Today is an anniversary for me. Today marks both an end and also a beginning. Two years ago today my best friend Spencer lost his brave battle with Leukemia. Two years ago my brother died. Two years ago life without him began.

We had known each other 27 years, came up through the same schools, were raised quite differently but had so many things in common. In our teens we were in a band together. He was a great guitarist who loved Jimmy Page and Hendrix and he had a passion for music that I had never encountered before. Spencer suffered all of his life from Hemophilia; he suffered more pain through this than he ever let on to any of us but he never let it dull his passion for music or dampen his sick and twisted sense of humor. I think that part of my sick humor stems from long term exposure to him over the years! You couldn't help but love him and laugh at his ways! What he lacked in physicality he more than made up for in presence and personality.

He was there for me to get me at the airport when my Dad was dying in hospital. Spen was sick as a dog with cancer, no hair from chemotherapy and two coats on...stood out in the freezing cold to avoid germs, just waiting for my flight to come in and take me to the hospital. Nothing can buy you a friend like that...Nothing. There's not a day goes by that I don't think of him in some way and think of the good times and laugh. I try not to think of the pain he endured in his last months; he would have ridiculed the crap out of me for wasting time thinking that way. I just think of the laughs we shared over the years, the conversations we had and the fact that I loved him like a brother.

Some people fade away when they die but Spencer isn't one of those people. There were and are too many people that knew and loved him for that to happen. All of his friends and family carry a piece of him inside them wherever they are and his memory endures.

If you ever have a friend as good to you as Spencer was to me then you truly are a very fortunate individual. Do yourself a favor, stop to pinch yourself first and then tell your friend that you love them. You may not have the opportunity again.

Here's to you Spen, watching us all from the ether. I miss you mate!

ASH

John here again. I forgot to mention this earlier on the blog about user names in the Social forum, but unfortunately you will have to register again to post messages. While we wanted to give everyone who registered in the Gallery easy access to the forum, we just can't at the moment since we encrypted your passwords for your protection. Since we can't see what the passwords are, we couldn't add them to the forum. Sorry for the inconvenience and we will try to work out something better in the near future. For the time being, you can always use your gallery name and password (provided you know them) to register with the forum and then set the "Auto Login" checkbox and be done with it. Again, sorry for the pain in the wotsit... - John

Hey this is John here. I'm Ash's web guy and I'm writing on his behalf to announce some long awaited updates and features to the site. First off, you can now post comments on blog entries and read them online. This has been a highly requested feature and we are happy to have it out the door to you. Also added is a new FeedBurner feed so you can subscribe to the blog with your favorite feed/RSS reader like Google Reader or Netvibes. Look for the orange RSS logo at the top of the blog to subscribe. And the best addition to the site is the opening of the Social! Finally you have a place to post and share with Ash and other fans of his work and the bands he shoots. We hope you enjoy these new features to the site and find them useful. And just to let you know, we are hard at work to get the Sales section going since so many of you have asked about buying Ash's great work. Ash will be offering prints of his work and T-shirts (which look awesome by the way) for sale on the site. We'll post again when we have a more specific date when it will be available. My team and I are also working on some more fun stuff to add to the site since the Rocker's Jigsaw Puzzle has worked out so well. We have some cool ideas coming up to give you more reason to spend some time here with this crazy-ass Brit we love (but not in the way that Marcus Henderson loves animal statuary)!

Thank you all for helping us make AshNewell.com a smashing success! We couldn't have done it without you, and of course Ash's amazing talent!

John

I feel like crap today! Was up until the late hours last night editing photos for my mate Daniel Adair, drummer for Nickelback. Daniel's a top bloke and a first class drummer...like Nickelback's music or not, he can beat the arse off a lot of today's metal drummers and still have energy left for a smoke and a pancake! He's having a new website done and phoned me the other day asking for a selection of fine images that show him at work...



Might be heading back out to California soon for a magazine feature but am still waiting to hear finer details at this point. Should be fun if it comes off and the opportunity to hang out again with birthday boy Marcus Henderson of Guitar Hero fame should be fun as always... Hopefully he won't try and shag any ornamental animals this time! He's 35 years young today so if you see a long haired skinny man running naked though the streets of San Francisco today it's not a one man gay parade...it'll just be Marcus letting off steam!



It's about that time for Easter when folks like me can't dress up kids that they don't have...right? Wrong! Daisy may not be a rock star but she sure as hell knows how to act like one and can belt out a tune better than some with record contracts! She's better looking and much better behaved than any member of Avenged Sevenfold as today's photo session shows! PLUS... She's getting email and has quite the growing fan club so go figure!


Happy frickin' Easter!
ASH

Just a quick post to let you know two new live photo sets have been added to the gallery. There's a new Phil Collen live set for all you Def Lep fans. And for you Hinder followers, there is a new live set from October 2007. Go have yourself a look and thanks as always for continuing to visit my site and comment on my work. More to come later...

ASH

I woke this morning to read that one of my most favorite artists passed away. Jeff Healey lost his lifelong fight with cancer last night. This saddens me greatly, he was an inspiration to many people on many levels and never blamed his lack of sight or his illnesses for not being able to do what he wanted to. He went ahead and did it. His music saw me through a lot of good and not so good times when I was younger. I have many good times in my life tied to particular songs of the Jeff Healey Band.

My thoughts are with Jeff's family and his many friends in music.

Last Sunday I hopped on a plane and headed off to the hot, dry and dusty delights of El Paso, Texas to do the new publicity photos for Al Jourgensen and Ministry. Al's assistant Isa met me at the airport and generously carried all my luggage and lighting gear to the car.

An hour south of El Paso on a 2,000 acre Pecan Ranch sits the studios and rehearsal facility where the Ministry guys are holed up for a month prepping for the upcoming Ministry farewell tour. Was good to see my old mate Tony Campos from Static X who's standing in on bass... Talk to the guys in the band but no Al... Eric the tour manager tells me he's a little worse for wear from the night before and is "resting". It's 5:30pm and Al is still passed out on the sofa due to the imbibing of a serious amount of Absinthe and Red wine the night before. So I grab my camera and get a couple of shots of Uncle Al in slumber and then head off to grab some pics of the guys rehearsing.

A little later Al had roused himself, popped the cork on a new bottle of red and was ready to grab some shots with his coffin shaped Schecter guitar. Got a few shots of Tommy Victor and Sin Quirin with their guitars as well who were good sports and put up being blinded by ringflash.

Next day about midday everyone was up and ready except Tommy who was ironing his underpants or something... Finally we got started shooting outside...the bloody wind was going at it something rotten throwing dust all over the place and I was trying to direct and place six guys all with the attention span of a bluebottle! Herding kittens would have been easier but we had some good laughs at everyone's expense throughout the day in various locations. Got some great new photos will be coming soon. The band seems to love 'em. Here's a few snapshots in the meantime!

ASH