Ash’s creative fires are still burning after 25 years

The Irish band’s frontman Tim Wheeler says songwriting is as much about understanding life now that he is in his 40s as it was when he was a teen, writes Ed Power

THE cliche of growing up in public has never been more applicable than to Ash’s Tim Wheeler. He was just 16 when the band put out their mini-album, Trailer, in 1994. Now in his early 40s, the native of Downpatrick, Co Down, has endured all of life’s ups, downs, and sideways drifts — including the death of his father, who had Alzheimer’s — in something approaching the glare of the spotlight.