Black Country, New Road cover The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ at London show
Part of an entirely improvised set at the London Climate Music Blowout event
Black Country, New Road delivered a live cover of The Beatles‘ ‘Hey Jude’ during a show in London last week. You can see fan footage below.
The band were performing an entirely improvised set as part of the Climate Music Blowout event in London, which also saw performances from Porridge Radio, Skinny Pelembe and more, and DJ sets from Goat Girl.
A number of guest musicians some of whom had also performed that evening then joined the stage for the version, which also featured a live conductor. They included David Wrench, Kam-Bu, Spang Sisters, and Ethan P. Flynn.
Black Country, New Road’s set was “based around an improvisation game of the band’s design.” It saw the group responding live to prompts like ‘Pointy’, ‘Drone’, ‘Motif’. Their ‘Hey Jude’ cover was the set’s encore, and their response to the heading of ‘Pop Song’.
Preceding the live music performances, the Climate Music Blowout hosted a conference where leading UK music industry figures and artists discussed how music can play a leading role in the response to the climate emergency.
Topics included how to reduce the environmental impact of staging live music performances, innovative new approaches to physical record packaging, collaboration between rival labels on green initiatives, and how artists can use their platform.
Black Country, New Road’s performance came a few days after the band announced news of their second album ‘Ants From Up There’. It will arrive less than a year on from their Mercury Prize-nominated debut ‘For The First Time’ on February 4, 2022.
The first taste of the record arrived in lead single ‘Chaos Space Machine’, which singer Isaac Wood hailed as “the best song we’ve ever written”.