After more ups than downs, Jason Pierce of Spiritualized is as sharp and talented as ever. He gives Tim Hughes a dose of his insight

Many people have claimed to suffer for their art, but few have died for it. Jason Pierce has. Twice.

A lifetime of living to excess took its toll on the Spiritualized frontman when he technically passed away on a hospital bed after contracting pneumonia. Eerily, he was working on an album at the time: Songs in A&E.

He now tells me he is much better, despite being informed earlier this year that his liver “has gone”.

When a group of friends volunteered for medical check-ups after decades of abusing their bodies, Jason joined in out of solidarity. They were given clean bills of health; he was told he had long-term liver damage and must stop. Everything. For a career ‘caner’ it has been a tough lifestyle change. This, after all, is a man who has dedicated his life to getting high, to exploring the outer realms of consciousness; a man who, previously, as frontman of the band Spacemen 3, neatly defined his role as “taking drugs to make music to take drugs to.”

And, he admits, sobriety is taking some getting used to. “A lot of people I know have abused and laid into themselves so I thought I’d check it out and see how much longer I can do this,” he tells me, while he drinks tea at his home in East London’s Tower Hamlets. “Unfortunately, when I went to see the doctor, I was the one who got the bad result.

“That’s all I do — mess myself up, so having someone tell me I can’t do it anymore is a head-spin. But I’ve got to slow down.”

To make himself feel better, and to avoid the debilitating effect of conventional liver disease treatment, he chose to do what he has always done – act as a human guinea pig for a new drug. In this case, however, it was new medication initially designed for leukaemia patients. They worked; so much so he was able to make another record at home — though he admits to having been “out of it” much of the time. He feels healthier, though, the memory of his near-death and subsequent problems now fading.

“That was bad,” he says. “I didn’t make any plans for the future; I didn’t even know what I was going to do in 10 years’ time. But I got lucky and got on a trial for a new drug that seems to be sorting people out, and I saw an amazing nurse who made sure I got heavy doses.”

He smirks at the idea of experimenting on himself with a new drug. “There is a bit of irony,” he says. “They have no redeeming qualities though, unless you have liver disease.”

The result was last year’s masterpiece Sweet Heart Sweet Light, which Jason debuted at the Royal Albert Hall, before playing at Oxford’s O2 Academy and West Oxfordshire’s Wilderness festival.

The real title, for Jason though, was the moniker emblazoned on the front: a fake hexagonal molecular diagram labelled, chemical element style, with the question: “Huh?”

“That was the name of the record,” he says. “But I thought there would be a Monty Python-style situation of people trying to order it — so I gave it a serious title.”

He describes the process of making it as “a nightmare”. “I was in a very weak state when I made it,” he says. “I’ve got no real take on it and it astounds me that people like it. It resonates with people.”

Jason talks softly but deliberately. He may have built a career on self-medication but his mind is razor-sharp. Indeed he speaks of his experiences as a scientist or intellectual might — albeit one who, like the writer Aldous Huxley, had formulated his theories by experimenting on himself.

Yet, despite a lifetime of taking drugs to make music to take drugs to, Jason doesn’t seem to miss it. Indeed, despite the mind-bending juddering acid-rock of Spacemen 3 (whose songs Rollercoaster and Ecstasy Symphony were soundtracks for the psychedelic trip) and Spiritualized’s knowing narcotic references (album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space came packaged in a giant pill box), Jason insists you don’t have to be out of your head to ‘get’ his music.

“If you need drugs to understand the music, there’s something wrong with the music,” he says. “One enhances the other but music works on its own level anyway.”

Now, the only experimentation is of the musical kind, he says. “I’ve always had the idea of trying all the things I love, without it being fusion.

“I’ve got the songs and am talking to people. It is in formation. But it’s important I don’t make a record like the last few. I’m always looking to the next thing and it’s got to feel like the best thing in the world. Spiritualized is as forward-thinking as it can be, and the real beauty of things is in the tiny details.”

He has never shied from transforming the band, such as enlisting 120 musicians for album Let It Come Down, before taking things back to basics for the gospel and Southern soul-influenced follow-up Amazing Grace.

“So much music seems like you press the red button and the show runs itself and there’s no way of finding your way in or around it,” he says. “I had the idea that Spiritualized had become a bit like that. It was running itself and the only way to shake it up was to dismantle it. Now the whole emphasis has changed and I’ve being doing shows with a new band. We are in a strong place to be.”

Oxfordshire fans have the chance to hear that band when Spiritualized headline the county’s biggest weekend of rock, pop, country, folk and alternative music, Truck festival, next Friday. The band will be joined at Hill Farm, Steventon, over the weekend by Horrors, Ash, The Subways, Treetop Flyers, Public Service Broadcasting and former Supergrass frontman turned solo artist Gaz Coombes. So how did he recruit the new band? “I put a bit of a word out and got lucky,” he says. “I avoided friends and thought it was best to go with people I didn’t know.”

So what, aged 47, is ‘Jason Space-man’ most proud of? “I don’t suffer pride,” he says. “I just get on. I’m not saying this is light years ahead, or behind. My music is what it is and I don’t have that conceit for what I do.”

And what is the weirdest thing that has happened to him? “A memory question!” he shudders. “It’s a weird thing, music, because it’s all about the scale of things. It’s still hardest to play to a small audience than a large one. Even a single person — or someone in your band. It’s the smallest things which are the biggest hurdles.”

But he is content. “I am happy doing things,” he says. “I haven’t changed. I love the music, pushing it into somewhere it hasn’t been. And, it seems, that without that I’ve got nothing. It’s the best thing in the world and the only thing I want.”

  • Spiritualized play  Truck Festival
  • July 19-20
  • Hill Farm, Steventon
  • Tickets: £78.15 (inc booking ) from truckfestival.com