Culture That Made Me: Tim Wheeler on the Pixies, Man on Wire, and Thin Lizzy

Tim Wheeler of Ash tells Richard Fitzpatrick about some of his touchstones

Tim Wheeler and Ash play Cyprus Avenue in Cork. 

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Tim Wheeler, 48, grew up in Downpatrick, Co Down. In 1992, he co-founded Ash and four years later the band released their acclaimed debut album, 1977. 

The band have contributed singles to several movie soundtracks, including Danny Boyle’s film A Life Less Ordinary. 

In 2001, Wheeler won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Pop Song for Shining Light.

Ash will perform at Cork’s Cyprus Avenue, on Tuesday, December 9. 

• See: www.cyprusavenue.ie

Pixies

Growing up, I was into bands from Boston like Dinosaur Junior, Pixies, Lemonheads. The one who was the most shocking to me and probably had the biggest impact was the Pixies.

Hearing Bone Machine for the first time was mind-blowing, like the drums just sounded backwards. The vocalists had a guttural-like scream I’d never heard before. The musicianship was brilliant. The drum sound was incredible. And the lyrics are like, “Where the hell has this come from?” I was probably 14 hearing the Pixies for the first time. I remember being in a mate’s parents’ car – anything to get away from the adults – listening to his big brother’s copy of Surfer Rosa on cassette and having my mind blown.

Teenage Fanclub

I saw Teenage Fanclub opening for Nirvana in Belfast – the Breeders were on the bill as well – in 1992. They’ve been a lifelong love of mine ever since. That was magic. I’d just turned 15. All of a sudden, I got turned on to a lot of cooler music after being a bit of a sort of a childhood heavymetaller. In those early days, Teenage Fanclub had a grunginess to them, but they had all these gorgeous harmonies, like Big Star, as well.

They were from Glasgow, just across the water from Northern Ireland, and so I guess there was a Celtic kinship I felt. and I remember June and Nirvana gig, they, I think, well, actually, the Breeders were on the bill as well, and they were on. We all went home after that gig, and we bought Bandwagonesque. It’s just such a great record of dirty guitars and beautiful melodies and brilliant lyrics that really spoke to a young teenage guy.

A Collection of Beatles Oldies

My parents didn’t have the coolest record collection, but one great record they had was a compilation called A Collection of Beatles Oldies (But Goldies!). It had all the same best singles from their early albums – I Want to Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Day Tripper. And the artwork was really cool because it was very psychedelic and art deco at the same time.

The back cover was just them sitting around backstage somewhere smoking with tons of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. I loved that up-tempo pop melodies and the brilliant chord sequences and the compactness of the songs, , absolute genius songwriting.

On the Road

I loved On the Road growing up. It’s quite cliché for a young man to be into, but I absolutely love it. I’ve read also read the original scroll version. He wrote it originally by taping together one continuous scroll of paper together so that he wouldn’t have to take breaks while he was typing. So, he would get into these furious streams of consciousness and could just keep going.

The original scroll remained unpublished and unseen for a long time. It’s got everyone’s real name in it – Bill Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg instead of their pseudonyms. When I was reading it first, I was going on tour for the first time and seeing the world for the first time. I sometimes wish I could go back and live with the freedom they must have had in those post-war years. The corner was starting to turn. The music sounds so exciting – the way he writes about jazz music. And the amazing characters he knew.

Man on Wire

Man on Wire.

I love the documentary Man on Wire. I watched it while I was living in New York – I lived in New York for 15 years – and thinking how mind-blowing it must have been for people to have seen that at the time, in 1974, and how brave it was [a high-wire walk between the Twin Towers ], but also how incredibly executed it was. It was a wild stunt, highly illegal, highly dangerous. I could only be pulled off by a total expert, and the documentary is so good because it sets it up like a heist movie. It was such a poetic thing to do, almost like Icarus. The guy was like such a lunatic, but he had the mind of an artist.

Buzzcocks

I first really heard the Buzzcocks from people saying how much we sounded like them. We kind of got it secondhand, their influence on Ash, because Nirvana was a big influence on us, and Nirvana were huge fans of Buzzcocks. That punk music and the pop melodies and the classic yearning lyrics that Buzzcocks had were just brilliant. I think we have pop sensibilities in common before I’d even knew about them. They were doing punk music, but they weren’t afraid of pop.

Hearing their records, which were 1970s production, which doesn’t quite have a full sonic range that you’re hearing in records in the ’90s. Once I got to see him live, and I heard the full power and full frequency range. I was like, “God, we are so like them.”

We got to have a few drinks with them. They were great fun as well. Steve Diggle [guitarist] was a wild man. He’s still a great performer. He really projects to the whole audience. I managed to weasel out of him that he was quite a big Bruce Springsteen fan. That’s where he takes a lot of his stage energy from. But he would do things like fire a gob of spit 12 feet in the air and catch it back in his mouth and then throw his guitar 15 feet across the stage and his guitar tech would catch it. The Boss does other great things, but I don’t think The Boss does those kinds of things.

Thin Lizzy

The Thin Lizzy guitarists are a huge influence on me. My big brother was a huge Thin Lizzy fan. He’s 16 years older than me. He gave me his old beaten-up tape deck and a few cassettes. One of them was Live and Dangerous. I was maybe eight years old.

What a brilliant gift. That’s where my love of rock guitars comes from. It’s such a masterclass in guitaring. Some of my favorite guitarists are Scott Gorham, Brian Robertson and Eric Bell.

Where I was living in London in the late ’90s, early 2000s, Brian Robertson didn’t live far from me. He was working in some guitar shop in those days. I got to befriend him. He came around to my house to play guitar one time. I learned a lot from him, but the funny thing was how long it took him to take off all his bangles and rings before he started.

Goodbye to All That

Robert Graves

A book I really loved at school was Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves. It’s this biography of the early part of his life.

At school, I was doing a lot on the war poets. It’s an amazing story of what life was like in the trenches in the First World War, but then it’s also a story of an artist and becoming an artist. That book really hit me, especially trying to be an artist against the background of war. It cuts off not too far after the war. It was enough of a tantalizing glimpse to see what life is like as an artist. It’s powerful. In the late 1920s, he moved to Deià in Mallorca. He’s buried there. I’ve been to his grave.

David Crosby

 David Crosby.

One of my favourite recent documentaries is David Crosby: Remember My Name about the musician from Crosby, Stills and Nash. He’s such a lunatic and had such crazy stories. He’s like such a good, positive person, but then also someone who did so much damage.

He was so flawed, such a messed-up person. You can see there’s something very pure about him too. There’s a very sad moment in it where he says, “There’s no one that I made music with who will talk to me now.”

And he made music a lot of people. He managed to pretty much burn every one of his bridges. There’s a nice redemption story to the whole documentary. He puts himself through hell and a lot of people but ends up being a very loving husband. Neil Young said, “There’s no one loved making music like David Crosby.” Ever since then, I love listening to the records trying to pick out his voice because Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies are unbelievable.