Daniel Ash has had a tumultuous recent past. Having reunited with Peter Murphy, Kevin Haskins and David J in 2005 for a now legendary performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, iconic goth rock band Bauhaus released their first new studio album in 25 years in March 2008. Sadly, the reunion had already faltered by then, with David J citing explosive chemistry as the reason in a SuicideGirls interview published that month. Moving on without Murphy, the trio regrouped under their post-Bauhaus band moniker, Love and Rockets, playing Coachella in April '08 and Lollapalooza the following August. After the last epic chord died down, Ash retreated to his Ojai home, seeking solace on the open road with the one thing he loves more than his guitars: his motorcycles.

All remained quiet for many months, until his friend and sometime manager Christopher Minister (whom Ash affectionately refers to as "The Minister"), persuaded him to come down to Swing House, a rehearsal and recording complex in Hollywood, to participate in a session for a new in-house project. One thing led to another, as things do, and Ash ended up producing (the track, "Rock On," to be released on the Swing House Sessions Vol 1, features vocalist Zak Ambrose).

Reinvigorated by working with a fresh mix of people, Ash is now looking forward to taking on more production work. In the meantime his Swing House buddy, The Minister, has compiled a Love and Rockets tribute album entitled New Tails To Tell, which features covers by The Flaming Lips, The Dandy Warhols and Puscifer, among others.

SuicideGirls caught up with Ash at the studio to talk about his new music, needless to say, the conversation soon turned to motorcycles. One has to wonder if the Swing House recording sessions are merely an excuse for the 160 mile round trip on his bike.

NP: So why are you here? What brings you to the Swing House?

DA: Well, four five weeks ago, Chris just called me up and he asked me if I wanted to play bass on this song called "Rock On," which was an old song from the seventies with David Essex. I've always loved that song. Love and Rockets used to play it live. We used to just play it for fun, so I knew the song really well...I ended up producing it and putting a bunch of guitars on and doing some vocals...It's just like a one-off thing at the moment, but I think it's a valid version. It sounds very contemporary, very now.

NP: Can you see yourself taking The Swing House Sessions project into an album?

DA: Yeah. That's the idea. I've got a few things that I'm working on, some brand new material. It's very strange these days, what do you do with an album? That sort of concept doesn't exist anymore.

NP: Record labels still want you to deliver an album, but on the internet they're just individual song files.

DA: Because of the internet, and all that, people have the attention span of a mosquito. They haven't got the patience to sit down and listen to an album. It's the times that we live in. Personally, I've always loved the idea of the three and a half minute single. So for me to do one track here, or EPs of two or three tracks, I find it really appealing, just all the good stuff without any filler tracks. Because how many times do you buy the album, and there's like ten or eleven songs on there and you like three of them if you're lucky?

I think the idea of putting out your absolute cream, what you perceive to be the absolute cream of what you do, just the idea of condensing it all into two or three tracks, I find really appealing.

NP: It makes sense. But the way record labels work you're forced to put the filler tracks out....

DA: ...and when CDs came out you had to put more music [on them]. In the old days when it was vinyl I think it was about 17 minutes a side. Now, because you can get 75 minutes worth of music on a CD, people are pressurized by record companies to put more music on, which is absolutely ridiculous.

NP: And the internet makes it too easy to post anything and everything.

DA: That's the downside of the internet. Because everything is so accessible nothing is special anymore.

NP: But the immediacy is also exciting when a creative endeavor has a natural flow like this.

DA: It is actually growing organically. The last time I was here it was so productive, we got this track that I think is really strong, in about six hours. We have to work quick here, because there are other people coming in, and there are financial concerns. It's really good and healthy to actually have a limit on how much time you can be in here for. On a creative level, for me, that really works, to be pressurized to get it all done, otherwise I get over fussy on everything.

NP: I was reading somewhere that you're not a fan of guitar solos.

DA: I don't care about the guitar solo, it's just a means to an end. I don't know anything about guitars. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I don't really, as long as it sounds OK, sounds right, feels good to play. I never practice or anything like that. It's not of interest at all. Maybe it's just because I've been doing it so long. In that respect, I'm much more into motorcycles. I could see a bike from half a mile away and tell you what it is...but the guitar thing, I just use a Telecaster most of the time and that's it. I'm into the overall song, that's why I want to get more and more into production, because I did have a big hand in the production of Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, and Tones on Tail, and the solo stuff. That's something I think I've got a good ear for.

NP: Going back to the song, the song is kind of lost in American music today. It's more about a certain sound that will fit into a certain slot.

DA: Yeah, I think more than ever because it's so corporate. I find, if I listen to the radio, these so-called modern rock bands, they all sound the same. They've all got that male, gruff, sort of like, "I'm in pain, I'm in pain" [vocal], that sort of real male, masculine thing, which I find really boring. I like stuff that's more androgynous anyway on the whole. I used to love Scritti Politti because that guy's voice sounds like an angel. It's not male or female. I love that stuff. All this horrible testosterone-driven rock music is so boring to me.

One thing I notice more than anything is, because peoples' attentions spans are so short now, the record companies are making sure that there are never any instrumental breaks. I don't know if you've noticed this, we're talking about the Top 40 radio stations, they never take a break from vocals. Every moment is taken up with vocals, vocals, vocals, all the way through. You do not hear any instrumental solos or breaks anymore, and it's really boring. If you just turn on the commercial radio station, it's all vocals all the time.

NP: I hadn't even thought about that, but you're right.

The economic climate now is very similar to the one Bauhaus grew up in in the '80s in England. There was high unemployment, and even looking for a job wasn't a viable option since there were none out there, so joining a band and doing something creative was a sensible use of time.

DA: Yeah. Well in England we have terrible weather, so that keeps everybody in anyway, and it's either zoning out to DVDs or doing something creative like music or some art form. I mean it's very tough, living in Southern California, for me to discipline myself, to sit down and try and write and stuff because it's sunny everyday and I just want to go out on the bike.

NP: I always find California punk music rather amusing. Because punk was born out of a dark, gritty, dirty misery that you just don't get in California. California punk is kind of goofy, which, to me, is an oxymoron.

DA: Yeah, but the thing is though, the kids that weren't jocks and any good at school, and didn't get the girls and all that stuff, they're all over the place -- they're the ones that go into their bedrooms and start making weird music. Then they have their day when they're in their twenties instead of the jocks who have their day when they're seventeen, eighteen at school. We all have our little moment, different people at different times. You often find the guy that was really popular at school now sells car insurance.

NP: So where were you in the pecking order at school?

DA: Right down at the bottom, me and Pete. We were the two little faggots at the back of the class as far as the school was concerned. We just used to go to the art room the whole time instead of playing football and stuff like that. I was only any good at art and English. Pete the same. We were just two friends together that didn't fit in at all with the whole jock thing. Well we don't call it jock in England. What do we call it?

NP: It's more about footie (soccer) culture.

DA: I think I went to a soccer match once in my whole life. I was fifteen or something and I had no interest at all, but I thought, "Well, I'll go to see what this is about." And guys were throwing darts at each other. I just saw that, and got out of there and never went back. I've no comprehension of the appeal of that.

NP: Guys would go, not to watch a football match, but just to have a ruck [fight].

DA: It's that testosterone thing again. It's like if there's not a war going on a lot of males have to go and fight each other or destroy things. It's a guy thing.

NP: There's a theory that it's testosterone that's responsible for the current financial downfall. It was all the guys on Wall Street taking testosterone-driven risks.

DA: Yeah. I can totally see that. Absolutely. There's 2012 coming up with the whole Mayan Calendar. Time as we know it coming to an end, and I don't think that's a negative thing at all. I personally think it's going to be the beginning of a shift in consciousness -- obviously to a higher level. I think it's going to be the beginning of the next phase of human evolution as far as our intelligence goes, and our spirituality. That's what I'm hoping anyway.

We, as a race, are being forced into it financially, because of this big meltdown of finances. It's going to make us re-think. If we don't come through this, and it's a huge depression like the thirties or worse, it's going to make us as human beings re-think our values, our value-system is going to make a shift. I think there's going to be a lot of turmoil and a lot of grief before it happens, but after the initial storm, we're supposed to have a thousand years of a Utopian civilization.

NP: So in 2012 you'll have to shift to more Utopian music too.

DA: Well, I never really think about the music stuff. As long as I can still have my supply of gasoline for my bikes, because I don't want to be running motorcycles on electric -- that sounds really boring. I'm being super selfish here.

NP: You wouldn't covert them to vegetable oil?

DA: No. I love the smell of gasoline, and petrol and oil. I'm a total hypocrite on that stuff. But it makes me laugh when they talk about the emissions -- like we might have to do smog tests for motorcycles. That to me is so ridiculous because they do about forty miles to the gallon no matter what size it is, and it's so much less wear and tear on the roads and everything else. If you think about the aircrafts that are taking off out of LAX and all over the world everyday, the amount of pollution that's coming from motorcycles is so miniscule in comparison. I think it's just an excuse to get people off of motorcycles actually. But I just found them so therapeutic since I was about ten or twelve-years old. It's my yoga...You'd be amazed on how it clears the head.

NP: It's that sense of freedom. In a car, you're out in the world but you're still in a bubble.

DA: Well, the bikers call cars cages...Because you have a screen on a car, you're not feeling the elements like you do on a bike, so you're getting half the sensation of travel...I go off into the middle of nowhere, go to mountain tops. I don't think anything of going fifty or a hundred miles for breakfast...

NP: I was in the Angeles Crest National Forest a few weeks ago.

DA: Oh, I was there two weeks ago...When I lived in LA, seven or eight years ago, I used to go there all the time. I discovered it by accident, but it's terrific, there's about fifty miles to the top, it's about 5,000 miles above sea level. It's a great ride.

NP: Where else do you like to ride?

DA: Well, I go up the 33, which is way out near Ventura. You get on the 33 and you just ride and ride and ride and it takes you to Bakersfield and all over.

NP: What do you ride most of the time?

DA: I like English and American bikes. I've got a few Harleys and a few Triumphs.

NP: Any favorites?

DA: I've got one in England. I've got this old 1950 [Triumph] 5T Speed Twin. All the Triumphs I've got over here are new ones from 1995 to 2005 so they're super reliable. There's one, it's called a Thunderbird, that was based on an early Kawasaki engine, that's the story, that's how they developed the engine to make sure it was going to be reliable. I've had that thing since 1995 and it's never let me down once. I just ride it and ride it and ride it. They're super reliable. They're just like all the good stuff about the old bikes but with the reliability of the Japanese bikes, so it's the best of both worlds.

NP: Are you involved in any of the organized bike culture in America?

DA: No. I've always ridden on my own. But there is this thing called Dice Magazine, and it's terrific. It's a small mag, it's full of English humor, and the photos in it are hilarious. What these guys do is they used old panheads, shovelheads, some evo engines, old Triumph engines from the '50s, '60s and '70s, BSAs, Nortons, and they just make them look really interesting and functional, and they've got style. You should check this magazine out.

NP: I remember reading something in Dice about the fact that a county in Florida had changed its right to assemble laws to stop bikers riding out together.

NP: Absolutely. Obviously you were involved in rave culture, did you know that Joe Biden was the guy that penned the American anti- rave act (Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003? Our Vice President basically shut down rave culture -- it's never recovered from that.

DA: Yeah...It's scaled right down now. But I think a part of that is just that things move on. We had that whole thing, which was connected to ecstasy, and now, I'm not sure, but it seems like people got bored with that drug, and that music, and people are back into bands again. But I think it's coming up again, DJ culture. I think everything's mixing up more and more now. It needs to anyway, it can't really go anywhere else.

This thing is not a dance track though, it's a full-on rock track. I mean there's a real drummer on it. We're not playing to a click track. We're actually rocking out.

NP: Could you see yourself playing live with these guys?

DA: You know, it's totally open at the moment. I just decided I needed to start working again, and do something new musically. But it's really tough, because of what I said before. What's an album these days? If you make an album everybody downloads it for nothing, and the only way you can make a living and actually survive is if you get your stuff on film and TV or if you play live.

I've been playing live for so long I really do not cherish the idea of going on the road again. I've done it for thirty years. I'm done with that. But the idea of doing a few one off shows would be fun. Personally I'd like to get into producing bands that I find really interesting now or film and TV work, that's really where I want to go.

NP: You had a track on Nip/Tuck...

DA: Yeah. "Fever." That was great. They used the whole song as well. I was really thrilled that they actually used it. I have no problem at all with what people call "selling out." If you create quality stuff that you feel OK with, and if it happens to be really popular, that to me is just a massive plus. But some people tend to think, because of the bands that I've been involved with, that you've got to be all obscure and left of center and indie. I hate that word indie -- with a passion. It means limited, to me. The whole idea of being independent from the massive record companies is cool, but it just smacks of limitations.

NP: And a reverse snobbism.

DA: Absolutely. I remember years ago, with Love and Rockets, we had this one hit, "So Alive." It was a big commercial hit and I was thrilled, and then the people that loved us, a lot of them were going, "Sold out! Sold out!" What do you mean? We just at last had a bit of commercial success. What's wrong with that?

NP: And you couldn't really help the fact that people liked your music.

DA: Well, why would you do it otherwise? Do you want to appeal to 200 people or 2 million? It's a no-brainer answer as far as I'm concerned. I've always thought like that, right from Bauhaus days. The first single we ever put out was nine and a half minutes long, "Bela Lugosi's Dead." That's commercial suicide, but the next single was called "Dark Entries," and I had fantasies of being on Top of The Pops [the UK's number one chart show at the time] with this. We didn't have a hope in hell because it was so dark compared to what you get on Top of the Pops, but in my head I was like, "God! Wouldn't that be great to get on that big commercial program." I've got no problem with that.

What's this American Idol stuff? That's the bad side of it all. I can't watch that program. It makes be cringe so much. That's the bad side of it all. That's the real commercial, manufactured, safe, appealing to the absolutely lowest common denominator with some song that was written forty years ago. The people that sing those songs I don't think could write a good song if their life depended on it. Those kids that are singing them, they can't write their own stuff.

NP: It's the safe thing that upsets me most. So much about why you're so passionate about music as a kid is that spark of rebellion -- it's important to the psychological process of cutting the umbilical chord. The music you listen to is a way of saying "fuck you" to your parents.

DA: Absolutely. That's why rap music became huge, because a lot of kids, the white kids who were listening to rap, their parents were listening to Led Zeppelin, so they couldn't stand rap. "Where's the guitars? There's no this, there's no that..." The kids loved it because it was pissing off mum and dad.

NP: I feel sorry for kids now. What do you listen to to piss off your parents?

DA: I don't think that music is probably as important for this generation as it was for the MTV/'80s generation. It all was about the music and videos in the '80s, now it isn't because you've got all these other distractions. I think music will always be essential to humans, but it's not as be-all-and-end-all as it was in the '70s and '80s -- or even in the '60s when this whole thing exploded...What can you do now? It really does feel now that it's all been done. Where can you go from here? Is that the case? You can't say what it is going to be next otherwise you'd do it.

NP: I think that's a question people have been asking for about 10 years now and no one's come up with an answer.

DA: I don't know. Of course I don't. You don't know. Otherwise we'd be doing it, and it'd be the new big thing. I suppose there was the invention of the electric guitar, which changed everything. From the big band sound, suddenly Les Paul invented the electric guitar and then suddenly you had rock & roll in the late '50s with Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, that whole thing.

NP: And then the invention of the synthesizer.

DA: Yeah, and then you had The Human League, Depeche Mode etc...

NP: Tracking though your music in Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, what were the most important bits of gear that sent you on a course musically?

DA: We didn't change our gear forever. I use the same amps that I used way back, and the same guitar.

NP: But you also do the programming stuff.

DA: Yeah, well that was just using loops. I got so bored with working with just an acoustic guitar, writing songs like that, it became so boring. So then, this is early Love and Rockets, we were listening to The Orb, and Orbital, and that whole thing took us over, and then we came out with this album Hot Trip To Heaven, which we were really pleased with but there's no guitars on it as such, it was all created in the studio. I personally thought it was either going to be our Dark Side of the Moon or commercial suicide and it unfortunately turned out being complete commercial suicide because people that like Love and Rockets they couldn't hear any guitars and stuff.

But we had to change. As a band I know David, myself and Kevin, we get bored really quickly, so we have to sort of move on and sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot because of that. Just when we're on a winner, when everything is going good, we get bored and then we change it all around -- but that's being English as well. That's a very English thing to do, putting a spanner in the works. It's that sort of fatalistic attitude.

NP: So are you guys going to be doing anything?

DA: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We've worked together since 1980. I really want to work with new people, I'm sure everybody feels the same. I just want to completely break away from all that. It feels like a million years ago anyway. Time to change. Can you imagine working with the same people since 1980? What are we now? 2009? We played Coachella and Lollapalooza last year and that's it.

NP: I always think that with bands, it's worse than a marriage. When you're married you can divorce, but when you're in a band you're forever connected. Even after to die you're connected, there's...

DA: ...that history. Yeah, I know. I mean, I can't do it. I can't talk to the guys about it. I mean I don't use email. I don't. Other people look at me like I'm from another planet but I tried it once for about a month and couldn't stand it. I just use the telephone, you know. I don't use email.

There's these bikers that I met actually, and they weren't old farts, they were in their 20s, and they say, "Yeah, we call it e-jail, because you're just stuck there answering email all night when you could be out riding or doing whatever you want to do." And I thought, I wanna shake your hands guys. These are the first people I've met that agree with me -- that it's a trap.

NP: I do believe that we create our own prisons, and when you're in a band, you inadvertently create a massive wall around yourself.

DA: Absolutely. It can become a big jail. I remember seeing an interview with Sting a few years back, and when The Police were at the height of their fame they'd never been more miserable, as people, in their lives. And I think the reason for that is they were trapped. They were in a gilded cage. I mean you can't walk down the street, you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't just relax, you've always got this thing, a monster called in their case "The Police" on your back. You've got three guys trying to get on and there's all the pressures that go with it. What is the teenage fantasy becomes a nightmare when you get that sort of success. I mean can you imagine being The Beatles? At one stage they even bought an island to get away from everybody, and the natives had pictures of them in their mud huts! They couldn't get away. So they ended up just being holed up in these flash hotels.

NP: I can imagine with Love and Rockets, when people have an image of what that band is and they want you to replicate that for the next record -- you tell an English person to go do this...

DA: ...They'll do that. That's me completely. Yeah. Absolutely. But I think that's why we have got that creative spark. It's a funny little island. We're separate from the rest of Europe, and it's that English awkwardness. It's sort of charming in a way, but we have it so bad in England, it's sort of the antithesis of what we've got over here really. We're real optimists, particularly in California I think. It's such an opposite to that English thing...It's a completely different attitude. I know which I prefer, because when I go to England I notice that sort of cynicism, particularly where I come from, right in the middle of the country.

It's pretty severe there. I remember years ago when I was a kid all the bands would come through Northampton to test themselves out. If they could get some cheers from a Northampton audience they knew they were going to be OK, because it was the toughest town in the whole country for that. That's where we come from. I mean, Bauhaus, could you imagine, we were criticized for everything. They either loved us or hated us there was no in between -- which actually is a healthy thing really.

NP: And there's also that English thing where they love to hate.

DA: They love to see people fail in any area -- they love it. Then they also love the underdog as well, so you can't win. I see that in myself so much. Also being a Catholic doesn't help. When you're brought up being a Catholic that's a tough one.

NP: Are you still?

DA: No way. No, I resent that religion with a passion. I really hate it. I don't agree with organized religion anyway, but the Catholic religion is outrageous, what it's done to people over the years I think it's outrageous.

NP: Do you believe in a god?

DA: Oh, that's a real big question. You know what? I don't know, but I lean towards reincarnation, not in the sense that I'm coming back, but I think that we reincarnate through our DNA. If you don't have kids as an individual, that doesn't matter, because as a race we're reincarnating all the time from one generation to the next through our DNA. That's how I think it works. Our soul really is our DNA, that's the stuff with all the memory banks. I've got the DNA of my great-great-great-grandparents in me and so have you right from the beginning.

NP: And you can extrapolate that to music, today's music contains the DNA of everything that has come before.

DA: Yeah. It's alive through that. That's the way I see the reincarnation thing working. I think a lot of people can't accept the fact that they're not coming back. It makes them feel terrible. I, personally, don't care about that. It doesn't bother me -- I don't think it does anyway. I don't care about dying at all, but I do care about how I'm going to die. I don't want to die in agony -- that's the difference.

NP: But you take risks with the biking thing?

DA: Yeah, absolutely. I ride carefully, but I couldn't not ride because I get such a positive thing from it. I get a lot of my ideas when I'm riding. It's therapy. I like doing 80 miles an hour, then I feel at home and relaxed -- which is a bit strange but true.

It makes you focus, and that is meditation. They call motorcycle riding the lazy man's Zen, 'cause it forces you to concentrate, because if you don't you could die, or you're really going to hurt yourself or somebody else, whatever, so you have to concentrate. If you haven't got the discipline to concentrate on one thing, you're forced to because you're doing 80, 90 miles an hour -- so you have to concentrate...in effect you're doing a type of meditation. It's a mental discipline and ultimately it sets you free when you do that.

NP: Do you give any nods to keep Al Gore happy? Any carbon offsetting.

DA: Well I ride bikes most of the time. I'm actually in a car today, I had the guitar and stuff I had to bring down.

NP: Yeah, motorcycles aren't really good for transporting gear.

DA: No. But most of the time when I come down here I come on a bike. It costs me $8 to do 160 miles...so that's my thing.

The Daniel Ash vs Zak Ambrose version of "Rock On" will be released on The Swing House Sessions Volume I on June 23. New Tales To Tell, the Love and Rockets tribute record will be released digitally on July 28th and physically on August 18. Both project are available via Justice Records.

A lot of really good stuff in this interview. One thing though that he contradicts himself is when he's against guitar solos, yet he's saying that instrumental breaks, and he specifically says musician solos, are missing from today's music. Hey, I completely agree. But why single out guitar solos? I don't get that part.

I like guitar solos if they're done right. I prefer something nice and melodic to endless noodling, but I think a good guitar solo is an important part of a song. I knew a professional vocalist once who told me that she doesn't know a thing about the guitar, but she knows what she likes - someone who can make the guitar sing. Best guitar advice I've ever heard.

I also agree with his complaint about the CD. Records were better. They were shorter, and bands were able to fill them with good songs. Nowadays on CDs, there is too much filler. You buy 60 minutes, but only 40 of the minutes are good. Should have put out a record instead.

And funny how he calls American Idol "lowest common denominator." I completely agree. That stupid show is ruining music, dumbing down the American public when it comes to musical taste. I can't watch it either.