Daniel Ash doesn’t jam. “Never have,” he shrugs. “I have no interest in that. I want a finished product. I want it done.” This may be the most Daniel Ash thing ever said, and it explains everything from the blunt reinvention of Bauhaus to the dub-soaked reinterpretations on Stripped, his 2017 solo record that finds him deconstructing his past without ever sounding nostalgic.
A founding member of Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, and Tones on Tail, Ash’s legacy is canon—but he has little interest in reliving it. “I don’t want to go on the road ever again,” he says. “I think people that still tour at my age are insane.” After nearly three decades of live gigs, his new stage is the licensing department. “These days it’s all about getting placements in film and TV,” he says. “Slugging it out on the road holds no appeal for me.”
Enter Stripped, a record of reworked classics that leans hard on drum machines, synths, and subversive production tricks. “They told me to do stripped-down acoustic versions. I lasted seven minutes,” he says. “I felt like a fucking folk singer. No way. I hate that one-guy-and-a-guitar thing.”
Instead, he turned to the machines. “Drum machines have soul,” he insists. “That whole ‘drum machines have no soul’ thing—bullshit. Depends how you program them.” The result is a sleek, weird, and unexpectedly modern record that tosses genre rules out the window. The biggest stylistic swing is a dub reggae version of “American Dream.” “Everyone told me not to do it,” he says. “So I did it.”
The song was originally “fully realized” with Love and Rockets, which made it one of the toughest to reimagine. “But I kept picking up my guitar and playing reggae riffs without thinking,” he recalls. “Eventually I just said, ‘fuck it. It sounds good.’” The resulting version owes more to King Tubby than goth rock, and that’s exactly the point.
Ash also makes no apologies for being a perfectionist. “It took six months, five days a week, to make this record,” he says. “I hate underproduced albums. Unless it’s the Velvet Underground. Then it sounds fantastic.”
But don’t expect another album anytime soon. “Albums don’t make sense anymore,” he says. “It’s too much work and not financially viable. What am I going to do, sell 500 copies? No thanks.” The dream gig these days is a scoring job—short, focused, and ideally lucrative. “Someone gives you a scene, 35 seconds to fill, boom, there’s your gig,” he says. “That’s what I want.”
Creativity hasn’t dried up, it’s just taken a new form. “I don’t pick up a guitar unless I’m making a track,” he says. “And even then, I don’t know any scales. Never did. It’s a combination of laziness and spontaneity.”
His disdain for musical “snobbery” runs deep. “Those guys that know every scale? They just end up sounding like Yes or Genesis. And that’s worse than death.” Cue the rant: “I remember house parties when I was a teenager—guys with beards and brown jumpers in the kitchen talking politics with fucking Yes playing in the background. Meanwhile, the rest of us were trying to get laid.”
So yes, he prefers pop. “George Michael was amazing. So was Duran Duran,” he says unapologetically. “People think I’m supposed to like Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson. But I’m a sucker for a great pop song. It takes real talent to write a hit.”
He lights up when talking about working with She Wants Revenge, tossing E-bow textures on a piano track with no prep and zero overthinking. “I didn’t even know what key it was in,” he says. “Just started playing. That’s how all the good stuff happens.”
As for the future? “If Taylor Swift called and said, ‘I want you to play guitar or bass,’ I’d be there in a New York second,” he grins. “That stuff’s great.”
Daniel Ash: goth icon, reggae apostate, acoustic refusenik, pop lover. Still allergic to nostalgia, still reinventing—and still way cooler than whatever’s happening in the kitchen.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
