A PIECE OF ASH

The best thing about riding bitch on a bike is the powerlessness. Whipping through California mountain roads, a kick of the leg from the edge of a cliff, arms wrapped tightly around my driver’s waist, body pressed into the back of his leather jacket. If he loses the plot for even a millisecond I’m toast. Who cares? I’m alive right now. So alive. Every now and then I look into the rearview mirror and catch a glimpse of his face, or the part I can see at least, what with the helmet and the sunglasses and all. It’s a face I’ve been staring at on the back of album covers and in pictures on screens since I was a teenager; and I can hardly believe I am in such close proximity to it. I could touch it if I wanted to, but of course I won’t. That would be weird, practically sacrilege. You don’t touch the face of Daniel Ash, unless you’re his mother or his girlfriend or a makeup artist, and I am none of these things. I’m just his biggest fan.

I met Daniel Ash in 2014 after he was forwarded a sort of superfan’s how-to guide I’d written about his musical catalog and cultural influence, starting with Bauhaus through Tones on Tail, Love and Rockets, and a few criminally overlooked solo albums. At the time, I was fronting my own gothadjacent rock band and had been worshipping at the altar of Ash for years, finding inspiration in everything from his signature guitar techniques (EBow, 12-string, ominous buzz-saw leads) to the way he shaped his eyebrows (you don’t curve down at the arch, you keep going straight out at an angle like Spock), so I felt inclined to give credit where credit was due. Something about the way I wrote struck a chord with Daniel, who, though notoriously reclusive at the time, invited me to meet him in person. We hit it off instantly; he took me for a motorcycle ride, and before I knew it I was working with him in the capacity of an art director for a record he was doing called Stripped. Life comes at you fast!