Further details are emerging about the forthcoming new recording of the all-star Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” which will be credited to Band Aid 20 in acknowledgement of the anniversary of the 1984 release. The single will be issued Nov. 29 in the U.K. on Mercury/Universal.
Recently committed to the recording are Paul McCartney, U2 frontman Bono, Robbie Williams, Dido, Snow Patrol and Natasha Bedingfield. McCartney will play bass on the track and Bono will reprise one of the most famous lines in the original lyric: “Well tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you.”
McCartney, Williams and Dido are understood to be recording their parts separately from the Nov. 14 session at London’s Air Studios; Williams recorded the whole track in Los Angeles on Monday. British artist Damien Hirst will design the sleeve artwork for the release, which will raise money for the Band Aid Trust’s famine relief in Africa, specifically in the blighted Darfur region of Sudan.
Travis’ Fran Healy will play guitar on the recording. “It’s dead exciting,” he tells Billboard.com. “When it was first recorded, I was 11 and I went everywhere looking for it and I couldn’t find it, and now we’re going to do the follow-up to it. It’s going to be great, McCartney’s doing it, Bono’s going to sing his own line, [and] we’re going to help out with some music, with Nigel [Godrich, who’ll produce the single]. I really wanted to get Franz Ferdinand involved in it — I think they’re going to do it, although I haven’t spoken to [executive producer] Midge Ure for about a week now.”
“Midge did a thumbnail sketch of the original with new music on it,” Healy continues. “He’s got the Darkness doing the guitars at the end, and he’s changed the arrangement of it. He shipped that over to L.A. where Nigel was working with McCartney. If it turns out absolutely s***, it does not matter. What I will say is you’ve got to buy the record because it’s the only record that’s going to save lives this side of Christmas, and you can’t ask for more than that.”
