Richard Ashcroft – A study in ego gone mad

Something I've always found intriguing is people's egos. As a journalist you get to meet alot of interesting, and frequently rich and powerful people. But the most bizarre are always those with incomprehensible self-regard.

They are definitely not someone you would want to know personally, but doing an interview with someone who for some reason believes themselves to be so utterly wonderful that they can only expect people to flock to them, is an anthropomorphic buzz.

It gets better the larger the gulf between their perceived importance and talent, and what skills they objectively possess. To watch a human mind try to bridge this gulf, when everything points to the fact that the people around them have nowhere near as high an opinion of them, is amazing. In fact, it is a genuine mental illness.

What many famous people tend to do – if they have enough money – is surround themselves with sycophantic employees and so create a world is which all people treat them with due reverence, or are else fired.

A big part of why such people loathe journalists is because the journalist has been here many times before and is not impressed. If the “star” then makes the mistake of getting offended at the journo's lack of reverence, they tend to find the journalist has an even stronger self-belief that this person needs to be taken down a peg or two.

But not there in the room, no, you let them hang themselves with their behaviour and then have your say – to a much wider group of people – in print. The star's mind, inevitably, can't take the disparity between what they read and how wonderful they are and so choose the only course forward – personalised hatred toward the journalist and often the media in general.

The ironic upshot of this is often that the star refuses to do interviews and so sees their fame dissolve because the public loses track of them. And so, dotted all over the country, are little bubbles of bitter ego, living in self-contained worlds, convinced – at least on one level – that they are still secretly famous and that people deep down *know* how great they are. Anything that happens in real life that doesn't fit with this is just caused by jealousy.

There are alot of these bubbles around. But at the moment the biggest, most extraordinary bubble has to be Richard Ashcroft.

Offensive fences

Mr Ashcroft, formerly lead singer of The Verve, became a famous name in 1997 when the band had a hit album, their fourth, called Urban Hymns. The success ruined the band and they split up.

Richard Ashcroft went solo and produced his own album, Alone with Everybody, in June 2000. I know this because he headlined one of the nights at V2000. I was there with my mate Debbie and we were interviewing a load of bands and had backstage passes.

While we were in the portacabin area behind the stage, I heard the first example of a man's ego gone mad. To get to this area – which was solely for musicians and very occasionally their friends or journalists – you had to get past the first backstage barrier (a 10-foot wall), and then get a pass for a second part of the backstage.

Yet this was not enough for Mr Headliner Ashcroft and, incredibly, he insisted that stewards erect an entirely separate partition for his portacabin. It would seem that he was too important to even mix with other musicians. This led to several members of world famous bands openly calling Ashcroft a wanker in front of a journalist (me). Others just shook their heads.

To Travis' eternal credit when they arrived the next afternoon as headliners for that night, they insisted the barrier be taken down straight away.

Considering that Ashcroft's album just wasn't very good, I wrote him off. He had lost touch with reality. I figured he'd be dropped after his next (flop) album and settle down in a big house to hate the world for the rest of his life.

He's back

But, incredibly, he is still going, and he has just brought out his third solo album, Keys to the World, which has been damningly called “his best solo album yet”.

Fortunately for everyone who wants to see an ego entirely out of control, Mr Ashcroft has decided to give press interviews this time round. The result so far is that every single article I've seen had has as a main theme that he has completely lost it.

In fact you should enjoy it while you can because very soon it is going to become something that you should pity him over.

In an interview with Jonathan Ross this morning, Ashcroft appeared to decide out of the blue that he was an actor and then started confidently listing directors he'd like to work with. I couldn't hear past Scorsese because I was laughing too hard.

He also clearly believes what Chris Martin of Coldplay said when introducing him at Live8 (something that his record company's press department has virtually branded on his forehead and so has appeared in nearly every press article ever since) – that he is “the best singer in the world”.

[Frankly, Chris Martin has spent the last eight months building his own super-bubble that could well out-do any but Michael Jackson's. Martin has developed a familiar form of ego-madness where he believes that he will act as a conduit for other musicians that people *ought to listen to*. He claims to have found Arcade Fire and Arctic Monkeys. And that's just the “arc”s. If you're a band, quickly rename yourself “Ardent Follower” and you should be next for Martin's holy patronage.]

A fortnight ago I heard Ashcroft on the radio saying that “yeah, it was inevitable that people would compare me to John Lennon” – because he had bought a big home in the country and virtually retired for a few years. There is only one mind in the entire world that is comparing Ashcroft to Lennon.

Jesus!

In another interview recently, he didn't stop at Lennon. He was now directly comparing himself with the Son of God. “The way I look at it is: how would Jesus Christ cope?” he said. Oh good lord.

It wasn't a slip either. He told the NME: “I love the man, I feel like him.” Yep, he was talking about Jesus. He explains: “There's only Richard Ashcroft and Liam Gallagher who know what it feels like. We're the only ones who know how many people we've touched and how powerful that is. I feel like I'm on a one-man mission. I'm here to use my tools and my gift to take them to a higher level.”

The Guardian didn't like the new album and said so. “His sabbatical has done nothing to dampen Ashcroft's passion for stating the abundantly obvious in an anguished voice that implies he's exclusively revealing the arcane mysteries of the universe,” one part of the review read.

Another read: “At the song's conclusion, he unexpectedly cries: “Fire! Fire! FIRE!” It is unclear whether this is intended to galvanise listeners who might have nodded off during the preceding monologue or if someone has merely let off the studio's alarm in a last-ditch attempt to shut Ashcroft up.”

But the review does hits the nail on the head as to why Ashcroft even exists in our consciousness at the moment: “[The album] sounds like the work of a twit, but an appealingly bloody-minded twit. In a world where albums are compiled by focus groups and bands advised by brand managers, that might be enough: you wouldn't bet against the public clasping Ashcroft to their collective bosom once more.”

And rather pleasingly fitting in with the ego-process outlined above, Ashcroft has turned against journalists. A gig report by the Herald reported that: “By this point he has already been on his knees and subsequently launched a verbal tirade against 'middle-class journalists trying to make me look stupid'. For those of his audience who are not readers, his new album, Keys to the World, had earlier been on the end of a critical slaughtering in the Guardian.”

It concludes: “Ashcroft is far from stupid, but he is musically marooned by his own delusions of grandeur and the expectations of his fan base.”

The jackpot!

But if you were in any doubt that Ashcroft has hit the magical musician mad button, it was in an Xfm interview a week ago.

If there was ever a simple sign of the ego gone mad in the music business it is the “concept album”. A musician so lacking in faculties that they focus on one subject and, convinced beyond any reasonable doubt of their genius, honestly believe people will listen to them harp on about it for eight songs.

Richard Ashcroft outlined what his first (!) concept album would be about. “I think I’d do a real big rant on points in supermarkets,” he jibbered. “That'd be my first one a whole concept album on award points. I'd be like the first song would be I’m no fucking puppy, I don't need a fucking reward for buying my beans.”

He went on: “It's incredible isn’t it? What do you get after 35 years of friendship and shopping? You get 6p off your petrol! I feel sorry for my wife Kay cos she literally has to take a crash helmet into Tescos.”

Wouldn't you love to do an interview with Richard Ashcroft before his mind cracks? Such a study of ego-mania comes but once a decade. Let's just hope there are some people around that he hasn't alienated when the the brain does go.