Charlotte Hatherley: Happy to be alone at last

Just over a year ago, Charlotte Hatherley found herself unemployed. The guitarist rose to fame in the late Nineties as one quarter of pop-punk band Ash. She was a late addition to a three-piece trying to expand its sound and bring a touch of glamour to its all-male line-up. But after 10 years of faithful service, Hatherley decided it was time to leave the band and strike out on her own. "For the first time in my life I had to take responsibility for myself," she recalls. "I was 26 and I was finally growing up."

Now Hatherley has just released The Deep Blue, an album recorded with long-term PJ Harvey collaborator Rob Ellis, and Eric Feldman, formerly of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. Sitting at a restaurant table in north London, just a few minutes from her home, Hatherley is glowing with anticipation. "I know some people might be surprised that I'm not in the band any more," she says. "But as far as I'm concerned, wanting to do something different and play with other musicians is the most natural thing in the world. You can't play with the same people all the time, or you'd go mad."

Nevertheless, the decision to leave the band wasn't easy. Ash were doing well commercially, and she and fellow members Tim Wheeler, Mark Hamilton and Rick McMurray had become close friends. But Hatherley had begun to feel creatively stifled. Although she had written a handful of songs for Ash - "Taken Out" was the B-side for the 1998 single "Jesus Says", and "Gonna Do It Soon" was released on the "Wild Surf" single of the same year - Wheeler had always been the principal songwriter.

There were also musical differences, she says. "The boys were really in love with American music and with America. After years of touring the States they were listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, stuff I've never really been into. I found recording Meltdown [Ash's fourth album] really difficult because of that. Basically I couldn't relate to it."

After Meltdown was completed in 2004, the band decided to take a break. Wheeler and Hamilton went to New York, McMurray decamped to Edinburgh and Hatherley stayed at home in London. "At this point I had pretty much decided not to make another album with the band. Things were getting a bit stale and I think we all needed something to change. But in the end it was the boys' choice. They wanted to go back to being a three-piece. They knew I wasn't happy in the band any more so they assumed that I'd be fine with the decision."

And were you? "Yes, though I did find it a bit weird," she replies. "I left the conversation thinking, 'What just happened there? Did I leave or was I fired?' But it was all very nice and there were no hard feelings."

At the beginning of 2006, Hatherley started work on The Deep Blue. "It was quite a big moment for me. After all that time in a touring band, it was hard to suddenly not have that structure. You could say it was like coming out of a relationship, but with three men. Was I scared? Maybe a little, but it was pretty exciting. I've learnt a lot about the music business in the last 10 years thanks to Ash. I'm as ready now as I'll ever be."

The Deep Blue is, in fact, Hatherley's second solo effort. During the recording of Ash's Meltdown she simultaneously began recording Grey Will Fade, an album more indebted to The Breeders and the Pixies than Ash's brand of bubblegum punk. At the time, Hatherley had no intention of giving up her day job. It was a low-key release that had critics foaming at the mouth in praise. She had written the songs while on tour and in the time off between Ash albums. When she began recording, she had no record company and no expectations. "I just had a bunch of songs and a friend offered to produce it, so I thought 'Why not?' I had no ambitions except to see if I could do it."

Thus she regards The Deep Blue as her first proper solo album. Stylistically, it is light years away from its predecessor. The brash indie pop of Grey Will Fade has gone, replaced by a more experimental, thoughtful and mature sound informed by Hatherley's love of Kate Bush, David Bowie and Mercury Rev.

"The songs on Grey Will Fade were written five years before they were actually recorded and certainly reflect what I was into at the time," she explains. "These songs were written more recently and are about what I listen to now. I didn't want to make a straightforward guitar record as I knew that's what people might expect. I wanted to do something different, something more grown-up."

Hatherley is quick to say that she has had nothing but support from Ash with regard to her solo work. "Tim was particularly great about it. As soon as I'd finished Grey Will Fade, he wanted to hear it. He came to see one of my shows and stood at the front shouting his head off. I don't know if he's heard the new album yet. Something tells me it won't be his kind of thing."

Hatherley began her musical career aged 15 in the punk rock band Nightnurse after she answered an advert in Melody Maker. "Everyone in the band was a lot older than me," she recalls. "It was quite weird playing at all these club shows that I was effectively too young to be at." Standing in the crowd one night at Putney's Blue Moon pub was Wheeler, who was looking for a fourth member for his band. Wheeler had already interviewed a series of male guitarists for Ash, before a friend suggested he check out Hatherley. On being offered the job, Hatherley jumped at the chance, abandoning her A-levels in favour of a life of boys, booze and relentless globetrotting.

Long-standing Ash fans were frosty at first. Many assumed that Hatherley was Wheeler's girlfriend and felt that she had no place in the band. "It was a typical sexist reaction, though the girls were the worst," Hatherley grumbles. "They somehow regarded me as a threat. I found that very weird."

Hatherley had two weeks in the rehearsal studio before she played her first gig with Ash in front of a crowd of 20,000 at the 1997 V Festival. Her first studio recording was on the single "A Life Less Ordinary" and the following year she appeared on Ash's second album, Nu-Clear Sounds.

The early years with the band were, she says, "a huge adventure", but she could never quite escape the feeling of being an outsider. "It took two or three albums and a lot of touring to really feel like part of the band. I guess I always felt like I was a bit late to the party. But it was inevitable, really. Tim, Mark and Ricky were schoolfriends and I was this stranger who arrived later to even the numbers. Looking back, I think I was drunk for about five years. A lot of it was because I was feeling out of place. The boys were big drinkers and I thought that the only way I could communicate was to get as drunk as they were. It was a strange time."

Still, it wasn't until Hatherley reached her mid-twenties that she started to think it was time for a change. "I suddenly realised there was so much else that I wanted to do, and that I was wasting time," she says. "Time goes so quickly when you're in a band. You make an album and then tour for a couple of years, and then you start a new record and do it all over again. I thought to myself: 'I can't get to 30 and still be in this band. I need to do something else.'"

Despite this, Hatherley claims that she never wanted to move centre-stage during her time in Ash. Even now, she says, she's still not sure she's destined to be a solo artist. "I don't think I'm enough of an exhibitionist to be a front person. In Ash I was quite happy to lurk in the shadows. The first time I played live by myself I was very nervous but as time goes on I'm getting more confidence. Now at least I'm proud of the songs. I've proved that I can do it and I deserve to be up there."

'The Deep Blue' is out now on Little Sister records