Biography
The first time we were confronted with the phenomenon of RICHARD ASHCROFT must have been sometime in the second half of the 1990s. We did what everyone else did back then: zapped to MTV and there he was, leather vest, a George Harrison-anno 1966 haircut and in terms of attitude we saw a mix of Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever" and De Niro and "Taxi Driver. We had never seen anyone so cool. More, we were ready to jump into the television set and follow him to wherever he stepped. Today we are twenty-seven years later and Ashcroft is still walking, from stage to stage. He travels and he takes with him: a guitar, a backing band, suitcases full of brilliant songs and choice stress because he only gets to play for an hour. After all, it's not that his spice was shot after "Urban hymns," incidentally one of the best records a British band ever put under the Christmas tree. No, because solo tracks like "Alone with everybody" (2000), "Human conditions" (2002) or "These people" (2016) dance smoothly from tearjerkers to exciting rock'n roll and back again. Ashcroft is playing with us at one of the indie nights of 2024, with Pixies and Future Islands, a party that continues on Monday, Aug. 5. That's more good songs in one night than MTV regurgitates in an entire year these days.