Jon Brookes

Jon Brookes

Mumfords & Sons' Winston Marshall will perform at the tribute concert for The Charlatans drummer Jon Brookes.

The folk rock band's banjo player and The Pretenders guitarist James Walbourn have joined the line-up for 'A Night For Jon Brookes', which takes place at London's Royal Albert Hall tonight (18.10.13), after being recruited by The Vaccines to step-in for their absent band members.

Jon passed away in August after losing his battle with brain cancer. The 44-year-old musician was first diagnosed after collapsing on stage in Philadelphia while on tour with the band in 2010.

The Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess, who is hosting the celebration, said: "The Vaccines all wanted to take part, but Justin Young and their drummer Pete Robertson are on holiday, so Freddie kindly got some friends to help back me up. I love The Vaccines, it'll be great to sing a couple of their songs."

Winston and James will join Vaccines guitarist Freddie Cowan and bassist Arni Arnason on stage. The all-star line-up also boasts Manic Street Preachers' singer James Dean Bradfield, New Order's Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert, the Chemical Brothers and Liam Gallagher.

Liam will be joined on stage by former Oasis bandmate Paul 'Bonehead' Arthurs for the first time in 14 years.

The Charlatans singer Tim has revealed the band started working on a new album with Jon shortly before his death, due to be released next year.

He said: "We started recording because Jon wanted to be involved on it. The more Jon's cancer progressed, the more he wanted to be involved. We had to tell him sometimes he couldn't do it - in his head, Jon felt fine, but he physically couldn't play. But, whenever he could, we'd get Jon into play."

He claims the group's 12th studio album is very "light-sounding" and positive, despite the tragic events.

Tim explained: "An album is only good if it's not a struggle, and there was no effort to the optimism in that record, which I think has happened in these songs too. It's a very light-sounding record, considering what was going on."