GENEROUS music lovers have secured the immediate future of an iconic Southampton music venue after a desperate plea for help over coronavirus cancellations.

Fans and friends of The Joiners, the St Mary's Street venue which played host to Oasis, Coldplay and Green Day as they rose to fame, raised nearly every penny of the £5,000 crowdfunding target needed to keep The Joiners going for a month in just 24 hours.

The venue also hopes to receive a small Goverment grant, but will need more help to get through the next few months of uncertainty, which have seen 30 tours postponed in just the last few days.

Ricky Bates, the venue's operator / booker, told the Daily Echo: "When the Government announced people shouldn't go to venues like ours, that was just horrific. I was just watching the press conference thinking he's hung us out to dry.

"It's not really the Joiners way to crowd fund. We just about find a way to stay open every single year without handouts. But I didn't know how we were going to survive. This next three months are the bread and butter for any live music venue before the festival season takes over and without them we've got nothing. We're re-booking shows for September or October, but we need to somehow keep going until then.

"We're really overwhelmed by the support. It's been amazing to see how much it means to the community. A lot of live music venues could potentially close down, but we're doing all we can to keep The Joiners afloat.

"The music community and all our regulars are family and it's really heart-warming to see them helping. In all this doom and gloom it's the light at the end of the tunnel."

The 200 capacity Joiners Arms, which opened in 1968, has put tens of thousands of up and coming acts on stage since its inception, some of whom have gone on to be huge, including Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Razorlight, David Gray and Primal Scream.

Donate at gofundme.com/f/help-us-survive-corona-virus