Making a charity record is not an easy task. While, in theory, we should welcome those moments when rock stars decide to use their fame and influence to help others, the fact is that we often don’t. We’re a cynical lot, and, ever since Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse lampooned DJs who “do a lot of work for charidee”, we’ve looked suspiciously at any celebrity trying to do some good.

Last year’s Live Earth concerts – a worthy enough idea, surely – were attacked relentlessly because of the huge carbon footprint of the gigs themselves: a reasonable point, but a form of logical reasoning that would prevent anyone from ever doing anything to help the environment, apart from sitting quietly in an unheated room, starving but thinking good thoughts. There is also the sneaking suspicion that these do-gooders’ own careers and images are being given a nice healthy shine, with the good cause merely a means to good PR. Then there is the crushing argument that Band Aid did it all 20 years ago, and you’re not going to top that – as if the whole thing were just a competition.

So, if you’re planning to make a charity record or stage a charity concert, you’d better come up with something that’s both good and different. If you can do the whole thing with a wit and imagination that will appeal to an audience regardless of the message, so much the better. Fortunately, wit and imagination are the hallmarks of Consequences, a single in aid of the homeless charity Crisis, which will be released in March. Crisis has proved itself adept at finding innovative ways of involving musicians. Its Pudstock live event was the exact opposite of the overblown “private jets for climate change” charity concert – an intimate acoustic concert featuring the likes of Dirty Pretty Things, Graham Coxon, Supergrass and Ed Harcourt. To attend, you had to find one of the “lucky sixpences” hidden in special Crisis Christmas puddings.

Now the same musicians – plus Paul Weller, Andy Rourke from the Smiths, Beth Ditto, the Enemy and many others – have come together to make Consequences. And, just as Pudstock was different from any charity concert that had gone before, so Consequences is different from any charity single. In fact, it’s probably true to say that it’s different from any other single. What makes it different is the way it was recorded.

The idea originated with Supergrass’s drummer, Danny Goffey, and his girlfriend, Pearl Lowe, who is an ambassador for Crisis. Their idea was to record a track in the same way that children play the game Consequences. You’ve probably played one of the variants. In one, the first child draws a head, then folds the piece of paper so the next child has to draw a body without seeing the head; legs and feet are added, with each child unaware of what has gone before. In another, the first child begins a story, then folds the paper; each child continues the tale, again with no knowledge of the story so far. In both versions, the paper is finally unfolded to reveal the complete but incongruous person/story, to the general hilarity of all involved.

Recording a song in this way was a cute idea. The problem was making it work. The person who had to solve that problem was the producer Paul Epworth, a man whose track record includes work with Bloc Party, Babyshambles and Kate Nash. “When they asked me to get involved in a charity record, I wasn’t sure about it – but then they sprang this concept on me, and I was intrigued,” Epworth recalls. “All they said was, ‘like a game of consequences’. The question then was, ‘How can we do it in a way that doesn’t sound like a hodgepodge of unconnected ideas?’”

The band he had to work with was comprised of musicians who came to fame in the Noughties, the 1990s, the 1980s and the 1970s. But, to make the Consequences idea work, he looked back one decade more – to the 1960s. “I thought perhaps it would work best if we went down the Phil Spector route of having lots of people playing the same instruments,” he says. “He treated his band like an orchestra, with lots of instruments playing the samenotes. We have three drummers, four bassistsand two pianists.”

Epworth, Goffey and his Supergrass band-mate Gaz Coombes wrote the song, then recorded a sparse demo consisting of a drum machine keeping time and a piano playing the chords. “That was our ‘sheet of paper’,” Epworth says.

Then the musicians came in, adding their parts without ever hearing what anyone else had contributed. Epworth admits to giving some of them “a certain amount of direction”.

By the time it was Andy Rourke’s turn, there were three bass parts, “so I suggested that he should play a melodic bassline, higher than the rest”.

True to the spirit of a Spector production, Epworth worked in a 1960s style – no computer editing, everything played live. “Modern recording usually involves recording all sorts of stuff, and working out what sticks later,” Epworth says. “We couldn’t do that. We had to be brutal as we went along – even when it meant whittling down Paul Weller’s contribution. That was a real shame. But everyone put their egos to one side and just enjoyed the process. I think the 1960s ideas in the music helped to link everyone together, because that stuff influences everybody. I don’t quite know if we ended up with a Wall of Sound, but it’s certainly a wall of noise.”

In fact, while Consequences certainly has a 1960s feel, the early mix I heard was more Motown than Spector – poppy R&B with the trademark Detroit rhythm, impassioned lyrics and trademark guitar contributions from Coxon.

“They told me it would be like Consequences – although I did hear a rhythm track,” Coxon says. “If none of us had heard anything at all, and we’d all just played, that could have been amazing. I don’t suppose radio would play it, though.

“I played some parts, then Paul said, ‘How about a solo?’ Guitar solos are dodgy areas. Years ago, I didn’t mind, but these days I try to avoid them. So I did something, but I don’t know if it’s very soloy. It won’t be an easy track to mix, because they’ll want to take into account everyone’s feelings and try to make sure that they all get heard.”

Epworth is perfecting that democratic mix right now; but, if anyone feels they aren’t fairly represented, they can always try to blow everyone else off the stage at Consequences Live, which takes place at the Roundhouse, in London, on March 2.

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