By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
November 22, 1996
The three musicians in Ash are so young that when their record label signed them two years ago, their contract stipulated that the kids could finish their school exams. In fact, the Irish teens turned down the chance to tour with Pearl Jam so they could graduate.
Now that two of the band members are in their last year of teen-dom and the third is 20, they no longer stamp their singles with stickers that read: “Guaranteed real teenagers.”
“That guarantee is about expired,” joked 19-year-old singer-guitarist Tim Wheeler during a brief stopover in Chicago last week. “I think we’ve got our heads screwed on and we’re quite mature.”
Bonafide rock stars in Britain, the musicians are hoping to make a dent on the U.S. pop charts with their punk-edged pop songs. While they have talent, drive and a killer buzzing guitar sound, it’s too early to say whether they’ve got enough diversity to distinguish themselves from the pack of shimmery Britpop groups that preceded them.
So while they may be headliners back home, they’re sandwiched between opener Drill and headliner Stabbing Westward on this tour. Ash will play the second of two consecutive sold-out evenings tonight at Metro. Their set will be heavy on cuts from their album “1977,” which is the year Wheeler and bassist Mark Hamilton were born. Drummer Rick McMurray, 20, is the old man of the group.
“We’re trying to establish credibility here because a lot of people think we’re just another hyped U.K. band,” said Wheeler.
The band does have the distinction, however, of turning down Pearl Jam’s offer of an opening slot two years ago. Of course, while Pearl Jam is a superstar group here, their popularity in Europe is negligible.
“”The whole thing blew out of proportion and people were saying we hated Pearl Jam,” Wheeler said. “But that’s not true. We were still in school at the time and they were going to tour Southeast Asia. To do it, we would’ve had to drop out of school. We hadn’t started to get really famous at that point so it made sense to stay in school, just in case.”
Their decision to graduate didn’t deter their U.K. success. Still, Ash has a while to go before it peaks. At a summer show at Metro, the trio’s songs tended to share the same manic lead-ins that made a chunk of them indistinguishable from each other. But standouts such as “Girl From Mars” and “Goldfinger” show the band has much promise. And their Ramones-style “Kung Fu,” which has become their calling card, is exhilarating.
“I had the Ramones in mind when I wrote that,” said Wheeler, who once studied martial arts. “I wanted to do their kind of punk song. And I also liked the silliness of `Kung Fu Fighting’ by Carl Douglas. And we’re all big fans of (martial arts film star) Jackie Chan, so I ended up mentioning his name about 10 times (in the song). People seem to get a kick out of it.”
Not surprisingly, Chan featured the song in his breakthrough U.S. film “Rumble in the Bronx.”
