Richard Ashcroft barrels into the conversation, equal parts philosopher and pissed-off prophet, with riffs of language that carry the same weight as the guitar lines he’s busy defending. Sitting down to talk Natural Rebel, he set the tone immediately: “This record is for the fans. Not the critics, not the chin-scratchers, not the bullshitters who’ve never written a song in their lives. The fans.”
Ashcroft’s been orbiting this point for years: critics are parasites, fashion is a disease, and rock bands these days are Xeroxes of Xeroxes. He’s not wrong that his own career has been anything but trend-compliant. The Verve collapsed, reformed, collapsed again. His solo career, nearly two decades deep, zigzags from brooding balladry to bursts of psych-soul. But this time around, he swears it isn’t about reinvention—it’s about realignment. “When Rolls-Royce unveil a new model, it’s not about what Lamborghini thinks. It’s for the admirers. That’s how I see my music. If I’m Enzo Ferrari, why would I care what the critic from Vermont has to say?”
And then, inevitably, the conversation swings back to that song. “Someone stole fifty million off me in ’97, and they’ve still got it,” he spits, referencing the infamous “Bittersweet Symphony” publishing grab. “I’m telling them, I’m coming for my money. Alan Klein Jr., put that track on in your car on the way back from seeing your yoga guru and think about what you stole.” The fact that the Stones eventually signed over the rights doesn’t soothe Ashcroft’s rage—it fuels it. He laughs at the industry’s gangsters of old, claiming they wouldn’t last “five minutes” in today’s virtual shark tank.
His contempt isn’t just for lawyers. “Rock and roll is killing itself,” he says. “It’s a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox. These bands don’t even know what it feels like to be in a forty-five-minute jam where you reach transcendence. They’ve never been there, man.” For Ashcroft, transcendence is the whole point. He talks about Birdsong melodies as if they were lifelines, dismisses Auto-Tune as the crutch of singers with no personality, and insists that writing something as simple and sturdy as “That’s How Strong” is harder than burying yourself in production gimmickry.
Still, the love songs on Natural Rebel aren’t born of domestic bliss so much as rebellion against a divided world. “Everyone’s jumping on politics like it’s a trend,” he shrugs. “Bob Marley risked his life to bring people together. Now music’s being used to divide them. That angers me. Music is meant to transcend. It’s meant to lift people.”
He’s funny about it, too, in a way that’s half self-aware and half oblivious. “Without the audience, it’s just a guy tossing off on a stage,” he says, recalling his decision to sign fans’ ticket stubs at Glasgow’s Barrowlands, one of those mythical venues he insists means nothing without the people in the room. He describes himself as a “PhD of this culture” and rattles off a lineage of rock’s holy ghosts—The Stooges jamming with Hendrix, Sly Stone harmonizing with Jim Morrison mid-meltdown—as if he were sketching blueprints for rock’s lost cathedral.
Ashcroft doesn’t see himself as bitter—though “Money Money,” with its closing solo meant to sound like Funkadelic colliding with punk-era chaos, suggests otherwise. He insists he’s just honest. “I’m not the flavor of the month. Thank God. If you’re in fashion, you’re out of fashion. My fans found me through word of mouth, through the songs. That’s a solid relationship. It’s not built on advertising campaigns or whatever blank-canvas bullshit bands are out there now.”
And when he rails against the state of things—against critics, against Auto-Tune, against a rock world he calls fantastically boring—it doesn’t sound like sour grapes. It sounds like a man still spoiling for transcendence, still chasing that place where the jam never ends and the spirit hasn’t been copied to death. “What am I?” he says. “I’m just a guy who writes songs. But if I’m going down, I’m going down playing them real.”
Ashcroft leaves the conversation where he started it—defiant, impatient, and very much alive in his own mythology. “This record’s for the fans,” he repeats. “Always has been. Always will be.”
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