Foals‘ Yannis Philippakis has explained how a family gathering saw him suffering the gory injuries that have stopped him from playing guitar at the Hyundai Mercury Prize 2019 tonight (September 19).
The singer revealed on Tuesday that he’d had an unfortunate “run-in with a knife” and shared a picture on Twitter showing deep stitches across three fingers of his right hand.
Describing the injury, Philippakis explained how the mishap occurred when his cousin was messing around with a blade at a family gathering in Greece.
“My cousin basically came over with a knife and was doing a blood brothers game saying, ‘We’ve got the same blood, me and you’. I went to stop it and he pulled the knife and it opened my hand up,” he explained.
While the injury meant that he wasn’t able to play guitar, an eleventh-hour saviour came in the form of former Maccabees guitarist Felix White – who’s filled in for him at the awards tonight.
“We’re mates with him. Jimmy [Smith, guitar] and Jack [Bevan, drums] were texting him after I sent photos and said, ‘We’re not going to be able to play the Mercurys’,” he explained.
“We cancelled the show tomorrow and then they just texted him and he was up for him! Thankfully it’s just an easy song, it’s basically just one riff over and over again.”
Elsewhere, Philippakis discussed how the forthcoming second part of ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost’ sees the band reflecting on the current “dark times” across the globe.
“You only need to pick up a newspaper or go online and look at what’s going on around us. We’re living in a dark time. It’s not a fantasy record, it’s about the here and now,” he said.
Check back at NME.com for more Hyundai Mercury Prize 2019 coverage.