Elbow have teamed up with the Co-Op Live arena in Manchester to help donate sound equipment to the city’s grassroots venues.
The collaboration comes nearly a year after the iconic Britpop band took to the stage as the first performers at the venue last May, and sees them look to keep smaller venues in the city thriving.
With the fund, spaces including Manchester’s Night & Day Café, Matt and Phreds, Aatma, SOUP, Peer Hat, and The Castle Hotel will all benefit from the partnership, and money raised will be used to buy new PA equipment, instruments and backline technology.
It was put together by the Night & Day Café, and looks to both celebrate the ongoing legacy of the Northern Quarter and further improve the city’s vibrant music scene.
“Playing Co-op Live’s opening night will stay with us for a lifetime, not least because of how incredible the room sounded,” said Elbow frontman Guy Garvey. “When the venue donated funds in our name to support the city we love, it made complete sense to carry that through to the Northern Quarter, and to venues that have meant so much to my bandmates and I throughout our career.”
Guy Dunstan – Senior Vice President and General Manager of Co-Op Live – continued: “In the past year, I have been proud to see Co-op Live become an integral part of such an incredible city. Teaming up with Elbow to directly support the venues that first put Manchester on the map, and to share something so intrinsic to us as venues – proper sound – is something truly special.”
The latest work with Elbow comes as an extension to the efforts made by Co-Op Live to give back to the community. Already the venue has donates at least £1million annually to its charity partner, The Co-Op Foundation, and has also provided funds for Liam Gallagher’s animal charity Happy Doggo and Eric Clapton’s addiction recovery centre, Crossroads.
Visit here to find out more about the collaboration with Elbow.
The continuous efforts from Co-Op Live to give back to the grassroots community come after initial teething problems seen around the opening of the arena led to backlash. Last year, former boss Gary Roden, resigned after he came under fire for his comments about grassroots music venues. These included arguing that some of them were “poorly run”, and insisting a proposed £1 ticket levy to preserve their future was “too simplistic”.
It also comes after pressures were put on the venue from the Music Venue Trust, which pushed for owners to do more to support the wider community of live music.
Ahead of its opening, the 23,500-capacity Manchester venue located opposite the Etihad Stadium, drew criticism from MVT CEO Mark Davyd, who told NME that he believed Roden’s remarks were “disrespectful and disingenuous”.
He then called out the irony of Roden making such “ill-judged, unnecessary and misleading” comments in the same week that the Co-Op Live Arena was forced to delay its launch following numerous logistical problems.
As for Elbow, ahead of their show at the Co-Op Live venue, the Mercury-winning Manchester indie band spoke to NME about both the follow-up to their 2021 album ‘Flying Dream 1’, and the battle that Night & Day Café had to undergo to avoid closure.
“I have to say I’m hugely disappointed in the council. There’s some skullduggery going on. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s a PR disaster for everyone in the council,” Garvey said. “I don’t understand it, personally. I really hope that they do the right thing.”
“Businesses with as much heritage and ongoing function should be protected. You can’t justify putting up shiny new buildings, built on the success of little ones like that without protecting them. Nobody in the mayor’s office or at the council seems to have the courage of their convictions,” he added. “It is completely insane. It’s a small family running a family business.”
In other Elbow news, aside from the new partnership with Co-Op Live, the band spoke with NME towards the end of last year when they shared the surprise Black Sabbath-inspired single ‘Adriana Again’.
Speaking about their plans for a new “garage rock” EP, Garvey told us: “We’re still working on it, but I imagine it will have some symmetry to it. There could be some found footage on it; we used to enjoy putting some street-recorded sounds on. I think it’ll have some of the garage-yness that the album has. We went back to working in a small room for ‘Audio Vertigo’ and that’s how this song was made; digging in and finding the energy together as opposed to piecing it together on a computer.”
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