Bob Vylan announce UK tour as BBC chief condemns “deeply disturbing” Glastonbury set to MPs
Bob Vylan have announced a new UK tour on the same day that BBC director general Tim Davie again condemned their Glastonbury set to MPs.
The run of dates is aptly titled, Won’t Go Quitely, and will kick off on November 4th at the O2 Academy in Leeds. Announcing the tour, the duo wrote, “After all the attempts to silence us, we’re about to be louder than ever. We won’t go quietly!”
Following Leeds, Bob Vylan will play shows at Manchester Academy, the O2 Academy in Glasgow, the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London, The Prospect Building in Bristol, before concluding the run at Birmingham’s O2 Academy on December 4th.
After the band’s set on the West Holts Stage at Glastonbury in June, Avon and Somerset Police began investigating Bob Vylan, but they have yet to be charged. During their performance, lead singer Bobby Vylan led the crowd through a chant of “Death to the IDF,” referring to the Israeli Defence Force.
Bob Vylan’s visas were revoked in the United States following Glastonbury. Additionally, their management company, UTA, dropped them, and they also lost their support slot with Gogol Bordello on a European tour.
Now, on September 9th, the same day as the newly announced tour, BBC director general Davie addressed their Glastonbury performance to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in Westminster.
Per The Independent, Davie told the committee when probed about the BBC live-streaming the set on iPlayer: “I don’t think I misread it, I just got there (to Glastonbury) when I heard about it (at) about five o’clock … the performance was well done by then, and at that point I knew absolutely that it was an antisemitic broadcast.”
Davie continued: “So, my decision was to get that off on demand, simple as that, I mean, it wasn’t too complicated in my mind, and to your point, I do think it was deeply disturbing, deeply disturbing.”
The director general said that the BBC made “a very significant mistake” in broadcasting the performance on iPlayer. He also claimed to have said, “We’re not broadcasting this guy,” when shown footage of Bobby Vylan’s comments.
Davie’s latest comments come after Dame Melanie Dawes, the chief executive of Ofcom, claimed in July that the broadcaster’s Glastonbury coverage “does start to erode public trust and confidence” in the BBC.
Bob Vylan UK tour dates 2025:
November
04 – O2 Academy, Leeds
05 – Academy, Manchester
06 – O2 Academy, Glasgow
11 – O2 Forum Kentish Town, London
20 – The Prospect Building, Bristol
December
04 – O2 Academy, Birmingham
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