Richard Ashcroft explains why he avoids certain Verve songs

Richard Ashcroft has been dissecting his live sets and why fans will be left waiting for some Verve tunes to be given an airing.

While what would become Urban Hymns started life with Ashcroft very much on his own, the resultant album and much of what came before still contained notable contributions from the hugely talented Nick McCabe in particular – and it’s these which Ashcroft feels he should avoid in his solo guide.

“I think I’ve just avoided over the years the tunes I think we wrote as a collective in a way,” he told Radio X. “These are the songs I wrote and arranged etcetera. The other ones are the ones the band wrote collectively.”

“Yeah I wrote the lyrics and whatever, but you know Nick would come up with the riff or et cetera.”