UKC

Guns & Roses anyone? I'd rather chew my own leg off than watch their overblown bilge.

After some pretty inspired headliners the last few years surely they can do better. There's always Elton John getting a well deserved break into the big time I suppose.

In reply to pasbury:

Stormzy in 2019 was great, which the media portrayed as both good and a risk. Since then ...  Paul McCartney, he is a great musician, but jeez! It all seems to be about nostalgia now, which is interesting as I think it's the younger Emily Eavis running the show. Elton John, sure he's national treasure, but I wouldn't want to see him in concert or at a festival. 

In reply to pasbury:

IMHO the fact that the Glastonbury headliners are a big media story sums up everything that's gone wrong with the festival. That and the fact that I can never manage to get a ticket.

I don't think I ever bothered to see the main stage headline act any of the times I went. That's just not what Glastonbury was about for me.

In reply to pasbury:

I’ve only been to Glastonbury once. That year REM, Manic Street Preachers, and Skunk Anansie were the headlines. Really enjoyed them all. 
 

i saw G’n’R at Download a few years ago and they were great. Turned up on time, did a long set, and played all their hits. I’m slightly biased because they were the band that got me in to rock music and I’d wanted to see them for ages. 
 

With most festivals the headlines are likely to be ones who can sell out a stadium tour, so that probably limits it to some extent. 

In reply to rockcatch:

That doesn't apply to Glastonbury though. It sells out before they announce who's playing. So they have a free hand to get anyone they want.

In reply to pasbury:

I'd say Glastonbury is the one festival where it doesn't really matter who the headliners are - it's almost a bonus if you don't like them, as you can go and watch someone else brilliant on one of the 100+ stages, with 100k people taken out of the mix.

Despite that I think Elton John is a great headliner, his last ever UK gig will be quite special. I'm going and will watch that, though I'm not bothered about GnR. 

In reply to pasbury:

Good lord.  (And yes, I'm right with you there.)

I hope the Eavis's have GnR signed up to a contract with truly terrifying penalty clauses to enforce reasonable behaviour.  They directly incited the riot that so thoroughly shat the bed for Leeds Festival in 2010 that they had to find a new venue.  (Though admittedly the festival was already on notice from the year before.)

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/guns-n-roses-disastrous-reading-leeds-festival...
https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/best-in-leeds/leeds-festivals-year-booze-fuell...

But perhaps the TV coverage and Glastonbury's legendary status will be enough to inspire them to try harder than a mere stadium or arena full of their loyal fans usually does.  And at least at Glastonbury no matter how late they are going on stage there will be plenty else going on that people can wander off and see instead.

In reply to deepsoup:

Seems exactly what one would hope and expect for from a proper rock band. Perhaps they should have done a Velvet Underground 15 minute set with backs to the audience. Or fought with them.

In reply to pasbury:

Who would you prefer? It's good to have a proper stadium/festival rock band at a proper festival rock concert.

GnR might be a bit beyond relevance but other than Coldplay and Foo Fighters, who else fits that bill currently (and even both of those are arguably a bit passed it)?

I guess since Kanye it has changed what it's about but I'd rather watch Axle Rose belt out Night Train at a festival than someone like Sam Smith or Harry Styles.

In reply to pasbury:

I thought its arctic monkeys next

In reply to pasbury:

As others have said here, the Pyramid Stage headliners are totally unimportant to Glasto, anyone who has even been knows that.

I've been 7 times and am there again last year, the only headliners I've ever watched on the Pyramid stage are (most of) the Foo Fighter and all of Kendrick Lamar (who was absolutely outstanding, by the way).  Wasn't there the year the Stones played.  Damn.

I can't imagine I'll be watching any of them this year.

The other thing to bear in mind is that Glasto isn't a commercial festival like the others, well not in the same way anyway, and so the fee they pay to bands is a significant reduction on what other festivals pay - I think they pay around a quarter of what others pay so choice is limited.  Bands have to either want to do it for the kudos or exposure, if it's for the cash they're better off playing elsewhere...

In reply to climber34neil:

Yeah they're doing one of the days

In reply to PaulJepson:

The list of acts I'd prefer to see over GnR is a long list!

Someone musically relevant, whose best work is coming out now rather than decades ago would be nice.  

The three headliners not all being white men with Guitars would be nice (yes I know Elton plays the Piano, but it's dad-rock nonetheless)

In reply to PaulJepson: I was horrified at Guns and Roses booking but your mention of the smith/styles threat has tempered my outrage.

In reply to pasbury:

Glastonbury is not about the headliners, it's about raving your nuts off at the Glade stage (latterly Arcadia) and chatting codshit to munted randomers

In reply to deepsoup:

Too late to edit - but a correction.  The riots I'm talking about were 2002.
(The last year that Leeds was at Temple Newsam before the move to Bramham Park.)

I didn't even realise they had been booked again in 2010, which makes the bit in that first article where it says "unsurprisingly, they’ve never been booked since" a bit of a nonsense.  Clearly Festival Republic should have known exactly what to expect from GnR, based on their experience 8 years previously if nowt else.  "Fool me once..."

In reply to deepsoup:

Although I wasn’t at Leeds ‘02 I worked there the previous 2 years and there were riots every year, the full works - fire engines, riot police etc

Those riots were nothing to do with GnR and everything to do with the organisers putting on a frankly terrible festival that bred discontent amongst the kids by the end of the weekend.

Get a load of kids into the arena, force them to buy carling at a fiver a pint all day, get them fired up by by metal all day then come midnight kick kicks them out and tell them to go sit in the campsite where there was literally nothing to do or see all night long.
 

Best part is that we all felt like poor cousins as all the attention and tv coverage is at the Reading leg. 

In reply to Iamgregp:

Not as bad as woodstock 99 lol. This may not make sense if you haven't seen the Netflix documentary.

In reply to philipivan:

No I have seen it (brilliant docco btw) and yes nothing like as bad as that, but some of the themes and issues of that event really reminded me of the events at Leeds, may have even served as somewhat of an isnspiration for some of the ringleaders…

In reply to Iamgregp:

Well... I knew some guys who were working on the GnR show which is now known as the "Riverport riot". Utter mayhem caused by Rose, where the crew feared for their lives.

I couldn't remember the details so I googled Guns and Roses riot. There were quite a results to go through...

In reply to Iamgregp:

I was there too those previous years, and also in '02.

There is certainly some truth in what you say but the riots in '02 were an order of magnitude worse than the previous year, in a different league of feckwittery.  As I drove home that night (morning), there was still a pall of acrid black smoke blanketing the M1 thick enough to present a bit of a hazard to the traffic.

I'm certainly not suggesting Mean Fiddler were blameless and it would hardly be fair to blame GnR for the event being a bit of a powder keg before they went on stage.  (Or more to the point perhaps, before they didn't go on stage.)  But they absolutely did light the match that night, keeping a restless and pissed-off crowd waiting for an hour or so before going on and then interspersing their abbreviated lacklustre set with some fairly inflammatory speeches.
(eg: https://youtube.com/watch?v=WbtE3ZGEVMs&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE )

Until I made my mistake with the links above, I had no idea they'd been booked again for Reading & Leeds in 2010, I'm absolutely gobsmacked by that.  That one absolutely is on Festival Republic, GnR were absolute bellends but by then it was pretty much their signature move and completely predictable.  (Their 2012 arena tour was a disgrace - huge chunks of the audiences for a lot of those shows had to go and catch the last train or whatever and ended up leaving before the band had even gone on.)

I'm not suggesting this stuff is going to be an issue at Glastonbury, obviously.  (Er..  in fact I'm not really sure where I'm going with any of this tbh..)  Other than maybe to echo the sentiments above: that imo anyone who'll be at Glastonbury this year would be a fool to pass up any of the dozens - hundreds! - of more interesting things they could be doing instead while GnR may or may not be appearing on the Pyramid stage.

In reply to Hooo:

Oh I’m of no doubt Rose whipped up an already belligerent crowd, but they didn’t cause the riot as evidenced by the fact that it happened the previous two years..

…and GnR played on the Friday night, the riot happened on the Sunday.

In reply to facet:

Impressed that he included a ballet duet part-way through, which seemed to go down well:

https://bbonfilm.balletblack.co.uk/film/bb-at-glastonbury/ (2 mins)
 

In reply to pasbury:

I always thought and knew  G & R were shit back in the day, and then to confirm it Cliff Richard said he loved them and that  finally rock music had grown up  ! 

In reply to PaulJepson:

Are you saying that Coldplay are a rock band ?

In reply to Hooo:

Yes it's cool to say that, and yes I agree there's plenty of other things to do and see, but being at the front of the crowd for Dodgy and Radiohead on the Saturday night in 1997 was pretty special.  In 1998 I saw The Prodigy and was pretty blown away.  Other highlights for me have been Ben Folds Five, Kula Shaker and Supergrass (I'm a popaholic).

In reply to Jamie Hageman:

I seem to recall Kula Shaker being there one year, and offering to do an extra set as another band had cancelled - which was just adding insult to injury IMHO. 

I would have made an effort for Prodigy if I'd been there that year. I have previously tried and failed to see them at some huge commercial rave as I just couldn't get anywhere near the tent.