With the final day of Glastonbury 2024 approaching, festival organiser/booker Emily Eavis says she would have liked to have seen more rock bands perform at her family farm last weekend, but that wasn’t an option this year as “there aren’t many new rock acts to choose from”.
In a new (paywall) interview with The TelegraphEavis admits that no matter who is booked for the iconic English festival, she inevitably faces criticism from some quarters that the line-up is “too rock, too grime, too hip-hop, too pop”. However, she argues that each year the programme reflects “what is happening in the music world at the moment”.
“To be honest, there aren’t many new rock bands to choose from,” Eavis told the British newspaper. “Hopefully it will come back. My heyday was in 1995 with Pulp and Oasis and Radiohead… and that was great, but music is always changing and right now we’re here.”
Headlining the Pyramid Stage at this year’s festival are Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA, with genre-bending PJ Harvey arguably the only artist on the site’s main stage that those who insist on labels could classify as a “rock” act.
However volume up– Supported artists such as IDLES, Fontaines DC, Voice of Baceprot, High Vis, Yard Act, NewDad, The Last Dinner Party, Problem Patterns, Kim Gordon and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have played or will play sitewide from June 28-30.
In May 2019 Metal hammer‘s Merlin Alderslade congratulated the Glastonbury team for finally embracing metal after organisers made room in the iconic Shangri-La fields two years earlier for the Scum stage, curated by Earache Records, which featured performances by Napalm Death, Ho99o9, Hacktivist, Wormrot and more.
Last year’s event featured a headlining performance by Guns N’ Roses on the Main Stage on June 24, Queens Of The Stone Age as the headline act on the Other Stage on June 25, a “secret” performance by Foo Fighters, as well as performances by Nova Twins, Manic Street Preachers, The Hives, The Hu, Maneskin, Viagra Boys and more.