And Finally Artist News

Royal Blood turned down Band Aid because they couldn’t get the ‘Bono line’

By | Published on Monday 23 February 2015

Royal Blood

Royal Blood have claimed that they turned down an invite to appear on last year’s Band Aid bash because their demand that they get ‘the Bono line’ was turned down.

Speaking to the Telegraph, the HSBC’s favourite band (I’m guessing, I mean, Telegraph management didn’t pull the interview) explained that back stage at the MTV European Music Awards last November all the pop acts were talking about the then impending Band Aid 30 record, and the duo’s drummer Ben Thatcher discussed it during a thirty minute chit chat with Bono himself.

Says Thatcher: “We were actually talking about the Band Aid single. It was just about to happen. We’d been approached to do it but it didn’t work out. Ed Sheeran and all the other pop stars were also there, and everybody was standing around talking about whether or not they were going to do it. I said to Bono I would only do it if I could sing his famous line with him. And then he said, ‘Funnily enough, I’m actually changing my line’. So I said, ‘Well, I’m not doing it then'”.

Thatcher’s fellow Royal Blooder Mike Kerr adds: “Those were our terms. We’d only do it if Ben could dress up as Bono”.

Given the particularly loud backlash to the most recent Band Aid adventure, Royal Blood possibly had a lucky escape. Perhaps they could do Red Nose Day instead, everyone seems to still love that, despite that ‘Panorama’ expose, and the fact that all of these celeb-fest rich-people-ordering-poor-people-to-donate fundraisers are surely as patronising and flawed as each other, even if they do lots of good work along the way.



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