Oh Yeah
By Tim Wheeler (Ash)
When a young band’s debut album explodes out of the traps, going straight to No.1 in the UK, then you know that something special is happening. And so it was with 1977, the first major instalment from Downpatrick punk-pop three-piece Ash. Packed with diamond-bright song nuggets – some of which were hits in their own right – 1977 charted strongly across Europe, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand before going platinum in the UK. Ultimately ‘Oh Yeah’ became one of the band’s signature tunes – and lent its name to the Government-supported rock ‘n’ roll centre in Belfast that is helping to inspire future generations of Northern superstars-in-the-making.
The Story Behind The Song
Tim Wheeler, Mark Hamilton and Rick McMurray, otherwise known as Ash, were still attending school in February 1994 when their first independently released single, ‘Jack Names The Planets’, caught the ear of BBC radio rock guru John Peel. Suddenly they were the band that every record company wanted to sign.
Deal duly done with the London-based Infectious Records, the self-proclaimed “guaranteed real teenagers” from Downpatrick in Northern Ireland threw themselves into a whirlwind of gigs that started with choice Ride, Suede and Placebo support slots, and quickly turned into their own riotous sell-out shows.
Having previously played together in a heavy metal band called Vietnam, Tim and Mark weren’t averse to turning their guitars up, Spinal Tap-style, to ‘11’, while Rick was a punk rock child who only knew one way to hit his drums – very hard!
Among the songs pouring out of Tim as they traversed the UK’s motorway system was ‘Oh Yeah’, a joyous, wide-eyed celebration of adolescent love, which – it has been claimed! – is guaranteed to make you feel like a teenager yourself.
Tim Wheeler of Ash at Electric Picnic 2018 by Miguel Ruiz
Tim Wheeler of Ash at Electric Picnic 2018 by Miguel Ruiz
“Her bee-stung lips,” a dewy-eyed Wheeler recalled. “Kisses sweeter than wine/ The things she whispered/ With breathless sighs/ The summer air was soft and warm/ Her eyes were making silent demands/ And as her hair came undone in my hands/ Oh yeah, she was taking me over.”
Exhibiting the kind of feel to which songwriters all over the world aspire, over a gorgeously intricate melody, Tim paints the picture so vividly that the details become almost like your own memories. Sadly, but poetically, the infatuation celebrated in the song wasn’t to last.
“I don't know why these things ever end,” he rued as the guitars momentarily quietened. “I sometimes wish it was that summer again/ I still see her in my sleep/ And hear the sighing of the summer wind/ Still, I don't regret one thing.”
Recorded early in 1996 with Owen Morris, the A-List producer who’d just finished working on Oasis’ megahit album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, ‘Oh Yeah’ is among the numerous standouts on Ash’s debut 1977 album, which went straight to No.1 in the UK.
" I wrote ‘Oh Yeah’ when I was 18 about a girlfriend I had when I was 15,” Tim recalled. “So yes, it’s a love song. It was my first romance. It consisted mostly of hanging out after school. The song’s about having those feelings for the first time.”
Like Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ and The Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’ before it, ‘Oh Yeah’ has become deeply ingrained in Northern Ireland’s DNA and still elicits one of the biggest roars from the crowd whenever Ash, now onto album number seven, perform live.
The band have had other irresistible hits, notably ‘Shining Light’, which was covered by Annie Lennox of Eurythmics fame, Coldplay and Emm Gryner; won an Ivor Novello Award for Tim for Best Contemporary Song and an Irish Music Award for Best Single; and appeared in movies and TV series aplenty. But ‘Oh Yeah’ has a different kind of vital legacy.
Ash - Oh Yeah (on Top Of The Pops)
In 1998, the song’s positive sentiments embodied the new era of hope in Northern Ireland, which lead to the April 10th signing of the Good Friday Agreement, and the subsequent cessation of the forty years of violence known as The Troubles.
Ash got to perform ‘Oh Yeah’ at the celebratory concert in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall , where the then-Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and his SDLP counterpart, John Hume, symbolically linked arms on stage with Bono from U2, as well as the writer of the song, Tim Wheeler himself.
Three get ready: Ash, photographed for Hot Press by Cathal Dawson
Three get ready: Ash, photographed for Hot Press by Cathal Dawson
More recently, ‘Oh Yeah’ – the song – has leant its name to the Oh Yeah Music Centre, a cultural hub with its own rehearsal rooms and studio, which has helped give birth to the next generation of Northern Irish rock ‘n’ roll talent.
If they want something to aspire to, they need look no further than Ash – one of the brightest and most exhilarating outfits ever to emerge from the island of Ireland.
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