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Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood play on Band Aid 20
first posted on Treefingers by Miro · rewritten for the archive
Thom Yorke plays piano and Jonny Greenwood guitar on Band Aid 20's new recording of “Do They Know It's Christmas?”, made at Air Studios in London on the weekend of 13 and 14 November and produced by Nigel Godrich. Neither of them sings a line.
Thom and Jonny are in the band with Paul McCartney, on his Hofner “Beatle bass”, and Supergrass's Danny Goffey on drums; The Darkness's Justin and Dan Hawkins added twin harmony guitars on the Saturday.
I play bass on it, that's really all I was really asked to do and that's what I fancied doing.
Paul McCartney3
The song opens on piano before Chris Martin takes the first line, Bono sings his 1984 line again, and about 40 voices joined the chorus on the Sunday. It had its first play at 8am on Tuesday 16 November, on Chris Moyles's Radio 1 breakfast show and other stations at the same moment.
The money goes to food aid in Darfur through the Band Aid Trust. The download went on sale on Thursday at £1.49 from 7digital, and the CD single follows on 29 November at £3.99.
The video, filmed at Air during the sessions with Thom and Jonny in shot, went out at 17:55 on Thursday on BBC One, ITV1, Channel 4 and the other main channels at once, introduced by Madonna.
The Sun reports that Bob Geldof, who organised the record, has had Def Jam put the CD in American shops on 29 November too. We've got names like McCartney, Chris Martin, Dido and Radiohead involved and they're all big there.
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