War Child at the Mojo Honours Awards
War Child Music | 18th June 2008
500 guests. 21 awards. And a room full of music legends (most of whom were way before my time which made it hard to recognise some of them without my handy crib sheet.)
I was in amongst the photographers and journalists, all scrambling to get a picture of all the winners and frantically calling their news editors for that ever important exclusive.
Flying the flag for War Child was Jeremy from Gibson Guitars, who have kindly donated a Gibson ES-335. Not only are we lucky enough to have this amazing guitar but Jeremy was lovely enough to get all the winners from the ceremony to sign it. How cool is that? And how lucky will the person who ends up getting it be when we get around to auctioning this bad boy… watch this space for news on when this might happen.
In no particular order, the following graced the press room and added tonnes of glitz; Jimmy Page & John Paul Jones aka Led Zeppelin(Best Live Act); John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten – (MOJO Icon Award); Neil Diamond (Classic Songwriter); Paul Weller (Outstanding Contribution to Music); Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (Best Album for Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!) and Genesis (MOJO Lifetime Achievement).
Alex Turner and Miles Kane (aka The Last Shadow Puppets, seen left) got the gong for the Breakthrough Act of 2008, while Duffy scooped the Song of the Year Award for her hit “Mercy” and was tip top happy until she was unfortunate enough to bump into Johnny Rotten. Not sure what exactly went down thereafter but apparently she fled the Awards crying. Ouch.
En route home a few complimentary cocktails later, I walked pass a couple of police cars and a drunk guy dressed in skinny jeans, funky hat, pointy shoes and suede jacket smoking a “stinky” rollie…”Who is that?” I ask the paparazzi lady taking pictures of this debacle, to which she replied “Oh my god! You don’t know who he is? Johnny Cooper Clarke is the ultimate legend”. Right. Yes. Of course. At which point I saw a black cab and jumped in homeward bound. Zzzzzzzz.
And here are some photos taken with the stars who graced our Gibson guitar with their signature:
Paul Weller and Graham Coxon (Photo: Dean Fardell)
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (Photo: Dean Fardell)
To find out more about the Mojo Honours List head to www.mojo4music.com
War Child will be auctioning the signed Gibson guitar you can see in these pictures at a later date with all proceeds going to our projects helping children marginalised by conflict. Keep watching www.warchild.org.uk for more details.
All photos copyright Dean Fardell.
