Richard Ashcroft: Grand designs

Fatherhood and a solo career may have mellowed Richard Ashcroft somewhat, but there's still something of the big-talking teenager about the former Verve frontman. Fiona Sturges meets him

If there's one thing Richard Ashcroft likes to do, it's talk. He talks without pause or punctuation. Sentences seem to go on for hours, single thoughts for decades. He talks passionately, often angrily, about events past and present. Sometimes I wonder if he knows I'm there at all. Over the course of an hour, the conversation takes in a bewildering array of subjects, from the nation's "witless" obsession with celebrity and the "corporate bastards" who run the music business to childhood, fatherhood, the Beatles and the Smiths.

I find him sprawled on a chair in a dressing room at the Royal Albert Hall, where he is due to play a show tonight. The curly locks are gone, and his hair is now closely cropped, a style that serves only to accentuate his angular, cartoon-like features. The eye is drawn first to the cliff-edge cheekbones, then to the extravagant lips and finally to the eyes, which seem to sit on the side of his head like an insect's. In certain lights he can look really quite sinister. If the songs ever dry up, a career as a panto villain surely beckons.

Ashcroft's musical history is a long and turbulent one. In 1988 he formed a band called Verve, though when the US jazz label Verve threatened legal action over the name they became the Verve. In 1995 the band split up, citing all the usual problems – exhaustion, drug habits, fractured friendships – and Ashcroft began work on a solo album. But in 1997 the Verve were reunited and released Urban Hymns, a collection of string-drenched psychedelic soul songs that was to become one of the best-selling albums of the decade. Two tumultuous years later the band split for good and the singer finally went solo.

Ashcroft had originally planned to release the songs on Urban Hymns under his own name. But, he says, he lost his bottle and it suddenly seemed easier to get the band back together. Given the critical mauling that his first proper solo album, 2000's Alone with Everybody, received – it went straight to No 1 in the album charts, but critics wrote it off as unmemorable and overlong – does he regret that decision now? "In a way," he replies. "It's a shame I was fearful and didn't follow my instinct to go it alone. But [the guitarist] Nick McCabe was such a great musician that I wanted him to be on it, and anyway, there's no point in regret, is there? I'm really lucky. I truly believe that I've been given something that's not been given to everyone. This music, these songs, these lyrics, this power is something that's unbelievable. It may sound arrogant, but I really don't believe everyone can do it. It's a gift."

Such grand pronouncements have long been part of the self-assembled Ashcroft myth. As young as 14, while on holiday in Cornwall, he would tell people "You better remember me – you better remember Richard Ashcroft," while early on in his career he was ridiculed for his Christ-like poses on stage. The singer is well aware that he's rubbed people up the wrong way over the years. He tells me that after the "Bitter Sweet Symphony" video, in which he strode angrily down a street shoving passers-by out of the way, he would get chastised by strangers for his behaviour.

Ashcroft contradicts himself regularly, sometimes even within the same sentence. When I ask if he still feels stifled by the success of Urban Hymns, he replies: "It would be wonderful not to have to look back at the songs on Urban Hymns and see them as the only worthwhile songs I ever did, but I believe my songwriting's flourishing. In fact, my writing's gone beyond Urban Hymns. It's gone somewhere else entirely."

But under the brashness, there are signs of insecurity. He finds the act of watching himself on television "excruciating" and admits to "peeping through his fingers" at the footage of the Verve's 1998 homecoming concert in Wigan, where they played to a crowd of 33,000. Near the end of our interview, as we talk other people's perception of him, he suddenly gets all heated and says, "Who gives a shit about Richard Ashcroft? I don't give a shit about Richard Ashcroft. I wouldn't read about him if an article came out. Who cares? He's just another guy trying to sell his records."

Do you really feel like that? "The point is I didn't spend 10 years to become a public speaker," he continues, swatting the air with his hand. "I spent that time trying to use music as my conduit, and over the years it's got to places and to people. Isn't that a clear enough agenda?"

Ashcroft lives in the Gloucestershire countryside with his wife, the former Spiritualized keyboard player Kate Radley, and their three-year-old son, Sonny, along with a handful of dogs, hens and peacocks. The image of the rock hellraiser-turned-country squire has rankled with some reviewers, who have suggested that the move has somehow stunted his creativity.

"Well, there's nothing that I can do about them," he snaps, still clearly stung. "Image is static, but I'm a living, breathing, moving human being who is constantly changing. All people ever get of my life is a still snapshot. But at 32 I would not want to act like I was 22. I would be really disappointed if there was no progression or if I couldn't look back at the past, and I thought that there were things that I would never do again, and if I hadn't grown in some way. And besides, I've joined the biggest club in the world. John Lennon had children, so did Bob Dylan and Kurt Cobain. Did they get taken apart for it? No!"

Ashcroft is more philosophical about the critical panning that Alone with Everybody received. "I was always going to be vulnerable when I left the Verve," he shrugs. "It was a hardening experience for me. People saw me stripped down and decided to have their shot. I suppose they wanted to take me down a peg. But no one's got a guaranteed audience when they leave a band. Look at the Spice Girls – 30 million albums and they can't carve out a solo career between them. It isn't easy."

While his latest album, Human Conditions, is no masterpiece, it's a partial return to form. You can hear the epic orchestration of Urban Hymns on songs such as "Check The Meaning" and "Science of Silence". The lyrical complacency of his previous album has also been replaced by a sense of uncertainty. Ashcroft says the album is about "the vulnerability of being a father and the vulnerability of the world. It's seeing beauty, but also having an awareness of your place in the universe and how you deal with that. We all have our daily prescription of yoga, football, religion, or whatever gets us through that day. My thing is music. It's the only thing that gives me a sense of calm and balance. It's the thing I know I'm good at."

Oddly, I find Ashcroft's declarations of self-assurance more endearing than irritating. Fifteen years into his career, he still talks like a headstrong teenager with his eye on the big time. He's clearly weighed down by his own expectations, but invigorated at the idea of making great records that people will listen to for decades.

"Once you break through the barriers of insecurity and you work out how get to that place where you you're no longer aware of your immediate surroundings and your inner critic, that's when it starts flowing," he exclaims. "You know, rock'n'roll's an old carcass, it's one big cliché. It's so difficult to do anything that has any sense of freshness or vitality or meaning. But that's what I'm trying to do, to give it new meaning. I have done that before with Urban Hymns. There's no reason why my time shouldn't come around again."

'Human Conditions' is out now on Hut. The single 'Buy it in Bottles' is released on Monday