GREY MATTER

Charlotte Hatherley has taken a break from her day job with Ash to record a solo album. She admits she was nervous playing it for Tim, Mark and Rick, but their support has been a godsend, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea

Matters of time and business must be getting urgent for Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley - there she is putting on her secretary's voice when The Ticket phones her home number, fielding calls from the unwanted and the unwarranted. Satisfied that we are who and what we say we are - our enigma code solved through the use of a cryptic sequence of passwords - she relaxes and sails into personable mode.

With a new début solo album (Grey Will Fade) to promote, Hatherley has reason to be personable. She also has reason to be proud, as it's the kind of extracurricular project that some solo artists would be pronouncing a lifetime's achievement. Hatherley, however, prefers to wax rather less than lyrical. The album, you see, has been waiting in the wings, relaxing with a Tequila Sunrise and personal fitness instructor, since the late 1990s.

"I was getting bored with myself asking how long is this going to take? It's been simmering for about five years, but I never seemed to have the time to do it. It wasn't until Ash had a bit of time off before Meltdown that there seemed to be some spare time. Miraculously, that coincided with the time the album producer, Eric Drew Feldman, had off as well. So finally, I thought, fuck it, let's do it now. And then I did it. I'm quite proud of the fact that I finally got it together."

According to Hatherly, Grey Will Fade's material is half songs that had been lying in state before she joined Ash (seven years ago!) and songs she has doodled over within the past two years. People expecting the album to sound like Ash, therefore, will be disappointed. Rather, in much the same manner that her songwriting with Ash evinced a slightly more raw and harder pop edge, so her solo material displays her as a tighter, more melodic PJ Harvey.

"There's always been a hint that my own material would be slightly more difficult, left-field stuff to get into," she remarks. "To that extent, the record seems to have surprised people with how pop-oriented it is."

Was she particularly aware of wanting the more recent songs to sound different, conscious perhaps of the inevitable comparisons people might make between her and Ash?

"I didn't really think about it too much, and certainly not in the studio," Hatherley admits, downplaying the association. "I think I really knew that the songs I'd written were different enough not to really warrant much worry. I just wanted to make a good job of the album, and it wasn't until I got a label for it and it was coming out that I thought, fucking hell, people are actually going to hear this and have opinions!"

What's it like having the focus on her for a change? "It's incredibly different and it's great," she answers, but there's a telltale wavering tone in her voice that makes her sound unsure of the process. "I've always felt creative, and have always written songs, and it's nice to talk about these things. It's quite daunting, though, because with Ash I've got the three guys to fall back on. This time, I'm a bit exposed, so it's quite challenging and new. Having been in Ash for seven years now and suddenly to have something of my own is quite special."

Of course, her status in Ash is assured; while some Irish fans will remember that Ash began as a trio, outside Ireland Hatherley is as much a member of the band as Tim Wheeler, Rick Murray and Mark Hamilton. Where she was once the Ronnie Wood of punk/pop (is she a member of the band or is she on salary?), now her bona fides are beyond reproach.

"Thank God I don't get asked the 'what's it like being a girl in a band' question any more, which is great. I've just turned 25, and the reaction of being in the band for so long is the same - seven years seems such a long time. But everyone feels, rightly so, that I'm a quarter of the band."

It did take a couple of years to get there. One of the crucial moments, Hatherley imparts, was Ash's make-or-break tour of America a couple of years ago, when up to eight months was spent in a touring van together. Stale sweat, smelly socks and dirty jokes? "If you don't feel like a unit after that then you might as well give up. That was bonding or falling apart time, wasn't it?"

She's still in a bit of a tizzy about the positive reaction to Grey Will Fade. The day we spoke she had just received the first vinyl copy of the album and was quite touchingly giddy with the excitement of it. "It was amazing just to hold it, after all these years of saying I was going to do an album. It's out there now, and the one thing I have learned is that I want to do more - I've got the buzz for it. Ash were extremely supportive throughout the entirety of the recording, and it took me a while to play it to them after the record was finished. What did they think of it? They liked it; they knew it was one of the things I had to do, and they were so into it."

And so we leave Charlotte Hatherley. She seems a lovely sort, the type of personable pop/rock star who would much prefer to make music than talk about it. She ends our chat by stressing that what makes her happiest is being creative and busy.

And the whole well-known face thing? It isn't important to her, really, but she's smart enough to embrace it for what it is. "I'm not too big on doing TV stuff. Deep down I'm still the shy 18-year-old I was when I joined Ash. I get quite self-conscious with these kinds of things - promoting myself, my music and so on - so it's going to be weird not having Tim, Mark and Rick with me on this one. It looks like I'll have to get used to it for a while, though, eh?"

Grey Will Fade is released this week.