Photo credits: L to R: Bruce Smith (credit: Chelsea Miller), Daniel Ash (credit: Regan Catam), Paul Spencer Denman (credit: Stuart Matthewman)
Daniel Ash needs no introduction – his work in Bauhaus, Tones on Tail and Love and Rockets speaks for itself. Though he’s only properly been in three bands, Ash was itching for something new, a chance to create music with new musicians that he had previously not worked with. Enter drummer Bruce Smith (Public Image Ltd, The Pop Group) and Paul Spencer Denman (Sade, Sweetback), veterans themselves who have played with legendary musicians, and a new band, Ashes and Diamonds.
Started seven years ago, the band’s debut release, Ashes and Diamonds Are Forever, capitalizes on each member’s talents. The album shines as Ash injects his hallmark blend of post-punk grit, glam flair, and experimental textures, while Smith’s layered percussion and ambient electronics honor the band’s classic foundation and drive its experimental evolution, all anchored by Denman’s deep, pulse-like rhythm that solidifies their epic, soundtrack-ready sound. It’s both recognizable and forging a new, forward-looking sound.
Ash is excited about the release, despite the hard road it took to deliver, and he’s got the right to be. Economical in the fact that Ashes and Diamonds delivers quality over quantity – Ash says the trio didn’t write a ton of music just to whittle things down – this is an album without a weak spot. While lacking a singular overarching theme, the album’s dozen tracks radiate a dark, pulsating energy that evokes a “Hollywood” underbelly: a seductive mix of glitz and grit presented in a hypnotic, electronic-tinged, dark-pop package.
With a steady stream of conversations having already taken place to discuss his past, present and future, Ash was kind enough to grant me an audience for an hour-long conversation where we discussed how he has continuously found ways to be inventive using just the six strings on his guitar, the challenges that were overcome to release something he is proud of, and technology’s creep into the creative process.
It looks like you’ve been doing a lot of press in advance of the release.
DANIEL: Yeah, I am. I was just about to tell my publicist I’m getting burnt out. You know, I got another one tomorrow, and then I’m gonna say, “Can somebody else do a few?”
Right. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s probably good. People care.
DANIEL: Yeah, we’ll see. You know, I said this a million times, there’s a hell of a lot of traffic out there these days. With records, singles, albums, EPs, everybody and their uncles having a go. It’s trying to cut through that. We have YouTube, and we’re launching this on YouTube and all the other social media platforms. Hopefully it’ll cut through. The reviews have been really good. They couldn’t be better. We’re really hoping that’s going to actually translate into millions of sales (laughs).
I’m thinking about the history of rock and roll, the history of pop music. When Bauhaus started, rock and roll was not that old. Rock started mid-‘50s-ish?
DANIEL: Yeah. It was 20-odd years old.
I know that you were influenced early on by glam music, and pop music, and punk music. Did you feel at that time that you were inventing a new style of music because there weren’t a lot of other bands doing what you were doing?
DANIEL: Absolutely. Personally, every time we would rehearse, if it sounded like somebody else, I’d stop, and go, “Okay, we’ve got to reevaluate this.” And I’d concentrate, obviously, on my sound on a guitar, not to make it sound like something that had already been done. Then I discovered the e-bow, which did open it all up for me personally. That changed everything for me, and it gave me a new avenue, because it turned the guitar into a keyboard, basically. I instantly gravitated towards that, and it was natural to me to use that little e-bow on the guitar.
Is it harder to come up with something original in 2025 when there is 70 years of rock music and influences behind you?
DANIEL: Yeah, I think it is, absolutely. I’ve got a specific pedal. I was just doing some guitar work for somebody just the other day, and they wanted power chords in this one particular section, and I can’t just do power chords. I can’t do that, because it’s been done. I’ve found this pedal, but I’m not going to tell you what it is, because I don’t want anybody else to steal the idea. It’s transformed the power chord thing into something much more original than power chords on a guitar. I used that just the other day, and I was really happy with what I got. I’d had the pedal for quite a few years now. I always have an instinct about something, or something comes into my mind. How can I make this different, you know, with these power chords that are needed in the chorus? And I got this particular pedal that has turned it into something else, so I’m happy about that. That’s an example of trying to break out of the little box of what a guitar should sound like.
Every day, I’m amazed at the fact that a guitar has six strings. And yet, there’s 70 years worth of music that’s been created with just six strings. The creativity behind taking those six strings and creating something that no one has heard before, it continues to blow my mind. One of the greatest wonders of this world.
DANIEL: Yeah, but even so, having said that you’ve got six strings to work with, what about if you’re a drummer?
You’re right.
DANIEL: The sound of a drum. How many times has that riff, four beats in a bar, been used since the late ’40s? And then you’ve got the techno music, you’ve got the 808 sound. Boom, boom, boom. But it works.
I used to think 30 years ago, there’s only so many ways you can use those that you’re given. You would have thought that by now they would have been worn out, but they’re not. It’s infinite.
Technology helps. There’s always going to be someone finding some new way to string things together. It’s mind blowing.
DANIEL: Yeah, I think technology’s got a lot to do with it. A hell of a lot to do with it, because before the electric guitar, you only had acoustic. And they would have acoustic guitars in the Glen Miller Band, back in the ’40s. I think the first Les Paul’s were in the ’40s, the late ’40s, maybe. I don’t know much about the history of the guitar, but before that, you would only have an acoustic to work with. But then again, it’s a little bit like phone numbers. You think they’re all going to run out. They don’t. How many phone numbers are there on planet Earth?
That’s a great point. Now you’re going to keep me up at night thinking about that. In the ‘80s, there were a lot of movies about the future – like, 2020. That seemed so far away. Science Fiction movies had flying cars and futuristic settings. As I listened to the album, I pictured it being used in a bar scene, set in 2020, as someone might have imagined the future looking like in an ‘80s SciFi movie. When you’re writing songs, do you envision a certain scene or vibe in your head that you’re going for?
DANIEL: Not at all. Absolutely not. I’m talking for the three of us. Making music, for us anyway, it’s a very spontaneous thing. You don’t really have any preconceptions on what something’s going to be. That includes the lyrics. I get all my words from cut-ups from magazines, using the same approach as William Burroughs and Bowie. I use that 95% of the time. And when you sit down to write the lyrics, I don’t know what I’m going to be writing about. The headlines will suggest that. And then, hopefully, within a few hours, I’ll have a finished lyric.
Same with the music. I’ll get a baseline and a drum loop or two from Bruce and Paul. I have to love the bass line, and I have to love the beat. Sometimes they send stuff, and I don’t like it, or it doesn’t turn me on. It’s got to get me, not in the head, but in the heart. And then I can work on it, then it’s inspiring.
There are no preconceptions on what that thing is when you’re making a track. Not for us, anyway, because we’re totally free. We can do anything we want. There’s no commercial pressure at all at this stage, because when we started out, we didn’t have a record company. The three of us got into a room to see what would happen. It was that simple. There is no plan. The only plan that we would have is to make finished songs. They can take any form – rock and roll, jazz, anything you like. We don’t care, as long as something is created that is valid and we love it. That’s it.
I listen to a lot of music, and there are some albums that I might love 80% of the record, but to me, there are some skips. There really were no skips on this record for me.
DANIEL: That’s why we’re hoping this one’s going to catch fire and go next level, because we’ve had seven years to perfect it. We thought we had the album in the can, because we had to work independently because of COVID and everything, that really fucked us up for a while. And then at the eleventh hour, we realized it didn’t sound good enough. It sounded like what it was—bits put together from different parts. We were in different countries some of the time, or on the East Coast, the West Coast, and somebody would be in London. We scrapped it at the eleventh hour and re-recorded the whole thing. And it shows, because we’re all in the same room. We gave ourselves ten days to record it, mix it, and produce it. Now it’s fully realized. We had the luxury of seven years to get it right, you know, because we thought we had it right, and then at the end of the day, it just sounded like patchwork, which is what it was. So we scrapped the whole damn thing. It was a very expensive mistake, but we had to do it. We got a good deal in a studio in LA. Bruce flew over from the East Coast, and we got in there and got it all finished in ten days, exactly ten days.
The closing track is the perfect way to end an album. I can imagine a video that starts with you in 2025 and then we go back in time, watching you get younger and younger as the video goes on. As it comes to an end, there is you, as a young child standing in front of a store window, looking at what would become your first guitar. In this scenario, it’s a nice comedown to end the record, it ties everything together, and it’s a reflection of you. I think lyrically, it probably has nothing to do with any of that stuff, but that was what I saw in my head while listening to the song.
DANIEL: It’s to do with the whole COVID thing in 2020. It’s about that. And personally, I had a great time when that was going on, because there was nobody on the streets. I’m an introvert, if you like, most of the time. And I like being on my own, and I ride motorcycles a lot, and I was going through the streets of LA, and it was barren, and I loved it. It was magical to me. The opposite of all the hustle and bustle, so in that respect, everybody goes, “Oh, what a nightmare that was,” but on a personal level, it was the opposite to me. Obviously, there’s the tragedy of all the people that died, and the whole nightmare of that. But I didn’t have any problem not being able to see anybody at all. No problem with that whatsoever.
I listened to a podcast this week where filmmaker Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver, etc) was the guest. He talked about what I think was his first film. He said he had very little budget and couldn’t afford to pay most of the actors. He said he had a friend who he talked into being in the movie. He said at one point the friend leaned over and was, “Don’t forget, I’m not an actor” and Wright said something like, “But you’re affordable and you look good.” I’ve heard you say that you got Peter Murphy into Bauhaus because he had the look you were looking for. Have there been any other situations where you’ve wanted to work with someone based on their look and not their musical talent?
DANIEL: Not really, no. Everything has grown organically over the years. I worked with Glenn Campling [Tones on Tail], who turned out to be a great and amazing bass player, but he was my best friend at college, at art school. So, that’s how that started. There were, like, three or four of us who lived in the same house when we were at art school, and stuff like that, and he picked up the bass one day, and that’s it. I knew I wanted to work with him because of that reason. The only time I’ve wanted to work with somebody within music—going back to the story you’re talking about—is with Peter, because I knew him from eleven years old at school. And when we got to about fourteen, fifteen, we were both Bowie freaks, and he looked great in that genre, so I always thought that he should be in the band, even if he was only playing tambourine on stage, or any damn thing, just get him on the stage, because he looked amazing. On a whim, I went to his house. He lived about ten miles away. I hadn’t seen him in five years. And then I just knocked, waited for him to come back from work, and then the rest is history. But that’s the only real time. In effect, I’ve only been in three proper bands—well, this is my fourth band, I suppose.
You mentioned this album took seven years. Seven years is pre-COVID up until now, right? Seven years sometimes seems like a blink of an eye, and sometimes it seems like it was seventy years ago. Was it seven straight years of work, or was it starts and stops?
DANIEL: I did a tour with Bauhaus in that time, a tour with Love and Rockets, did another tour with Love and Rockets with Jane’s Addiction, and also did the Tones on Tail gig at Cruel World. So, no, this was in between doing those things. It was spread over a seven-year period. It should have taken seven months, and it took seven years, because of all the delays with COVID, and also me going on the road with the other bands that I’ve been in. A long time.
Were you sending files back and forth with the other guys?
DANIEL: Yeah, I’d get a bassline and a beat, and then I’d work from that. They’d send me stuff, saying, “What about this? What about this?” And then out of six things they’d send, I’d choose one, or possibly two, that really turned me on. I’d say, “Okay, this is one we can work on,” and then we’d work on it from there. Then I’d get the loops with the bassline, get the headphones on, do the cut-up thing on the kitchen table and get a song. Then I’d go into a studio independently here where I live, and then send that back. Then Bruce would get a hold of that and rearrange things, and it often turned out to be something that sounded very different from the original idea. But, having the luxury of seven years to perfect all this really paid off.
When Bruce and Paul, when you started working with them, was it instantaneous, like, “Let’s get together and do something,” or was it more of a “test the waters, see if there is anything happening”?
DANIEL: I’d never met Bruce. He’s on the East Coast. He was a friend of Paul’s for many years. Paul had contacted me about seven years ago; he wanted to work with me years and years ago, but the time wasn’t right. Anyway, when we got back together this time, Paul’s wife, Kim, who I knew from art school—that’s how those two got together—she suggested Bruce on drums. Basically, I met Bruce in a car park in this cheap rehearsal room in LA. I didn’t even know what he looked like. But I know he’s been with Public Image Limited since ’86. Anyway, we met in the car park, shook hands and everything, and then we went into the rehearsal room, and we were trying to write a song within half an hour, three-quarters of an hour of meeting each other, which is a very odd thing, trying to write a song with a complete stranger. You don’t know who that person is, it’s very odd. But I think we actually came up with something by the end of that first day, so the chemistry was there, and the three of us have been doing this long enough to know if it’s going to work or not. It did, so there it is.
Do you remember the first song you guys finished?
DANIEL: I remember by the end of the day, the whole of the floor was covered in newspaper cuttings because I was cutting stuff out. The floor was covered in newspaper clippings. It might have been “Teenage Robots” because that’s got a lot of words. That’s funny, I can’t remember. I do remember we did come up with something pretty much finished by the first day.
Do you tend to write in spurts? Do you do two, three, four songs at a time?
DANIEL: I only write when I have to. I got a thing about motorcycles, so most days I go out on the bike. I have to, for my sanity, that’s my thing, and luckily where I live, the weather’s fantastic, and I live near a mountain range. That’s great. So, when I get the music, that’s when I’ll sit down and actually focus on writing, but I’m not one of these people at all that writes every day. God, what a nightmare that would be. Really boring to me, that would be, actually. It’s definitely in spurts.
You recorded the album and then recorded it again?
DANIEL: The gradual process: six years putting it all together, changing this, doing that, and then we were in the studio, and we were like, “It’s not good enough.” Our management actually had a contact with a studio in LA, and we got a terrific deal. It’s Johnny Depp’s place, actually. Fantastic studio, because it’s like somebody’s living room in preference to a boring, sterile recording studio. So, we got a great deal through management, and we booked ten days and re-recorded everything. That was the inspiration. That really pushed us. First of all, we could record it again, because time was going on, it was like, “We’ve got to get this out, we’ve got to get a record deal soon, otherwise we’re going to lose interest as a band.” Everything sort of came together, and we got some spare time. There was some available time for those ten days. There it is. It’s a guy called Robert Stevenson, actually, that was Johnny Depp’s right-hand man, and he co-mixed and co-produced the album. I want to give him a credit, because he was fantastic. English guy.
Is the re-recording the same songs? You didn’t take that time between the first recording and the second recording and come up with two or three new songs or swap songs out, it was the same songs?
DANIEL: Yeah, I think we might have swapped some song. I know I added a load of guitars at the eleventh hour when we did the remake of the album, because I’m not really into guitars as such, I’m into the whole song, I don’t care if guitars are in it or not. But I happen to play guitar a bit, so at the eleventh hour, with most of these songs, I ended up recording a lot of guitar, actually, for the tracks. I’d discovered this new amp that was in the rehearsal studio. It was a little Fender Hot Rod amp, and I loved the sound of it. I could get much more bottom end out of it, so it inspired me to get the old guitar—the old banjo out, as I call it—and put more guitar on it, and it does work. It’s just that I get bored with guitars, so I’m not really interested in it as a specific thing. But, I’m really glad that I did put all those guitars on it when we re-recorded it, that’s for sure.
When you finished the twelfth song, were you like, “Okay, we’ve got enough for a record?”
DANIEL: By the time we went in to re-record it, we had the songs. We had ten or eleven or twelve songs. Actually, we had one song left over.
Did you know when the writing process with the three of you was done?
DANIEL: It’s simple. It’s like when you know when you have at least ten songs, then you have an album. Because that’s how it works. It’s something to do with, if you only have seven tracks, you don’t get paid the full amount, then it’s called an EP, or whatever else. I think the magic number usually is around ten songs. Or, forty minutes worth of music. Since CDs, actually, you could go a lot longer than forty minutes. You couldn’t in the old days, because with vinyl, you could only have, really, ideally, about fifteen, sixteen minutes a side, otherwise it starts sounding like crap. When CDs came out, you could have an hour-long whatever, but I prefer short and sweet, to be honest, than going on.
Is it fair to say that you are quality over quantity?
DANIEL: Yes, it’s quality, not quantity. Sade is a very brilliant example of that. They take their time making an album, but man, when it’s done, it’s the shit.
I think I also heard you say that you really weren’t interested in doing another Love and Rockets record, and this gave you this new, fresh approach, new guys to work with, it’s new. In your personal life, are you always seeking out new adventures, new foods, new places to visit, or in your personal life, are you more reserved?
DANIEL: No, my whole thing is riding motorcycles. If I had to choose between music and motorcycles, I would definitely choose motorcycles. It’s that extreme with me. I go out and do at least a hundred miles pretty much near enough every day, up in the mountains. It’s the solitude that I like, and I love being at one with the bike. I think a lot of people, if they were looking from the outside, they’d call it a bit of an obsession, really. It’s not a hobby, that’s for sure. I’ve been into motorcycles since I was 12 and they keep me sane. With all the stuff that’s going on in the world, particularly now, it keeps me sane. I don’t think I’d be here if it wasn’t for the motorcycles. Everybody has to have their release. It can just be going for a walk, or climbing a mountain. For me, it’s getting out of the city and into the middle of nowhere. There was this saying by Steve McQueen, he said, “I’d rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than any city on planet Earth,” and I’m one of those guys.
Do you ride the same hundred miles every day? Do you ever just pack up and do, like, a five-day trip?
DANIEL: In my life, I’ve been all over. I’ve been all around Europe. I’ve been to Sturgis and done the whole Sturgis thing. I traveled all over the States. As it is at the moment, because I get my fix, I go on this one particular—it’s a long road, it’s a couple of hundred miles all in. Because I have more than one bike, when I go on these different bikes, it’s like a new adventure.
But having said that, I should get on the bike and go to San Francisco, which is about 300 miles from me. I’m basically getting my fix from three, four, five different routes. There’s the PCH here. I have enough to satisfy me. Plus, as I said, because I’ve got the different bikes that are very different styles, it’s like going on a new adventure anyway, because the bike’s different. When I’m going about sixty, seventy miles an hour on a bike with no traffic, I’m in the moment, I’m in that place, the zone and away from people, and away from buildings and stuff, and in nature. That’s all I need. It’s a very simple existence, but for me, you can’t beat it. I just love it.
I have never been much of an exercise person, but in the last two years, I go out and run. It’s not getting me the same feeling you are from riding your bike, but it does get me out. Do you listen to music when you’re riding?
DANIEL: I don’t need to. I used to, years ago, actually. I would get the old Walkman on. But back then, I was a nutcase, because I’d drink quite a bit, stick the headphones in, and then go for a ride. Those days are way over. I’m still here, but it could have been very different, because I was a bit of a nutjob earlier on, years ago, with the drinking and driving and stuff. Don’t do it anymore. I just went through a phase back then.
I was thinking about this last Friday when I was driving home from work, listening to the record. You don’t get excited for a weekend, do you? You’re not bound by the 9-to-5, five days a week.
DANIEL: It’s funny, I used to think about that years and years ago in the ‘80s. I used to work on construction sites. I couldn’t do an office job, because I had to be outdoors, but I used to do construction stuff, working on building sites in England. I couldn’t work in an office, no indoor job. That’s my only sort of taste of the 9-to-5 thing, but I definitely remember getting the high on the Friday night then, and then the downer on Monday morning. I got all that when I was at school, when you had to go to school. That was a super downer all the time.
I remember when we used to do the John Peel sessions in England. We’d drive there. We’d start probably at eleven o’clock in the morning, we’d arrive in London at the BBC Studios to do a John Peel session. And we’d be working, usually five hours, six hours straight. Anyway, we’d get out of there probably at midnight. We had to drive from London back to Northampton, so we would actually get back into town at about four or five in the morning, just as people were getting up for work. That was a surreal thing, because we’d been working all night. Back to Northampton from London with all the traffic, so we wouldn’t get back until about five, six in the morning with the miserable English weather, January, February time, and then you’d see all these people going to work, and we would just be going home and couldn’t wait to go to bed, just knackered. It’s an opposite existence to the vibe, really.
When you’re in a band, the only time you have to get up early is when you’re doing a video. It used to be about three times a year, where you’d have to get up at six-thirty in the morning, and that was a real, “What the fuck is this?” Very strange to be getting up to do a video at six-thirty in the morning. But we’d only have to do it three or four times a year. And the rest of the time, we could lay until midday, which we did. Well, I did.
So on Fridays, no joke, I get like sixty publicist emails. If you knew the answer to this, then you would be rich and popular, but if I’m getting sixty emails a day, trying to cut through the clutter, it’s got to be impossible for you as a band to compete with all the other stuff that’s happening, it’s crazy.
DANIEL: Doing things like this interview is how we’re going to cut through, obviously, because you have X amount of people as an audience. That’s all we can hope for. It is weird, though, because in the old days, you’d put out a single. We’ve put out three singles in three months, something like that. That’s unheard of in the past. And then we’ve got the album coming out, the same day as the single. On the 31st, we’ve got another song coming out called “Boy or Girl,” same day as the album.
In the past, you would never dream of doing that. You put out a single, and you wait for weeks and weeks and see what it does, and months before you put something else out. I’m into the idea that before the album “drops,” we put these singles out to hopefully entice people. If they like the singles, then they’ll go ahead and order the actual album, and stream it, or actually buy the vinyl, or whatever else. I love the idea—not everybody in the band was into that. I said, “No, this is great.” Because people’s attention span is very small, so every two weeks, another track, another track, keep people’s attention, then hopefully, by the time they’ve heard their third or fourth track they either love it or they don’t. And if they do like it, they’ll go ahead and order the album.
You’ve talked about hoping for some commercial success with the record, and I’ve heard you say film placement would be one way, because that’s probably where a lot of people hear music these days.
DANIEL: Absolutely.
I don’t know how that works. How do you get placement?
DANIEL: We get placements from the bands I’ve been in. Tones on Tail’s “Go!” has had a lot of placements in advertising and film. So has stuff from Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. We still do. They basically come to you, or, in our case, they come to our lawyer to work on deals and all that stuff. It also initially goes to Universal, all that stuff is on Universal, that company. Whether it’s placement for film, TV, or advertising, they go to Universal and offer an amount for the use of the song. It’s usually fifteen to thirty seconds, and it goes from there, and then we negotiate on how much we get paid for it. That’s it.
Are you concerned at all that songs that are placed for film, TV, advertising might some day be done by AI so that they don’t have to pay the artists?
DANIEL: Oh, yeah. That is happening already and there’s a lot of controversy with the whole AI thing. We just put out an AI video. Have you seen it?
Yes, I have.
DANIEL: There’s been negative, and, a little bit of positive, but a lot of negative reaction to it. People are not liking AI. And it’s funny, because somebody said, apparently, I said in an interview that I would never use AI. Don’t remember saying that, but I could have said it, because I remember not liking it at all at first, it annoyed me. Then I remember seeing some really beautiful artwork on YouTube that was full-on AI, incredible. And then I remember having this conversation with Perry Farrell, saying, “This is all great and everything, but it’s so great and wonderful that people are going to get jaded with all of this, and go back to acoustic guitars, and just sit there strumming as a reaction to it, because the sky’s the limit.”
Since talking about that, we have gone ahead and created two of them, actually. The one before this one, “Teenage Robots.” The inspiration for that was AI, because it was suggesting the title itself is all about we’re getting taken over by AI, and everybody’s on their phone 24/7. So that was why we wanted to use AI on that particular track. We were pleased with the results of that, so then we went on and we got this guy in New York who is a professional photographer, and we got him to independently do this one for the song “ON.”
The reaction, I mean, I was really excited about how people were going to react to it, because we loved it as a band. We were like, “This is wonderful. It’s a great use of AI, and it suits the track.” The message on that track is basically, “Can we all get along and just throw down the weapons and kiss each other instead?” That’s the basic message, a very positive message. But then people are saying, “Fuck AI.” We’re going to carry on doing what we do. If a particular song and the AI works on it, we’ll do it. But, I was shocked at the amount of negative reaction specifically because it’s AI. And it’s weird, because six months ago, I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing an AI video, but I honestly had the thought, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
And, it was very practical as well, and cost-effective to do it, because you try making a video these days, it ain’t cheap if you want to do something really good.
And there’s not a great point in making expensive videos, right?
DANIEL: No, there isn’t. This is something else that I found out. It’s funny, I’ll put one picture up on the website, or whatever it is, social media. Well, my girlfriend will. And, it’ll get 150,000 views, and then I put the video up, and it’ll get 400 views. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, so the whole MTV generation—because I’m from that generation—it’s gone out the window. People are not really that interested, and I don’t blame them, I get it. I’ve seen bass, drums and guitar again, and again, and again. That was the ’80s and the ’90s. I get it, but it didn’t really sink in until we started putting these videos out. As I said, just a single photograph of somebody in the band gets a lot more hits than a full-on video. We made a video for “On a Rocka,” which was not AI, and that wasn’t cheap. Jake [Scott] did an amazing favor for us on that one. Did it for cost, basically. And again, the amount of views was minimal. We as a band, because we’re all about the same age, we were thinking old school, we were thinking this video thing was going to take it to the next level, but no. They’re not important anymore. It’s a tool, but they’re not important.
I watched the whole “ON” video. I didn’t tap out. I was getting the message.
DANIEL: A lot of people would watch thirty seconds of that and, like, “Next.” You think that’s how that works?
I’m too old to know, I don’t know. But like I said, the message was coming through, and honestly, because there’s no MTV, it was just a visual representation, and I was listening to the song, and I was seeing what you were trying to demonstrate. If you had put that video on MTV in 1989, I probably would have turned it off, right? But I think this is a way to get your music out there.
DANIEL: Why would you have turned it off in 1989? I’m just curious. Because of AI? Or because of the subject matter?
No, no, no, not the subject matter at all. I’m thinking, like, because in 1989, that video would have stood out it if it didn’t have people playing guitars and drums and bass. That’s what I was used to seeing on MTV. That’s what I expected from a video.
DANIEL: Oh, so you wouldn’t have wanted to see that because the band aren’t playing in the video?
Yeah. But, this is 2025 and I’ve seen all sorts of videos that wouldn’t have made sense to me when I was a teenager.
DANIEL: See, we didn’t want to do a video. We really have resisted doing a video with bass, drums, and guitar and the guys in the band playing. Come on, it’s 2025, let’s think of something new. So that was partly what was attractive to us to do this, because we didn’t have to play, we didn’t have to be in the video.
And these songs don’t just use guitars, bass and drums. You’re using technology.
DANIEL: It’s pretty organic, though. I mean, it is essentially bass, drums, and guitars and some keyboard bits. But it’s not an electronically motivated. It’s using traditional bass, drums, and guitar in essence, actually.
I think the album has a futuristic sound to it.
DANIEL: Oh, really? I was using a lot of e-bow in preference to the normal guitars on it, and then Bruce was putting a lot of certain tricks and stuff on the and keyboard bits with the percussion.
That’s why I think the video fits in this day and age.
DANIEL: Okay, got it. When you’re part of the creative process and you’re in the band, you often don’t actually know what it sounds like to the public. I wouldn’t have thought of it as futuristic as such, it just sounds like us in 2025. But to your ears, you’re saying it sounds futuristic.
If I turn on the radio, I might hear a guitar-driven Jack White song, what I think of traditional rock music. I don’t think what you’re doing sounds like traditional rock music. It doesn’t fit into the rock music box. It’s more than that. It’s taking rock music and reimagining it which, to me, makes it sound like the future.
DANIEL: Oh, good. That’s a good thing. Interesting.
And even from a timeless perspective, you started making this record seven years ago. This doesn’t sound like it was made seven years ago, it doesn’t sound like it was made twenty-seven years ago. It sounds like today and tomorrow. It’s not time-stamped, which I think is a great thing.
DANIEL: Right. I think Tones on Tail is like that as well. That’s very much like that. It’s sort of timeless music, absolutely.
I’ve heard you say that you don’t want to tour just to play in bars. I get that. I go see a lot of bands play in front of 20 people on a Tuesday night. That can’t be fun for any band.
DANIEL: Terrible. We would never do that now. God, no. Of course not.
Would you be open to an opening slot on a tour? I just saw that Gary Numan announced a tour. That seems like one that you’d be great on.
DANIEL: It all depends on whether this catches fire or not. If it doesn’t, no way. I’m done. We are done. We spent a lot of time on this and we know that it’s good. If this don’t catch fire, we’re done.
What is your definition of catch fire?
DANIEL: You know, just, be popular and be known as a real entity and not some tiny little indie band that hardly anybody’s heard of. I’ve always been commercially minded. The bigger the better for me. I’m not interested in Indie Land, and never have been. So, if the interest is not substantial, then we’re done. Fingers crossed that it is substantial, you know.
In 1989, when I was in high school, my friends and I, we were genre-specific. We had the Grateful Dead fans, and we had the metal guys, and then we had the people who went to the teenage dance clubs. I was a metal kid but I remember buying the “So Alive” cassingle because it had that commercial appeal to me. It was just such a good song.
DANIEL: Right, yeah, there’s no guitars in it, is there? I love that track. I’m really proud of it. I love three-and-a-half-minute hit singles, I love that. I wish I had more of them.
I know you’ve talked about this in the past, but since I live in Columbus, Ohio, I have to ask you to repeat it again. The “Mirror People” song by Love and Rockets is written about a club in Columbus, right?
DANIEL: I was with my future wife in a nightclub.
Crazy Mama’s, probably.
DANIEL: Right, yeah, probably. One with all the mirrors everywhere. And everybody’s checking themselves out in the mirror, and I just got a song out of it. I was going out with my … well, we divorced years ago, but she was my girlfriend who became my wife. She’s from Columbus, Ohio, so yeah, it was this nightclub with the mirrors everywhere. I got the song from what happened in the club, just seeing everybody checking themselves out in the mirrors. Thought it was funny.
I have been closing every interview I do with this question. Is there a song that when you hear it, and you close your eyes, it takes you back to something?
DANIEL: Basically, you’re talking about your favorite songs, because as soon as you have a song in mind, it’ll take you back to that song. There are so many. In the early ’90s, I lived in Brighton for a couple of years, and for some reason, the I was playing a lot of Pet Shop Boys. I love the Pet Shop Boys, I still do, but back then, living in England, I was playing them a lot more than I do now, and “West End Girls” is one of those songs that I have specific memories of walking the rainy streets of Brighton to that song. That’s one of the top of my list.
But then I’ve got other things. I remember the first time when I was fifteen and I bought “Starman” by David Bowie, and I was sitting in the back of Mum and Dad’s car. I had the single in my hand, and I was staring at that orange center, and it just had “Starman (D. Bowie).” I was fifteen and my life was going to change that day, because I’d got this thing. I didn’t know if it was a good or a bad thing, because there was something very decadent about the whole Ziggy Stardust thing, the androgyny and everything else. It was a magical thing, but I knew my life would not be the same once I’d bought this record. I was sitting in the back of the car, staring at it, going, “Something’s changing from this day on,” and it’s exactly what happened. Everything changed the day that I got that record. So, I have a very specific memory of “Starman,” of the 7-inch single, sitting in the back of Mum and Dad’s car after buying it in town.
I’m envious of you. You grew up as Bowie was defining who he was.
DANIEL: The whole Ziggy thing, he was 26 and we were ten years younger than that. He was born in ’47 and we were born in ’57. And then you had the punk thing after that.
*Did he ever release something that, at the time, you were like, “This is so different, this isn’t Bowie”?
DANIEL: No, no, no, I loved it, all of it. Right up to “Let’s Dance,” I loved all the commercial stuff later on. Wasn’t so crazy about the stuff in the early ’90s, when he was influenced by techno, Earthling. It must have been ten, fifteen years of consistently being brilliant. Scary Monsters, all those albums. Aladdin Sane, Ziggy Stardust, all of those were consistently brilliant. I remember talking to Dave [David J] about it, saying, “He can’t put a foot wrong.” Year after year, he wouldn’t put a foot wrong. It was just magic. All consistently brilliant.
Even up to the last record that came out, right? Didn’t it come out the day he passed?
DANIEL: A couple of days before. I haven’t bought records in decades, and that one, I went out and actually got in the car and drove out and went to the store and bought it, on CD.
It’s a great record.
DANIEL: I think it’s a bit overrated, to be honest. When I compare it with a lot of the other stuff years before, I think a lot of the power of it is the fact that he passed a couple of days later. So you have that connected to it, because you knew you couldn’t get anything else. But I didn’t play and play and play it like I would have when I was younger with the other stuff.
That’s fair, and you’re right, I think it’s the bias of when you’re listening to it.
DANIEL: Absolutely. I mean, I bought it, and then I got the message two days later, because I got it on the day it came out. Hadn’t done that in decades, where I actually went out and bought a record. I haven’t had a record player since I left England, which was 1994, so I’m not a big vinyl guy, obviously. I use streaming and YouTube like everybody else. But yeah, two days later, boom, he’s gone. Absolutely so shocked. I was devastated for a bit. I couldn’t believe how I was reacting myself. It was as bad as when my own father died, you know? It was just so strong, the emotion. I was crying and everything. I didn’t realize how much I loved that guy.
So, the album comes out on the 31st. Was that intentional, coming out on Halloween?
DANIEL: Yeah, absolutely. It’s got a nice ring to it, I think.
I do a lot of streaming but if there’s music I really love, I will buy the album.
DANIEL: Well, vinyl sounds better than anything else, I’m aware of that. I’m just not one of those people that can have boxes and boxes of records. I’m not bothered about vinyl, what can I tell you? I’m the opposite. I haven’t got a record player. I’ve heard the test pressings are really good, and somebody from the record company told me that it sounds great. Good enough for me.
Well, it’s been such a pleasure speaking with you. I love the record, as I said before, no skips.
DANIEL: That’s music to my ears, the fact that you’re saying that. That’s exactly what I want to hear. We’re hoping now, as a band, fingers crossed, that we’re going to get to the next level, that it becomes commercially successful, whatever that is. What makes something commercially successful? How many streams do you have to get? I don’t know. A few million would be nice.
Well, I hope that happens, because I would love to hear another record. I hope this isn’t it.
DANIEL: Well, that’s the thing. If this one does fly, there’ll be another one, and if it doesn’t, there definitely won’t be another one. I’m being brutally honest. Why would we carry on if this thing flops? No way. We’re too old to carry on.
