British rockers Foals have recruited The Maccabees' Felix White to replace injured Yannis Philippakis on guitar at the Mercury Music Prize ceremony in London on Thursday (19Sep19).
The singer/guitarist was forced to pull out of the show and a series of upcoming gigs after slicing through his fingers with a knife during an accident on the Greek island of Karpathos.
Yannis posted a photo of his stitched up fingers earlier this week (beg16Sep19), revealing he had a "run-in with a knife" that left him unable to play the guitar, and now he's detailing the accident that almost cost him his digits.
"My cousin, who's in his 50s, came over with quite a sharp knife, and was saying, 'We come from the same blood, we've got the same blood," the singer tells the BBC. "He was kind of nicking his hand, like a blood brothers kind of thing, and I just instinctively put my hand out to try and stop him doing whatever he was doing.
"I must have caught the blade and he pulled away, and it was quite sharp, so it just opened me up."
Philippakis reveals the incident caused "a whole scene", adding he was "spilling blood on the whitewashed walls" of a local church.
"They tried to stop the bleeding by opening up some cigarettes and putting some tobacco on it… but then the blood was coming through, so I went and got stitches in the village."
Luckily, no tendons were severed by the blade, and Yannis expects to make a full recovery.
