Glastonbury Festival 'appalled' by Bob Vylan's Israeli military chants
The festival organisers' comments come after police said they are assessing videos from the band's performance on Saturday, along with Irish trio Kneecap's set.
Rapper Bobby Vylan, one half of the rap punk duo Bob Vylan, led crowds on the festival's West Holts Stage in chants of 'death, death to the IDF' along with 'free, free Palestine'.
Responding to comments made by Bob Vylan on Saturday, Glastonbury Festival released a statement in a post on Instagram.
READ MORE: Kneecap responds to 'legend' who streamed their Glastonbury set after BBC blackout
It read: 'With almost 4000 performances at Glastonbury 2025, there will inevitably be artists and speakers appearing on our stages whose views we do not share, and a performer's presence here should never be seen as a tacit endorsement of their opinions and beliefs.
'However, we are appalled by the statements made from the West Holts stage by Bob Vylan yesterday.
'Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.'
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South Wales Guardian
24 minutes ago
- South Wales Guardian
Glastonbury Festival 2025 ends after weekend of controversy and surprises
Punk duo Bob Vylan and Irish rap trio Kneecap have seen both of their sets on Saturday being assessed by Avon and Somerset Police to decide whether any offences were committed. Bobby Vylan, of Bob Vylan, led crowds on the festival's West Holts Stage in chants of 'death, death to the IDF', before a member of Irish rap trio Kneecap suggested fans 'start a riot' outside his bandmate's upcoming court appearance, and led the crowd on chants of 'f*** Keir Starmer'. Sir Keir had said in the run-up to the festival that he thought Kneecap's set was not 'appropriate' at Glastonbury. On Friday, festival goers were treated to surprise performances from alternative pop star Lorde, who played her new album Virgin in full, and Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, who played two years after a set at the festival during which he struggled to manage his Tourette syndrome symptoms. The 1975 took to the Pyramid Stage to headline that night, with a set which saw singer Matty Healy joke he was his generation's 'best songwriter', with the band playing songs such as Chocolate, Love Me and About You. Pulp were revealed to be Patchwork appearing on the Pyramid Stage on Saturday to a backdrop paying homage to their classic 1995 stand in headline set. The Jarvis Cocker-fronted band performed some of their best known songs such as Common People, Babies and Do You Remember The First Time?. Their appearance came 30 years after their breakthrough headline performance at the festival when they stood in for The Stone Roses after the Manchester band's guitarist John Squire was injured in a cycling accident. Candida Doyle, the band's keyboard player, had previously appeared to confirm the band would not perform at the festival, despite being keen to play, telling BBC Radio 6 Music last week 'they (Glastonbury) weren't interested'. Also on Saturday, Haim made a surprise appearance on the Park Stage opening with one of their best known songs in The Wire, before performing a mix of older songs such as Summer Girl, and new singles including Relationships. The day saw veteran rocker Neil Young headline, performing some of his best known songs including Cinnamon Girl, Like A Hurricane and Rockin' In The Free World, at one point in the set he performed with Hank Williams' guitar. Brat star Charli XCX headlined the Other Stage on Saturday, performing tracks from last year's summer sensation such as 360, Von Dutch and Club Classics. Performing the viral Apple dance, during the song of the same name, was US singer Gracie Abrams, who had played on the same stage a day earlier. Sir Rod Stewart performed in the Sunday legends slot, bringing out former Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood for Stay With Me, Lulu for Hot Legs and Simply Red's Mick Hucknall for a performance of his band's If You Don't Know Me By Now. He was also joined by the festival's founder, Sir Michael Eavis, who was wheeled on to the stage by his daughter, organiser Emily Eavis. Bagpipes had signalled the arrival of Sir Rod, who kicked off his afternoon performance with 1981 single, Tonight I'm Yours (Don't Hurt Me). Sir Rod's set also included hits such as Maggie May, You Wear It Well and Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?. The Pyramid Stage was headlined by pop rocker Olivia Rodrigo on Sunday evening, who brought out The Cure frontman Robert Smith to sing his band's songs Just Like Heaven and Friday I'm In Love. As the 66-year-old indie-goth star arrived on stage on Sunday night, Rodrigo said: 'Glastonbury would you please welcome Robert Smith, give him a big welcome, come on.' At the end of Just Like Heaven, the pair hugged, before Rodrigo said 'give it up for Robert Smith you guys' before adding she was 'so honoured to play with him tonight'. The weekend saw many acts express their support for Palestine, with singer Ellie Rowsell of indie rockers Wolf Alice telling the crowd: 'We want to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine, and we shouldn't be afraid to do that.' Their Other Stage set saw them climax with their best known song Don't Delete The Kisses, which came after they had played snippets of The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army and Black Sabbath's War Pigs. Irish country star CMAT, real name Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, chanted 'free Palestine' during her set, which included Take A Sexy Picture Of Me, from her forthcoming third studio album Euro-Country. While frontman Dan Hoff of Irish noise rockers Gurriers said during their Woodsies set: 'Free Palestine, unlike other bands we know where we stand politically.' A number of other acts performed through the night on some of the festival's smaller stages, before a large scale clean-up operation begins in the early hours of the morning.
The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Our stage is a giant pair of open legs!' Meet Glastonbury's most obscure acts
With 80 stages hosting more than 3,000 performers, there is a terrifying amount of things to see and do at Glastonbury. While the headline acts dominate the coverage, what of the lesser-known artists listed further down the bill? Is anyone stumbling to their strange shows? From an Elvis-fronted Nirvana tribute act to a feminist punk group singing songs about UTIs, via a taxidermy mouse circus and a singalong performance of school-assembly hymns, we went in search of Glastonbury 2025's most obscure acts. Friday, 1.45pm, the Greenpeace stage In the baking afternoon heat of the first proper day, a man dressed in an Elvis bodysuit is making a crowd of about 100 people jump into a lively mosh pit. 'I might sound like Nick Cage, sometimes like Matthew McConaughey and perhaps like Kurt Cobain, but most of the time I do not sound like Elvis fucking Presley!' he bellows before launching into a vibrato-laden rendition of Nirvana's grunge anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit. The Newcastle-based singer Paul Kell is the man responsible for this maelstrom. Kell has played in bands since his teens and was always a fan of Nirvana. In 2015, his hobby became more serious when he was asked to perform at a fancy-dress birthday party. 'We decided to do Nirvana songs because we knew our mates would love it and for some reason we dressed as Elvis to add a bit of extra fun,' Kell says after his show. 'I started singing the Nirvana songs in an Elvis style and that was it. Everyone stood watching it open-mouthed and Elvana was born.' In 2019, they performed at Glastonbury for the first time and have returned ever since. 'It always goes down amazingly here. Even though there's so much happening at the festival, people like to roam and will always find their way to your show,' he says. 'Glastonbury is an amazing marketing tool and trade show because people come from all over the world to seek out oddities and take a chance.' Friday, 4pm, the Bug Harvey Jones has been coming to Glastonbury for as long as he can remember. Over by the West Holts stage, his parents have run a vegetarian food stall, No Bones Jones, for the past 25 years. It's the place where he met his wife and has since played his first shows as the video-game-themed DJ Pizza Hotline. 'During the pandemic, I began digging into old video-game music from the 90s and discovered this amazing, optimistic-sounding strain of jungle and drum'n'bass in the soundtracks,' he says. 'It gave me a sense of nostalgia and I decided to start making my own tunes that reference it.' During his Friday afternoon set on the roving Bug sound system, Jones works through frenetic versions of the theme tune from the 1997 video game GoldenEye, while mixing in fast-paced percussion and thunderous basslines. His crowd of a dozen, including his two children, bounce happily along. 'This is only the second time I've played at Glastonbury and it's been a dream come true,' he says. 'It's always a family affair and in the wider context of festivals it's hard to find something this colossal that still maintains its experimental roots. There's nowhere else quite like it.' Saturday, 2pm, Glebeland The roving taxidermy show Feminist Mouse Circus is so obscure that it takes 20 minutes to find it in the scorching Theatre fields on Saturday afternoon. Once you chance upon the portable setup, though, it's hard to miss: an intricately painted wooden doll's house perched on bike wheels that houses a range of puppet mice, each named after a notable feminist – Babybell Hooks, Germaine Gruyère and Paris Cheese, to name a few. 'We started the circus in 2015 with myself and another artist-activist called Jenny Fernbank,' the performer Miranda La Mutanta says. 'We were thinking about how gendered circus can be, with men performing stunts and women only doing aerial acts and looking beautiful, and we wondered if there was a way to challenge that while also educating people about feminism.' Drawing on her previous puppetry experience, La Mutanta settled on taxidermy mice as the conduit for her feminist message – 'A friend already had them' – and made her Glastonbury debut in 2018. 'This is our first time back since then, but it's always been such a welcoming and open place,' she says. 'It's a festival that is as much about performing arts as it is about music, and we hope we can bring a bit of playful subversion to it.' Saturday, 3.45pm, the Summerhouse stage One of the biggest success stories of Glastonbury 2025 is the primary school music teacher James Partridge's Primary School Bangers. A singalong session of assembly hymns and other nostalgic fare, Partridge went viral for his 2024 performance at the festival. This year, he took over the entire Summerhouse stage on Thursday night. His Saturday afternoon slot is decidedly more relaxed; he works his way through crowdpleasers such as Give Me Oil in My Lamp and He's Got the Whole World in His Hands on the piano as a seated crowd joins in passionately. 'The assembly hall singalong has died out somewhat for kids today, but these songs have such powerful nostalgia for millennials like me,' the 34-year-old says. With five performances booked for 2025, it feels as if Primary School Bangers could become a Glastonbury staple. 'It's the festival that kicked everything off for me and I think the show is the perfect way to spend part of your day here,' he says. 'There's nothing better than pure joy, nostalgia and singalongs – feel no shame and belt it out!' Sunday, 1.30am, the Hive stage California surf music and Colombian cumbia rhythms may not seem the most likely match, but for the psychedelic band Los Fuckin Surfer Smokers it proves to be a potent blend. During their late-night set at the tiny Hive stage, a few dozen revellers bounce around to wailing guitars and twanging melodies, celebrating a debut at the festival that has been a goal since their formation in 2017. 'We came all the way from Bogotá to be here and have planned the European tour around it,' says Alejandro Reverend, the guitarist. 'We've always admired Glastonbury for being such an open space for people to discover music, and even though it's tough and expensive for us to get here, it's a milestone we've wanted to do since we began as buskers.' Although the crowd mills and disperses throughout their hour-long slot, a closing mix of spaghetti western music with Beach-Boys-style surf and rockabilly injects energy into the remaining audience members. 'There is a lot happening in the world; everyone is so anxious and worried. We just want people to jump into the concert and enjoy themselves,' says Reverend. 'You can take a bit of that joy with you into the future.' Sunday, 10.30am, the Hive stage At a tiny stage in the north-east corner of Glastonbury, Old Man Vegas, AKA 53-year-old Jason Butler, can be found on Sunday morning, blending on-the-spot storytelling with bantering crowd work that keeps bleary-eyed passersby engaged. A hip-hop MC turned improv poet, Butler has a knack for conjuring delightful verses on the spot, including a 10-minute-long ditty about an office-working giraffe who becomes a tennis star, concocted from multiple crowd shoutouts. 'Glastonbury is where I started doing improv poetry – since it's such an open-minded crowd, you're free to experiment,' he says, still breathless after his set. 'This is the seventh or eighth festival I've played and I always come as a worker, as that way it's easier to blag slots on the smaller stages.' As well as performing, Butler is manning a service gate. He spends his free time wandering around the fields, chatting to punters and offering to write poems for them. 'It's such a beautiful way to make a real connection,' he says. 'I did one yesterday and it made the woman I wrote it for cry. Glastonbury might be a place where people come to let loose for four days, but it's also an amazing chance to come together and have a meaningful experience.' Sunday, 2.15pm, the Gateway stage 'Show me your claws!' Lekkido, Lord of the Lobsters, commands. Immediately, a crowd of at least 50 people in the Theatre field lift their arms in the air to make pincer movements with their hands, snipping at the sky. Over the next half-hour, Lekiddo pumps through crustacean-themed electro-pop songs (and even a Christmas number in 30C/86F heat), encouraging people to look out for each other, leave no trace on the farmland and, of course, show those claws. 'I've been coming to Glastonbury every year since 2009,' Lekiddo says. 'It's the people that bring me back every time. Everyone's having fun, they want to get involved and they feel the lobster love I bring.' It's unclear what Lekkido's lobster connection is or where it came from. He simply states: 'One day the lobsters chose me,' but the backstory matters little since his crowd is fervent, queueing up to meet him and show their pincers once the show is done. 'It's an honour to be here and I'll keep coming back,' he says. 'As long as the lobsters will have me.' Sunday, 10.30pm, Scissors Throughout the course of their hour-long Sunday night performance at the queer venue Scissors, the feminist pop punk group Twat Union will go through five costume changes, an entire carton of cranberry juice (downed by saxophonist Beth Hopkins) and bring out props including a vibrator, a drill and a broomstick. 'It's incredible to be performing our theatrical comedy music at one of the biggest festivals in the world, on a stage adorned with a giant pair of open legs,' says Kate Mac, the singer, before their set. 'It's our first Glastonbury, so we don't quite know what to expect, but we're excited to get silly with the crowd and make people engage with feminism in the process.' The band will be working through satirical songs from their recently released debut EP that reference UTIs (hence the cranberry juice), red flags in relationships and stereotypical depictions of women in bands, hoping to draw in punters who aren't already distracted by clashing headline slots from Olivia Rodrigo and the Prodigy. 'We're one member down this weekend, so we're going to give it our all and can't wait to hopefully come back,' says Alice Rivers, the keyboardist. 'We'll be full twats at Glastonbury then.'
The Herald Scotland
34 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Glastonbury Festival 2025 ends after weekend of controversy and surprises
Bobby Vylan, of Bob Vylan, led crowds on the festival's West Holts Stage in chants of 'death, death to the IDF', before a member of Irish rap trio Kneecap suggested fans 'start a riot' outside his bandmate's upcoming court appearance, and led the crowd on chants of 'f*** Keir Starmer'. Sir Keir had said in the run-up to the festival that he thought Kneecap's set was not 'appropriate' at Glastonbury. On Friday, festival goers were treated to surprise performances from alternative pop star Lorde, who played her new album Virgin in full, and Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, who played two years after a set at the festival during which he struggled to manage his Tourette syndrome symptoms. The 1975 took to the Pyramid Stage to headline that night, with a set which saw singer Matty Healy joke he was his generation's 'best songwriter', with the band playing songs such as Chocolate, Love Me and About You. Pulp were revealed to be Patchwork appearing on the Pyramid Stage on Saturday to a backdrop paying homage to their classic 1995 stand in headline set. The Jarvis Cocker-fronted band performed some of their best known songs such as Common People, Babies and Do You Remember The First Time?. Lewis Capaldi returned to Glastonbury two years after a set at the festival during which he struggled to manage his Tourette syndrome symptoms (Yui Mok/PA) Their appearance came 30 years after their breakthrough headline performance at the festival when they stood in for The Stone Roses after the Manchester band's guitarist John Squire was injured in a cycling accident. Candida Doyle, the band's keyboard player, had previously appeared to confirm the band would not perform at the festival, despite being keen to play, telling BBC Radio 6 Music last week 'they (Glastonbury) weren't interested'. Also on Saturday, Haim made a surprise appearance on the Park Stage opening with one of their best known songs in The Wire, before performing a mix of older songs such as Summer Girl, and new singles including Relationships. The day saw veteran rocker Neil Young headline, performing some of his best known songs including Cinnamon Girl, Like A Hurricane and Rockin' In The Free World, at one point in the set he performed with Hank Williams' guitar. The 1975 lead singer Matty Healey joked he was his generation's 'best songwriter' (Yui Mok) Brat star Charli XCX headlined the Other Stage on Saturday, performing tracks from last year's summer sensation such as 360, Von Dutch and Club Classics. Performing the viral Apple dance, during the song of the same name, was US singer Gracie Abrams, who had played on the same stage a day earlier. Sir Rod Stewart performed in the Sunday legends slot, bringing out former Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood for Stay With Me, Lulu for Hot Legs and Simply Red's Mick Hucknall for a performance of his band's If You Don't Know Me By Now. He was also joined by the festival's founder, Sir Michael Eavis, who was wheeled on to the stage by his daughter, organiser Emily Eavis. Charli XCX headlined the Other Stage on Saturday (Ben Birchall/PA) Bagpipes had signalled the arrival of Sir Rod, who kicked off his afternoon performance with 1981 single, Tonight I'm Yours (Don't Hurt Me). Sir Rod's set also included hits such as Maggie May, You Wear It Well and Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?. The Pyramid Stage was headlined by pop rocker Olivia Rodrigo on Sunday evening, who brought out The Cure frontman Robert Smith to sing his band's songs Just Like Heaven and Friday I'm In Love. As the 66-year-old indie-goth star arrived on stage on Sunday night, Rodrigo said: 'Glastonbury would you please welcome Robert Smith, give him a big welcome, come on.' Sir Rod Stewart was joined by the festival's founder, Sir Michael Eavis (Yui Mok/PA) At the end of Just Like Heaven, the pair hugged, before Rodrigo said 'give it up for Robert Smith you guys' before adding she was 'so honoured to play with him tonight'. The weekend saw many acts express their support for Palestine, with singer Ellie Rowsell of indie rockers Wolf Alice telling the crowd: 'We want to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine, and we shouldn't be afraid to do that.' Their Other Stage set saw them climax with their best known song Don't Delete The Kisses, which came after they had played snippets of The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army and Black Sabbath's War Pigs. Irish country star CMAT, real name Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, chanted 'free Palestine' during her set, which included Take A Sexy Picture Of Me, from her forthcoming third studio album Euro-Country. The Pyramid Stage was headlined by Olivia Rodrigo on Sunday evening (Yui Mok/PA) While frontman Dan Hoff of Irish noise rockers Gurriers said during their Woodsies set: 'Free Palestine, unlike other bands we know where we stand politically.' A number of other acts performed through the night on some of the festival's smaller stages, before a large scale clean-up operation begins in the early hours of the morning.
