Amid Oasis Tour And New Solo Album, Richard Ashcroft Is Recapturing His Wonder

Richard Ashcroft performs in support of Oasis on the opening night of their Live ’25 Tour at Principality Stadium on July 04, 2025 in Cardiff, Wales. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)

Samir Hussein/WireImage

Richard Ashcroft is soaking in the awe. Decades into a bountiful career in music, the 54-year-old singer/songwriter is buzzing off the release of his new solo album, Lovin’ You (out now), his summer nights playing gigs with his reunited Britpop colleagues in Oasis, and his upcoming tour plans, both independently in the UK and with Oasis in South America.

The last few months have brought the trajectory of the ‘90s icons full-circle—delivering sold-out stadium shows around the world—and confirming that the love for acts like Oasis and Ashcroft (well-known as the former frontman of The Verve) is far more profound than critics could comprehend.

“I feel more in the moment in this last lot of gigs than I’ve ever in my life,” Ashcroft says. “When you’re younger, you’re just hurtling through things. It’s given me the context of time. It’s given me the ability to really appreciate the connection that the songs have had with the people—and also the rarity that you can even make any kind of connection as a support act in a moment like this.”

Ashcroft—who conquered music charts with The Verve as Oasis simultaneously exploded before the new millennium—found the Oasis reunion tour to be a vindication of the ever-growing impact of a special moment in culture: that 30 years down the line, new audiences are swelling in astonishment to a scene once relegated to a bygone era. Ashcroft sees it as a testament to songs which have scored the lives of generations. He says the gigs were decidedly “in the now”—a far cry from a nostalgic cash grab.

While processing the almost impossible set of circumstances that led to this summer’s tour, Ashcroft is renewed with a sense of childlike wonder. He’s fixated on the rarity of the occasion: how two local British bands were able to reach the masses, accomplish so much, and revisit it all with a sense of modernity. He remembers traveling in vans, writing and sharing his ambitions with Oasis’s Noel Gallagher. Funnily enough, he believes their shared sense of ego only helped their mission.

“I was deemed a bit arrogant saying the classic cliches, ‘we’re going to be the biggest band in the world, blah, blah, blah,’” Ashcroft remembers. “It was great to meet a couple of guys that had that same conviction. It’s very rare to think that five years down the line, one of these dudes, he’s writing, “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” and “Wonderwall,” was going all around the world. And then you get hit with “Bittersweet Symphony”—all from the same posse of guys.”

“It’s rare that one band from the north touring together makes it. But two, to make it globally from those humble beginnings, is extraordinary. To confirm that [on tour] this summer […] it’s a beautiful thing.”

While Ashcroft still has a group of dates in South America to perform with Oasis—and has just dropped a new album—he’s already thinking about his next steps.

“It’s given me some energy for the next few years,” Ashcroft says. “It seems we always get a ceiling put on our potential. It’s not a free pass. There are these things you need to break through.”

On Lovin’ You, Ashcroft’s seventh solo album outside of The Verve, he continues his efforts to bust through society’s ceiling of his former success.

The record, which features a wide range of musical styles and themes, follows his tradition of disrupting expectations and staunchly defined genres. The songs co-exist between optimism and despair, and are indicative of a man trying to navigate a world in unrest. While projecting his own sense of hope, Ashcroft acknowledges, “it’s very difficult not to drown in the doom.”

“As a kid, I used to dream about seeing the mushroom cloud in the Cold War,” he explains. “There’s always been a background anxiety that we’re on the verge of something that is irretrievable. Now it could be the AI takeover, the technocracy, all these other elements that come into our daily consumption of what’s going on in the fractured world.”

Despite the murky water, Ashcroft is hellbent on rediscovering the awe that makes life worth living. He says his new songs, just like the old ones, are signposts for the future.

Below, Ashcroft discusses his new album, Lovin’ You, marvels at the magic of the Oasis Live ‘25 tour, and ponders the inimitability of it all.

It’s a pleasure to talk to you. I was bummed to see that you weren’t opening for Oasis in North America. I was lucky to make it to three gigs, which were life changing, but I feel the U.S. crowds were cheated out of seeing you!

I was kind of gutted. I’m going to do the South American dates [in November], which is going to be incredible. But, yeah, I feel like—with all respect to Cage the Elephant and whoever else was chosen, good luck to those guys—but ultimately what was going down in England was unbelievable. It’s a pretty unique thing from the final bars of “Bittersweet Symphony” and half an hour later Oasis hits the stage.

It’s just unique when you think that we both all those years ago were driving around England in transit [vans] on a tour together, dreaming big, and Noel [Gallagher] had already written his first [Oasis] album. A lot of our early writing came from jamming, and I really got influenced. I thought, “I’m going to take the reins a little bit on some of the songwriting for The Verve.” This was for the second album, A Northern Soul.

With that inspiration, I wrote “History,” and a song called “On Your Own,” and that went on to “Sonnet,” and “The Drugs Don’t Work,” and all these other tunes. But it was really that meeting of the minds. Because I was like the mouthpiece for my band–The Verve had an album out before Oasis, a couple of years—I was deemed a bit arrogant saying the classic cliches, “we’re going to be the biggest band in the world, blah, blah, blah.”

It was great to meet a couple of guys that had that same conviction. It’s very rare to think that five years down the line, one of these dudes, he’s writing, “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” “Wonderwall,” was going all around the world. And then you get hit with “Bittersweet Symphony”—all from the same posse of guys. It’s very rare. It’s rare that one band from the north touring together makes it. But two, to make it globally from those humble beginnings, is extraordinary.

To confirm that [on tour] this summer with, “Wow, our songs have lasted.” People have taken them into their hearts and minds. It’s a beautiful thing. It was beyond just a concert. In this fractured world that we’re in, people say things are spiritual, but it really was in a sense, like humans collectively craving to be human again. [laughs] Let’s get back to basics. Let’s connect again with all our memories, emotions, and dreams. Let’s do it collectively, and leave all our s*** at the door. Rather than using space as an echo chamber of whatever our beliefs are, can we just f***ing leave this for one night and can we come together?

Because where we’re from, it’s a bit like New York. If you can make it in Glasgow Barrowlands… a very famous concert hall in Scotland, where you bring people together that may not socialize together, they may have different football teams, they may have a different version of a religion, that was the whole point. For a band, everyone would come together and it was a space where people could leave it behind. That’s what it felt like this summer, like it was one of the few places on earth where we can just leave it all outside.

In those stadiums, some people have obviously lost people along the way. They’ve gained people. There’s such a huge mix of emotion, and I’m sure it was like that for the shows you were at. It is a unique experience, and maybe it will be repeated, maybe it won’t, but whatever. I was just very fortunate to be part of the whole thing. I wish I had that opportunity in America [in Summer 2025] because sometimes when you’ve had big, big songs, people think, “Oh, he’s only got one song.” There’ll be Americans who think I’m just like the guy who made “Bittersweet Symphony.” But there’s a lot more depth there. And in that brief moment, I would’ve absolutely slain that whole concert.

You’ve talked about the difference in the reverence between Americans’ love for their culture versus the people of the UK, often saying that Americans might show higher regards for the arts. Maybe it’s unique to this moment in time, but I’ve seen both Noel and Liam Gallagher perform solo in the UK and they were both very unique experiences. The American Oasis shows were incredible, but in the UK the crowd literally sings the guitar riffs—no lyrics necessary. That’s a different level of commitment.

There’s a clip of you playing “Bittersweet Symphony” at one of the gigs in Manchester and it’s amazing to hear the crowd sing the orchestral part. That doesn’t happen in America. Fortunately, you have performed to some exceptional audiences so far in this run.

I think so as well. America was the sort of the pioneer in chopping things up into library cards of genre as each bit of technology came through. The genre-ifying of things didn’t help.

I think Americans are spoiled with too many options and our country is very large, which complicates things more.

Exactly. It complicates it a hell of a lot. Here our national game is football or soccer, whatever you want to call it. Nothing else compares.

It’s interesting because I’ve played Brazil, Mexico, and these cultures and these crowds, Argentina could even be one notch more concentrated. And I don’t know whether that is the fact that you’ve got this football thing, this connection…

In American [music] culture over the years, there would be a divide between say a Nirvana fan and—not when they became huge—but originally you’d have this thing of, “We’ve got this thing over here. Then we’ve got the jocks over there.”

Hip-hop doesn’t suffer from that because it’s at one with basketball, American football, the whole culture and the clothes. It feels like there’s this movement. Whereas rock and roll, or an alternative mindset, has been a bit “anti-jock.”

Whereas Oasis bridge that gap and that affects the way the crowds are. Like I’ve said in some other recent interviews, [every reunion show] is like a World Cup final. Every night we win the cup, everyone goes home happy, and we all celebrate together.

How much of that transfers to American culture, because of the vastness of it? There is also a certain element of being spoiled.

Again though, even in England, I think [the crowd singing guitar parts] is a relatively recent [phenomenon] because when I first used to see The Stone Roses, maybe because the guitar lines weren’t as nailed into our consciousness. When The Stone Roses came back [in 2017], the whole crowd would [sing] quite an intricate guitar thing, they would sing the beginning of “I Want To Be Adored.” It’s like, wow!

The Britpop era of music just feels so ingrained in the culture, almost as if it’s built into the DNA of the UK, regardless of age.

Totally. A number of years ago, I went from Tokyo and my next spot was Buenos Aires. What was interesting was they were bouncing in Tokyo, but in Buenos Aires, they were giving that extra craziness. What else other than music can do that? How can you be in a completely different culture and communicate in a way and get people moving, singing and yet can fly to a completely different country a few days later and do the same thing?

It’s a magical thing too, as well, even to make the impression that Oasis have in the last few weeks in America is astounding really, when you think about everything that’s transpired over the X amount of years and how guitars have been marginalized out of culture. “The song” has died out a little bit. There’s not many songs that I can think of that are gonna “Live Forever” for want of a better quote. So, it’s pretty amazing.

Not the hardcore following, but there’ll be X amount of thousands in those stadiums that have seen it through the lens of mainstream interpretation of them as a band. And people were still saying, “Oh, do you think they’ll make it?” I’m like, “Of course they will.” If you’ve studied Liam [Gallagher’s] work over the last five or six years, you’ve seen the discipline that has been shown and the amount of shows he’s done.

He’s not going to wait around for 16 years for the thing he’s wanted, and then some silliness is going to take place and it’s not going to happen. Of course, it’s going to happen. Ultimately they’re in a position now that very few bands or artists get into: if they ever want to call it on again, they can and they could do what The Rolling Stones do. They could do a mega-tour every few years and they could do it for the rest of their lives—or never do it again. The ball is in their court. That’s a very unique position to be in. To make the impression which they just have in North America is incredible. The difference in culture in a sense of size! There’s that unified thing with football here, and we can put a few pints down us when we go to the show, as well, which also lubricates the whole situation. [laughs]

A few pints certainly can. The internet went crazy after you posted a clip of you chugging a Guinness in Dublin, did that give you a good laugh?

Oh yeah! The Guinness in Dublin is just something else. I’m not a huge Guinness drinker, but when I’m in Dublin, I am. I’m not one of those people to say, “Oh man, I drank whatever.” But I must admit, I’ve never drunk as much Guinness in my life as I did after the second Croke Park show. It just kept flowing and flowing.

I was in this place called O’Donoghue’s in the afternoon, I think it was before the second show. Me and my wife went down and the guys were pouring me a couple, so I’m a few Guinnesses in, and I’ve not done the show yet. And then as I’m leaving the pub, he’s like, “Will I see you later on?” And I went, “Oh no, I think Noel’s having a little drink somewhere.” And he went, “It’s here!”

So I went to the show, chugged one on the stage, then back to the place I was in the afternoon. And that went on until whenever. I’ve never seen as many pints of Guinness in my life. It is insane. Croke Park was a magical experience. It’s got a lot of history, that place. The Irish fans are amazing. I’m going to go back myself next year and play an arena down in Dublin. That should be amazing.

Were you able to sit and have a Guinness with Noel and look at him and just have a moment like, “What the f***!? Can you believe all this?”

I had a little hug with him, and I think we were talking about doing South America and just fantastic, you know what I mean? Buzzing. I mean, I committed after the first show. I think I seen Noel after the first Cardiff [gig], and I’m a fan. I’m like, “That was insane. ‘Little by Little.’ Wow!” And then I did the classic fan thing and I went, “And you didn’t even play ‘Columbia!?’”

You mentioned how this music became the soundtrack to peoples’ lives: how they experience loss and love and success and disappointment, and those things all become intertwined with their connection to the songs. Isn’t it amazing to see how all this music touches this special part of the heart and mind? It really does become much more than a concert.

Absolutely. And that’s what I felt from the crowds, not only for Oasis, for myself, and it was a massive outpouring of joy and catharsis. Because that’s what Oasis were for people. But now we’re 20 odd, 30 years down the line. The older people in the audience, the original fans, they’ve got all these different moments in their lives that some of those songs were the soundtrack to: pivotal key moments, heavy moments, moments that they’ll never forget. That’s what made it so unique for me.

When I was fortunate enough to play a couple of shows with The Rolling Stones a few years ago, that was when I first really got this whole cross-generational audience thing.

When you’re in your early twenties, you see someone in their forties or early fifties, like, “Wow, they’re old!” But there’s something about the guys and girls who’ve carried on and touched different generations. When everyone comes together like that, it’s unique, intangible. You can’t really put your words into it. There’s something beautiful about a multi-generational situation, like we say about the word “fractured,” we get so many different ways we can find a problem with people or we label every single damn generation. I’m sick of it: generation this, boomer, it’s just boring.

My first big live music revelation was when I was 12 years old. I went to see Iron Maiden with Dio and Motorhead, and that changed my life. Those dudes weren’t young when they were doing that tour. I later saw Iron Maiden’s Rock in Rio concert film—which was shot in front of 250,000 Brazilians—and I realized that music was much bigger than what I had understood it to be.

Oh, completely. The respect you have for these people just grows. When I saw Mick [Jagger]—God knows how old he was then—I had a good spot right at the front. And I’m looking at these legends! When I was very young, my local TV station put on Jean-Luc Godard’s, Sympathy for the Devil (1968) film. It was them recording in Olympic Sound Studios in London.

I was about 12, 13 at the time, but I’ll never forget looking at these grown-up dudes. It was obviously like half-three in the morning and they were in a studio trying to make this track, and it looked like the greatest job in the world, pure freedom. What’s really bizarre is how time flies. Thirteen years later, I was in the very room making “Bittersweet Symphony.” The exact studio.

At 13, I hadn’t learned an instrument. I was actually banned from taking music at school because we used to mess around with the glockenspiels. Every time the teacher came in, we’d send him crazy. I got so many great cliche quotes from school. I remember I went to college with five C’s and she said, “Oh, you are Mr. Average, aren’t you?” And I was called the “Cancer of the Class,” once by one teacher. I always remembered that. I still haven’t written that song yet, but I will one day.

There’s an intense level of focus it takes to perform these massive arena shows. Did you have any moments on stage this past summer where you were able to stop and meditate and soak it all in?

Absolutely. I feel more in the moment in this last lot of gigs than I’ve ever in my life. When you’re younger, you’re just hurtling through things. It’s given me the context of time. It’s given me the ability to really appreciate the connection that the songs have had with the people—and also the rarity that you can even make any kind of connection as a support act in a moment like this, that’s very rare in itself.

Years ago, the Oasis crowd was quite ravenous for Oasis. I said to Noel, “Look, I’m the only dude who should go on before you because I’ve got the artillery, I’ve got the stage presence and I’ve got the balls to get on there and do it.”

The crowds are full of fervor now and it’s full on, but it’s not quite the same, but it’s still a unique thing to be part of. Like I’ve said before, I’m not Coca-Cola anymore, The Verve is Coca-Cola, I’m Richard Ashcroft. I’m Panda Cola. So it was great to be given that opportunity to say, “Look, Noel, I’m the voice. These are some of the best tunes of my generation and I wrote them. I’ve still got a very strong voice when I’m on form and I can communicate these feelings.” And to have the audience give that back, it was just beautiful. It’s inspiring.

It’s given me some energy for the next few years. It seems we always get a ceiling put on our potential. It’s not a free pass. There are these things you need to break through.

Johnny Cash proved that with some of his last songs. He smashed these preconceived ideas that “Whatever you do, your greatest songs are behind you. You’re just running on fumes, your nostalgia.” And I feel like if Noel fancied doing it, he could do it, and I’m certainly going to do it. If John Lennon had lived, he’d have smashed that concept. Van Morrison does a good job with that. Neil Young does a good job at that.

I just saw Neil Young on his current U.S. tour and it was tremendous. He absolutely rips at 79 years old.

What you forget about these shows is, when Oasis first hit arenas, before The Verve played arenas, that was the first time I’d heard guitars really loud, properly loud, not club gigs. Suddenly you’re in an arena playing through a massive PA [system]. Guitars take on another shape when they’ve amplified to that size!

If you see Neil Young in an arena, his distortion tone, it’s like a jet plane taking off. It’s absolutely awesome. It’s creamy and beautiful. That’s another element of this. A lot of the younger kids, they’ve never really heard a few Marshall [amplifiers] through a massive PA. And that’s a great experience to hear rock and roll amplified to such a high volume. It hits you in the guts.

Let’s talk about your new album, Lovin’ You. One track that stood out to me right away is “Heavy News.” You say, “Don’t ever say you’re bored of life […] Don’t you want to live?” No pun intended, it’s a heavy song, but it still comes through with a sense of hope. It’s a beautiful sentiment.

Thanks, man. I lost a good dear friend of mine, a guitar tech, a number of years ago. He took his own life and that had a pretty heavy effect on me. He was a lovely guy. The first ever gig he did with me was at the Royal Albert Hall. We somehow got one of my acoustic [guitars] stolen from the backstage. I was recording on this boat on the [River] Thames, and I made him come and see me. I said, “I’m going to make you walk to the plank!” He was all worried, but I couldn’t keep the facade up. [laughs] He ended up working with me for years after that.

After he left us, it was like, “Rex, give us a sign, man!” A few weeks later, I got a phone call—this is 10 years later, by the way—and some kid in England had gone into this guy’s house and this guy had gone, “Oh, that’s Richard Ashcroft’s guitar!” The kid phoned the police and the police found my guitar that was lost on the very first night I first worked with him. It was insane. I’ve had a few guitars stolen over the years and never seen them again. It’s the only one that’s ever been retrieved. And this was a couple of weeks after, I was like, “Man, give me a sign!”

Collectively, unless you completely switch the matrix off, it’s very difficult not to drown in the doom. It is very difficult not to be waking up with a negative mindset. It’s hard to keep that positivity. It’s hard to keep that sense that you can make your life better. There’s a helplessness that gets projected on us.

As a kid, I used to dream about seeing the mushroom cloud in the Cold War. There’s always been a background anxiety that we’re on the verge of something that is irretrievable. Now it could be the AI takeover, the technocracy, all these other elements of what’s going on in the fractured world.

[The song] is not a solution—it’s like if you had that chance to say to someone that was on that verge, if you had that moment with them to explain: “Come on, let’s fight. Let’s find a way of enjoying this battle.”

No other time in humanity has been like this, so let’s live it. Let’s enjoy it. We know it ain’t going to be easy, but we might as well put up a fight. Because right now, we can change the world, we can shape the world. We can do something about it in our small little microcosm, and maybe that will spread.

So, it’s that kind of attitude. A guy on a ledge. It’s “heavy news.” This thing that culture is almost like pushing people to the ledge.

Right, there are two things working here. The entire album has a lot of positivity and love, but also a lot of awareness of the dread of the world. I mean, “Find Another Reason,” is another song that touches that theme, as well as “Live With Hope.” Do all of those songs tie in together?

Absolutely. “Live with Hope,” it’s just brutally honest. It says in the song, “Your sense of beauty lost.” That’s a key thing, when you can no longer look at the sky or trees or your family and see the beauty, that’s the scary thing. I’ve had those moments where I’ve looked at my own life and looked at my own future, I looked at my own creativity thinking: “What am I doing?” And the questions of it. And sometimes that desolation comes from within. Like the song says, it’s crushing you from within you.

Often it’s the loss of your internal narrative and your internal voice and your spirit, when you lose that ability to see any beauty anymore.

As a real young kid, it was almost like, God and everything, I just took it for granted. I could vividly feel myself in awe of nature as a child and really felt connected to it.

As your life becomes busier and the problems start rising and the bills start stacking up and all these realities of life start kicking in, you start losing the awe of it all.

Do you feel like a lot of these songs are you trying to wrangle those feelings in conversations with yourself and others?

Yeah, totally. They’re also little signposts for the future as well, because now if I sing “Lucky Man,” it kind of means more to me now than it did then. It’s a strange one that, yeah, exactly. [The songs] are willing me to get back in the fight because sometimes this thing can feel like you’ve got all the chips at the casino, and it’s like, “Are you going to leave the table?”

I don’t know if I’ve explained that enough, but sometimes it’s like, man, I did it. I’ve done everything. I’ve gone beyond what I thought was achievable. But that’s when you’re losing sight of just the basic craft of writing songs.

What’s happened over the summer is I’ve really come back to appreciate that. It’s given me a fresh, renewed energy for my next sets of original albums over the next few years. And there won’t be those big gaps between them. I am hoping that this renewed energy and focus will help me create some of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.

How does that sense of renewed motivation intersect with this new album?

I wanted to prove to myself that I still had the ambition to create things that were, in a way, you can’t label a [song like] “Lover.” I’m one of them rare breeds over here that I’ll listen to trap. [laughs] I know what’s going down with different producers. Even if I’m like, “Oh, I’m a bit more of a purist on hip-hop. I like these artists from this particular era,” I’m not someone who’s like, “What are these guys doing? Why is he mumbling with that hi-hat?” I can feel what that feels like in a club or in your car with a great stereo, and you might be in a particular mindset at two o’clock in the morning. It’s the soundtrack to that life and that culture. It’s like punk in its own way.

Over the years, I’ll still always be influenced by what’s going on and try to innovate like I did with “Bittersweet Symphony.” When I made Bittersweet, there was nothing like it and potentially has never been anything like it since. But that was me stretching. I had “The Drugs Don’t Work,” and all these songs written in a more traditional way in my pocket, but I was still focused on this one song that I’d sampled. I wanted to create something—and it worked for me. That went across all cultures in America, that song.

The first time I heard “Bittersweet Symphony,” was in a mix from some New York club DJ, and he layered it in with techno music and Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.”

Awesome man. It’s like ASAP Rocky’s version. I love that. I remember we were down in a real rough area outside New York. We were looking for a stroller for our kid. I was outside having a cigarette, and there was dudes coming over with full f***ing gold teeth and they were recognizing me. These are the kind of dudes who would never stop or recognize some white fella from England—and they loved it! [laughs]

Something connected with the energy of that. Going back to this one is like, it’s a different sentiment “Lover,” but it’s still sculpting and creating something that I think in a few years time, people look back and go, “What is that sound? What is it? Is it hip-hop, funk, rock and roll? What the hell is that?” And I love that. I like the idea that you can counterpoint that with “Fly To The Sun,” the last song on the album that could be some stripped down Velvet Underground tune.

Maybe we’re finally entering an era where my dream will come true, that it is just music. That is how I saw this album, lending my voice to all these different facets of the things that I love.

Follow Richard Ashcroft on Instagram. Catch him on tour in the UK. Pick up ‘Lovin’ You.’

Follow Derek Scancarelli on X.