpop ruled the airwaves. Oh yeah! Tim Wheeler talks to Rob Lyon about the tour.

Great to be talking to you, and congratulations on thirty years of 1977.
Yeah, it’s mind‑blowing. It’s been a journey.

I still remember that first show when you played in Adelaide with Garbage. That was where it started for me with the band, and I feel like I’ve grown up with Ash.
A lot of ways, so… wow, it’s thirty years since that tour as well.

Can you believe how much the time has whizzed by, and how many good things have happened for the band?
Yeah, it’s crazy. It doesn’t seem that long since we were celebrating the twentieth anniversary, but I do think it’s amazing that we’re still alive and playing and doing well. It’ll start getting harder, the fortieth anniversary, I just hope we’re still here to do it then, because we’re loving it and want to keep going as long as we can.

Just that legacy the album has built and continues to build, reaching new fans all the time, that’s got to be humbling and mind‑blowing at the same time?
It really is. I’m very proud of it. When we revisit it, like we did an acoustic show in Belfast to celebrate the actual day of the thirtieth anniversary, it was cool dusting off songs we hadn’t played for a while and doing them in a slightly acoustic way. I was like, oh man, this is nuts… the eighteen and nineteen year‑olds who made this music, and it’s still good, still great to play. It’s a nice record to approach with nostalgia. It’s a real coming‑of‑age record, so it’s a nice place to go back and visit.

How does the milestone sit with you? Some people don’t get nostalgic and are very forward‑looking, but is this a moment to embrace and celebrate it for what it is?
I look forward to it. We toured the hell out of that album at the time. Your first album, you always play all the songs live, normally, and we had a mini‑album for that as well. This group of songs is stuff we played so much, so it’s nice to come back to because the muscle memory is really there. It doesn’t take long to remember how to play them and some of the big hits we’ve played constantly over the last thirty years, but some songs you don’t get to play often. I particularly enjoy playing those ones. I’m proud of it as a record, so it’s nice to revisit. I know after the tour we probably won’t play the songs for another ten years, so I’m going to enjoy the moment.

At the time when you recorded the album, did you have a feeling you had a really special group of songs that would have that enduring appeal, and obviously some massive hits as well?
Oh yeah, well it came together bit by bit. We were at school, so we were recording singles in our school breaks, Christmas, Easter, summer holidays. We put out Kung Fu, Goldfinger, and Angel Interceptor in 1995, and then in early 1996 we had to write and finish the rest of the album around those songs that had already come out. I remember it was quite a pressured time to deliver the rest of it.

Did you think your life would change as much as it has? It’s not like becoming an accountant or rocking up in an office job!
Oh yeah. I remember our parents had to sign our record deal for us because we were seventeen when we signed it. My parents were like, “We totally support you doing this, it’s brilliant, but we really want you to finish school… just in case you’ve got something to fall back on.” And our management thought it was good too, it gave us time to develop further as writers, and through touring we were going to get better, so they were happy not to rush it.

I was actually enjoying being at school. I had good mates, so I sort of knew my life was going to change, but when I finished my school exams everyone else was applying for university. To keep my parents happy, I did a deferred entry for Glasgow University. But by the time that year rolled by, we had a number one album. They asked if I was going to come pick up my place at Glasgow University and I was like, “I’m a rock star now, I don’t need to come.” So I never ended up going. We did have a backup idea, but I was really hoping I wasn’t ever going to use it.

Were there any other moments from the time 1977 came out that you look back on now and think, wow, that’s still pretty cool?
I remember our first time on Top of the Pops, that was the summer of ’95 with Girl From Mars. I’d only just left school a few weeks before, and to be on a show I’d grown up watching every week as a kid and teenager… that was massive. All my heroes had been on that show. A few months after 1977 came out, we played Reading Festival and were pretty high up the bill. We had a massive crowd. If I see footage of that now, it’s just this heaving, massive 90s crowd. Those are a couple of my favourite moments.

Was it a buzz hearing your music on the radio for the first time?
Oh, big time. Stuff was growing while we were still at school. I used to drive to school and put on Radio 1, and I’d quite often hear us. I remember one time I left school, got in the car to drive home, and as soon as I started the car Girl From Mars was playing. That would’ve been ’95. That was a thrill.

Are you still able to listen to the album start to end as a fan, without critiquing it, just appreciating how perfectly it captured that moment in 1996?
Yeah, I always feel really good listening to it. I’m always amazed at the production. Owen Morris, the producer, did such a good job. There’s no way it would’ve sounded like it did if we hadn’t worked with him. He was quite a genius, he did the Oasis records, and he captured a mad sound that even if we tried to re‑record it now, we couldn’t get that same vibe. That’s my favourite thing to listen for. The playing’s really good on it too. Anytime we put out a new remaster, I always check the test pressings, and I quite like sitting down, listening to it, focusing on it. I like the way it flows, it’s diverse, lots of ebbs and flows, and that makes it fun to play live as well.

Even with the reissue for the thirtieth anniversary, are you finding there are still more hidden gems you could use, things you haven’t tapped into yet?
Because we’ve re‑released it a couple of times before, and this time I really wanted to make sure we’re giving fans something fresh and interesting. There was a really good deluxe edition, I can’t remember if it was 2011 or maybe 2008 or 2009, but that was only on CD, so we never got to issue all those cool B‑sides on vinyl. So this time we’ve got a double disc with all the B‑sides on the second disc and for the new CD, we found a really cool performance of us playing the album in full from 2021 during lockdown. It sounded really good.

We also found something I’d tried to find when we were doing that earlier deluxe edition but couldn’t locate the master: an unfinished song from 1977 called Diamond Rick, which was its working title. Through some detective work, I finally tracked down the master tape. We’d recorded drums, bass, and guitars during the first week of recording 1977, but abandoned it. I remembered all the melodies, found the multitrack, finished it, added a couple of guitars, and wrote lyrics. There were one or two lines I could remember, so I had to get my head back into the teenager mindset. That’s going to come out on the CD as well. We reworked a couple of tracks too, an acoustic version of Gone the Dream and a new version of Oh Yeah. For me, it’s important that if fans are buying it again, it’s really worth it for them.

With the Australian tour, playing it start to end, it’s one of those classic albums loaded with hits. You don’t need to jumble up the order. Some albums peak early and fall off, but 1977 is consistent all the way through.
It’s really cool start to end. We’re lucky, there are some big singles deep in the album and we’ve got a lot of other hits from other albums we can play after we finish 1977. We had a new album last year, Race the Night, so we can play a couple of tracks from that too. I think the shows are going to be wicked.

So what’s the plan beyond Australia? Another album? You seem to be in that purple patch where there’s a new record every year or eighteen months?
We’re kind of halfway through another album. This year has just gone a bit nuts, and from now until Christmas I don’t think we’re going to get a breather. I might get a little time in October to work on new stuff, but I feel like by springtime next year we could have another one finished.It just depends, will we be able to get it out in the second half of 2027, or maybe early 2028? Either way, it’s not going to be a long wait.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Ash on the following dates, tickets from Metropolis Touring…