It wasn’t until I heard the brilliant Oakenfold remix of ‘Step Into My World’ that I took a great deal of notice of what Hurricane had been producing. Much has been made in the press of how Bell sees the remix as an important part of what Hurricane aim to achieve. But curiously, their involvement up until recently has only gone so far as choosing which remixers get the nod.
Andy Bell: Oakenfold did a really good job on ‘Step’ - not just on the remix but for Hurricane too. Up until then what happened was we’d had remixes done and we’d liked them and we felt they were a big part of what we did. But Creation, especially Alan McGee didn’t really get that this was a big thing for us. Oakenfold being such a big name really brought home to him that we could work on and be successful with remixes for Hurricane. I think we’d prefer to be doing the remixes ourselves, from the recording stage onwards, giving it that sound we’re after, and this is really what we’re going to be trying to doing the future. Treating the remix as a kind of organic thing.

If you didn’t already know Hurricane # 1, like Ride before and other recently huge bands like Radiohead and Supergrass, are from Oxford.
Clap!: Is there really a massive scene going down in Oxford?
Andy Bell: Yeah, there is some kind of music orientated scene in Cowley Road, where the pubs are, but the bands you see drinking there are the ones that never go anywhere, never get anywhere. They do a gig every month or two but you never hear of them gigging out of Oxford. There definitely is an Oxford scene but we’re so busy ourselves that we never really get to see it. Clap!: How like Cambridge is Oxford?
Andy Bell: I think its quite different. I’ve been to Cambridge a couple of times and Cambridge is a lot smaller and much more adjusted to the University scene. Oxford is much more relaxed. The part we live in isn’t really affected by the University scene except that there are a lot of students about. Clap!: But how come Oxford Indie bands have been breaking, but relatively Cambridge bands haven’t had anything at all? So far we don’t seem to be able to quite do it…
Andy Bell: That’s what everybody used to say about Oxford. The only thing that happened before Ride was Mr.Big and everybody was like ‘You’re the first band since Mr.Big!’ and who the hell was Mr.Big? That’s what Oxford was like and everybody was like "it’s so weird, how come you come from Oxford? - Come and look at the freak show " but I’m sure it always takes a while before one or two bands come along. It only takes one really, and then it comes more easily. Clap!: It’s curious that you contributed so much to Ride vocally but have kept your voice firmly in the background of Hurricane # 1, was this a deliberate decision?
Andy Bell: No I just keep forgetting to sing! (laughs) Of course its deliberate! The reason why is I didn’t like my own voice at all. From the beginning of Ride my voice was kind of fashionable - that kind of quiet vocals, but as we started to change the band and write more normal sounding songs it didn’t seem to fit and it got to the point when so many reviews were saying ‘they cannot fucking sing’ you sort of think ‘oh dear.’
Clap! I find that surprising. I mean if you believe in yourself, who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks?
Andy Bell: Is it that surprising? When you consider a lot of the music were into is based around really strong vocals then to have someone singing who doesn’t feel his vocals are all that strong it’s not going to be right. And besides, Alex has got such a strong voice.
Anyway I get all my creativity out by writing the songs and playing the guitar. I feel fulfilled. But not doing the vocals is actually a lot more fun than doing them. It means you can enjoy the gigs a lot more, you know, concentrate on the guitar playing a bit more. Alex has got the hardest job because he constantly has to be on top form or his voice will sound wrong, whereas you can be off your head all night and play guitar and it doesn’t matter.

At this point Andy leafs through the last issue of The Clap! to find a piece on Hurricane’s HMV visit. I try to pull it away and there’s a short scuffle… Clap!: You won’t like it..
Andy Bell: No, you should stand by your convictions. Anyway, what’s wrong ? You’re saying that Ride made classic records, that’s brilliant - ah, I see ,‘Andy Bell - the baddie in the Bell/Gardner writing team’…. But that’s right, the press did make me out to be some kind of villain pushing himself forward. The stupid thing about all that is all the albums we made, especially the third album when my song writing was really going down, that was seen as my first step at songwriting by a lot of people. But the really crap thing about it all was that on ‘Nowhere’ I wrote nine out of eleven songs. The songs I didn’t write were ‘Nowhere’ and ‘Decay’, but the way it was then Mark (Gardner) was the frontman so he was obviously seen as the songwriter aswell. It took me about two years to start being bothered by it, so when I started to say I wanted to put my name on the sleeve that was when ‘The Colour Of Light’ was coming out and that was when the songwriting stopped working with the band. Nothing really went right for me with Ride in that way. I got credit for the bad songs I wrote, but no credit for the good songs I wrote. But I never really voiced it very much, it only came out right at the end”.

And so I do get Andy Bell to go on about Ride, the one thing I was told by Creation PR to steer clear of. ‘They’ve been there and done that bit to death’ I was told. But it couldn’t be avoided and I get the feeling Andy didn’t want to avoid it either. Besides, Ride were without doubt my favourite band of the late 80’s and Bell one of my guitar heroes. A privilege.