We love unexpected collaborations, and this was an especially poignant one. Greater Manchester band The Lottery Winners are supporting Nickelback on tour in the UK right now and when they played their home city at the new AO Arena on 20 May, the two acts got together onstage.
Lottery Winners' frontman Thom Rylance – who we spoke to last year for a pedal and guitar tour alongside guitarist Robert Lally – dedicated the two bands' performance of Oasis's Don't Look Back In Anger to the "22 Manchester Bees".
These were the victims of the 2017 suicide bombing after an Ariana Grande show at the venue when it was called the Manchester Arena. Noel Gallagher's song became an unofficial anthem of remembrance for the city in the wake of the tragedy.
The Manchester worker bee has long been a symbol of the city as an industrial centre and became an emblem of remembrance following the incident.
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I'm the Guitars Editor for MusicRadar, handling news, reviews, features, tuition, advice for the strings side of the site and everything in between. Before MusicRadar I worked on guitar magazines for 15 years, including Editor of Total Guitar in the UK. When I'm not rejigging pedalboards I'm usually thinking about rejigging pedalboards.
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