Ex-Verve Richard Ashcroft's New York Visit

05/24/2000 12:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(5/25/00, 12 p.m. ET) - Former Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft was in New York this past week promoting his new solo album, Alone With Everybody, which will hit stores June 27. He played a special show on Monday (May 22) that was for media and industry only, and managed to fire up a few Verve tunes along with material from his new album.

Ashcroft's solo set features a tune titled "New York," and LAUNCH asked him if the real New York City lives up to his song. "It does, yeah. . . The last verse was going to be 'I heard [Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani has cleaned you all up, but I can still find a thousand ways to get myself'-- I think it was--' f--ked up,' actually. But I edited it and changed that, quite wisely I think," he said. "But it's a different city from only eight or nine years ago when I first came here. It feels a slightly different city. Sometimes I don't know where all the homeless were brushed off to, and all the Vietnam War vets that I'd bump into, a few with the jacket on."

Ashcroft's first single from the album is "A Song For Lovers," which should be at radio this week.

-- Darren Davis, New York

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