The rock world is full of successful frontmen who have failed to make the same musical impression as solo artists.
Chris Cornell. Scott Weiland. Michael Hutchence, may he rest in peace. Even Mick Jagger.
But Richard Ashcroft doesn't appear to have any concerns in that regard.
He was the frontman of The Verve, the British group that disbanded last year after a tumultuous nine years, which included a brief 1995 breakup (when drugs, depression and band friction took their toll) and a regrouping that produced the huge 1997 hit, Bittersweet Symphony.
Ashcroft releases his solo debut, Alone With Everybody, on Tuesday, to be followed by a tentative North American tour in the fall.
"This is a man -- or boy -- of experience," says the well-spoken and friendly Ashcroft, 28, in town recently on a promotional trip.
"I've tasted the toilet and I've tasted the top of the mountain. I've tasted it all. So the desire to find out what it's like at the top is not the same as it was 'X' amount of years ago. But that doesn't extinguish the hunger within the songs, or within the music, or in the creative process. It doesn't do anything to that -- it fuels it more than anything."
The danger, Ashcroft cautions, is when you try to figure out "how this is going to work with The Verve, and how many The Verve sold. You become obsessed with that and you start making music for numbers, and you've lost it, you've lost the battle."
In Ashcroft's favour is his beautiful, clear voice, as well as some solid songwriting and an intense stage presence that was evident during his short but stunning showcase at a packed-to-the-rafters Ted's Wrecking Yard last month.
He took the candle-lit stage alone and played both acoustic and electric guitars as he performed a half-dozen songs from Alone With Everybody, in addition to Bittersweet Symphony. The long and lean Ashcroft was commanding and charismatic.
Across from a hotel-room table, he's also quite a handful with big, wide-set, blue eyes, exquisite cheek bones and bee-stung lips.
If he wasn't a rock star, he could be a model.
While Ashcroft became known as the guy who bodyslammed anyone who got in his way in the video for Bittersweet Symphony, the clip for his first solo single, A Song For The Lovers, is a voyeuristic exercise that has him shirtless and alone in a hotel room, eating, drinking tea and even going to the bathroom.
"The piss came earlier on -- it was the director's idea to put it right at the end," says Ashcroft, nursing a Beck's beer and inhaling a Marlboro Light.
Still, in his label's own press notes, he refers to making Alone With Everybody as "an Apocalypse Now kind of experience."
In what way?
"Just where it took me emotionally, to make the record and the things I had to face," Ashcroft says. "Going down the river with a certain track, and then having to swim back up again 'cause we'd gone too far. I didn't realize how draining it was going to be, really. I just think it's a particular record. It's my first solo album, the first time I've put my silly name on the front cover, so it demanded that attention."
In the press notes, Ashcroft also talks about "creating as much psychedelic insanity as possible."
He insists he wasn't being literal.
"I can't say I took that much acid during the recording of this record," he says with a chuckle. "But I feel my experimentation with acid and other drugs in my past, and (1930s author Aldous) Huxley said it himself: That drug will always give your perception a slight shift, and often that can be a negative thing. But a positive effect, really, within music, and I'm not here to say, 'Go out there, experiment with drugs, make music.' Music is within you anyway. All it does is it slightly cracks it, slightly cracks the way you write, slightly cracks the way you record, the way you overdub, what you want."
Along with loads of Bacharach strings and country-soul, Alone With Everybody boasts a big sound leftover from The Verve's expansive psychedelia.
"A track like I Get My Beat, there's intensity to the purity of the emotion that you get when you listen to the track," Ashcroft says. "It's an uplifting intensity. It's a life-affirming intensity. And I think that's something I didn't want to shy away from. I didn't want to be boxed off as someone who just revealed personal or universal horror all the time."
And, yes, Ashcroft agrees that Verve fans might be surprised by what they hear.
"You've just got to open your mind. You've just got to understand that when The Verve finished a concert, what was going on in the back of that bus. The music that was being played was such a massive, eclectic mix, that at some point, all these things will come out. But I now don't feel a slave to my influences...
"And if we look back on Neil Young and Dylan and all these characters, they put themselves all over the world in different places, different emotions -- you've got to do that. You can't be put in brackets, you can't be nailed down, because life is so much more complex than angst, or celebration, or joy. It's all this."
The RICHARD ASHCROFT File
Born: In the working-class, industrial town of Wigan, England.
Age: 28
Personal life: Married to Kate Radley, formerly keyboardist with Spiritualized. Their three-month-old son is named Sonny.
Claim To Fame: Fronted British band The Verve from 1990-1999.
Biggest Hit: The Verve's classical Rolling Stones-sampled 1997 hit, Bittersweet Symphony, which wound up in a TV commercial and was later nominated for a Grammy.
Solo debut: Alone With Everybody, due in stores on Tuesday.
Future plans: A tentative North American tour. Would also like to write music for European films.
QUOTE: On The Verve being on the verge of breaking up at the height of their renown: "Having this kind of universal success, selling records, and (yet) deep right at the core, there was severe unhappiness. Yeah, that was a juxtaposition that I found very uncomfortable at the time, because I knew given a different set of circumstances and personalities, that this was a moment to be celebrated. And how great to have 'head' music and soulful, spiritual music at the top of the charts amongst all this s--t. So it was a victory for me."
