Richard Ashcroft: ‘I’ll never experience anything like this summer again’

Richard Ashcroft: ‘For the older fans, they’d forgotten what they used to get out of those gigs. There’s a lot of pain and a lot of loss along the way, and also the dreams that you had when you were younger, and where are you now?’ - (Press)

Richard Ashcroft shoulders his way onto my computer screen like it’s another irritating obstacle on his cocksure swagger through life. “Who put a gun to your head to have to do this interview?” he asks, his tone one of combative nonchalance, his background one of sitting-room chandeliers and classically curtained windows. I’ve caught him “languishing in my well-worn ballad rut”, he says, wryly paraphrasing my two-star review of his 2018 album Natural Rebel, which prompted the characteristically defiant former Verve singer to set fire to a copy of our last interview for NME in a video shared to Instagram.

“It actually stimulated a beautiful piece of art,” he says. “It was a statement, in the sense of there’s a delusion with some people that they have an influence over my [life].”