Richard Ashcroft has revealed that the Joy Division classic ‘LOVE WILL TEAR US APART’ and his romance with his wife KATE RADLEY were the inspiration for his Number Three single ‘A SONG FOR THE LOVERS’.
Speaking to [url=]www.mtv.com, he said he was in a “pretty basic, punk rock hotel room” which had a radio built into the Formica bedhead. “There were only two stations you could pick up there, and for some reason one of these played ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. Even though it seems like an odd one, it seemed to fit the moment, because it was so odd to hear this great piece of music on this very dour, boring radio station,” he said.
He continued: “That fused a few ideas…it was sort of a ‘Play Misty For Me’ vibe, mixing a bit of me and my thing then rollin’ it into the imagination about those moments when you’re on the verge. You’re on the verge of a love affair, and this could be the love affair of your life, this could be a complete disaster, this could be a mistake. That anxiety and excitement you feel beforehand, when its ‘Moving like a train/into some foreign land/I haven’t got a ticket for it”, but I’m on it, I’m doing it.”
Ashcroft added: “It’s fusing an emotion into a track, and when the track bursts into its instrumental bit after that rant, that’s it. That’s the moment for me. I should have put just that on the record, just that one moment.”
His new single, ‘Money To Burn’ is released on June 12, followed by his debut solo album ‘Alone With Everybody’ on June 26. Ashcroft, whose debut solo gig in Toronto was exclusively covered by nme.com last week, appears at the V2000 festivals at Chelmsford and Staffordshire.
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