It is a long way from standing in front of 80,000 people at Slane to playing two nights at the Olympia, but Richard Ashcroft seems to be taking his fall from popularity in his short stride.
"Probably a Verve covers band might get more people than me on a good night in December," he says sitting upstairs in his dressing room, soundcheck over with, the background noise now a young child (Ashcroft's son, Sonny) intermittently babbling. While the distance from The Verve at Slane to Ashcroft at the mid-level venues of his current tour is measured more by the perception of failure than anything else, the reality is that the iconic rock star has found salvation in small but important things, turned his back on the big time and is awaiting the verdict from the public at large.
Since splitting up The Verve, Ashcroft has gone it alone: no heavy-duty management; a debut solo album, Alone With Everybody; a trimmed-down entourage; wife and child on the road; and a bunch of solo songs combined with self-penned Verve classics. Other rock stars have gone down the same route with mixed results; rarely have their solo careers achieved the same lofty heights as their band days. But The Verve was not so much a band as an altar at which Ashcroft was exalted.
Defining songs such as Bitter Sweet Symphony and The Drugs Don't Work exemplified a man at the peak of his community-saving powers. Overproduced for some, but barely-concealed spiritual salvation for others, The Verve's iconographic work imploded under pressure - leaving Ashcroft a lost figurehead for a generation, an idealised, romantic, Byronic figure of a rock star whose best songs effortlessly crystallise what he refers to as "the moment".
"Life is about unforgettable and transcendent moments, isn't it? The point of music is to get the moment. When I reflect on the past 10 years of my life, it's various moments that spring to mind, not one long monologue, one long piece. That's the beauty of music capturing the feeling, the moment, no matter how fragmented it might be. Pop music might seem banal and simple to some people, but it's what it expresses that counts."
Poetic sensibilities aside, there was a general feeling of disappointment with Ashcroft's first solo outing. Arguably a largely mainstream album from an artist once considered alternative, it suffers from a balladic sameness barely indistinguishable from a cruising Rod Stewart or Paul McCartney. What lifts it above the norm is Ashcroft's ability to weave a drifty tune around lyrics that state affairs of the heart in an unashamedly awe-struck fashion. Did he realise that, no matter what he did with the album, there would be people ready to pounce?
"I knew that would be the case," he says. "I was already aware of the type of reaction I'd get when I asked session player Pino Palladino to play bass on the record. I knew the critics would go for him first, and they did. Bizarrely enough, Noel Gallagher was the first music bod to mention it in a derogatory manner. A shame, really, because Pino is such a stylist."
Ashcroft also knew the critics would go for the lifestyle they think he enjoys: he and his wife's (former Spiritualized keyboard player, Kate Radley) cosy marriage in a country pile, dreaming their lives away. "We're not in some country pile, and she was pregnant with my son while I was recording, working all mad hours while she was waiting for me. That's not bliss. But when you read about this character who is supposed to be me, it's unreal. The actual character assassination is based not on me, but complete rubbish. That's the thing that frustrates me, that my persona and character were being painted in such a bizarre way. Who could relate to that?"
Perception, says Ashcroft, is rubbish. As is the theory that creativity stops when children arrive, when the artist becomes a parent.
"People reading this who have kids appreciate the unbelievable amount of doors that get opened up emotionally in your mind - things you didn't know existed. The whole cliche of rediscovery for the adult through the child is completely true. It's also like you thought there were no second chances but then the second chance arrives, and the awareness that you can live your late teen dream, the rock 'n' roll bullshit dream for so long and then, suddenly, some serious decisions have to be made."
Ashcroft is turning and twisting all the negative feedback into "a rush of positive energy tinged with anger. The aggression is coming back again. Sometimes in music and performing that's a good thing to have," he says. As for his standing in the rock and media community, he says that he doesn't mix in the right social circles. "I don't go to the Met Bar, or this bar or do that or the other. To me, there's a list of people who deserve a full page advert on how shit they are, and I'm not one of them. Criticism is beyond your control and is a collective group of people deciding things about you that may or may not be true. Some critics look for more when there's no need to. They have a dotto-dot picture of me they are intent on filling in."
Despite the falsehoods Ashcroft claims are made about him, he says that he will continue to write music that is honest and truthful, that is about moments good, bad and meditative. "Pop music is based on candy drugging people to forget that they're surrounded by billions of other galaxies. Some people have a God because they need faith, and that's fair enough. People need to know what they're going to buy tomorrow and where they're going to tomorrow to keep them sane. Any person who has wanted to prick the placebo bubble is trouble. Some people feel the truth has to be covered, that the forgetting of things is paramount. I can't imagine being anything but honest."
The next couple of years will tell whether rock music needs Richard Ashcroft more than he needs it. He mentions taking time off and the challenges involved. The choices as to where he wants to steer his life - that's the main test for him in 2001 and beyond. Does he want to keep making music enough to keep dragging people around the world? You have to believe in it enough to do that, he says. "I just want to make the right decisions for my wife and son. Hopefully, it'll boil down to not making music dominate our lives too much, so it becomes a real pleasure to go into a room and write a song again."
Ultimately, the ease of Ashcroft's symphonic songwriting (as well as its measure of easy-listening melodies) uplifts the soul. He remarks that when he recorded Sonnet (from The Verve's Urban Hymns), it was the first time he listened back to something in the studio and involuntarily lifted up his hands to heaven. The chorus made him feel exalted, he relates, as if he was experiencing some form of religious zealotry. "Within the design of the songs," he says, "I want points that make the listener feel overcome and spiritually lifted. All my favourite music makes me want to do that, and that's my aim as well. Alone With Everybody had to be made. I'd rather take the flak and have an album out than not, so the record just had to happen."
A parting question: What do you want for Christmas? "Absolutely nothing," Ashcroft replies. "I couldn't think of one thing I need. I've definitely gone into a Scrooge mentality. Christmas has lost its joy for me, but hopefully I'll revisit it with my son in years to come."
Alone With Everyone is on Virgin records
