Glastonbury 2024: Fat White Family mock Idles during performance of ‘I Am Mark E Smith’
Fat White Family delivered easily the most unhinged set of a rather sanitised Glastonbury Festival so far as they took to the Woodsies stage on a sunny June 29th. During their set, they seemed to hit out at last night’s Other Stage headliners, Idles.
In a mocking tone, frontman Lias Saoudi announced, while clad in skin-coloured extra-thick Lycra cycling shorts, “This next song is about my feminist zeal. This next song is called ‘I Am Joe Talbot’,” before mocking the boxer stance the Idles rocker frequent adopts.
The actual track that they performed was ‘I Am Mark E Smith’, a homage of the strangest sorts to the late The Fall frontman. However, the slight dig at Talbot that preceded it wasn’t entirely unexpected, the two bands have exchanged words in the past.
Five years back, Fat White Family released a public statement defaming Idles, proclaiming: “The last thing our increasingly puritanical culture needs right now is a bunch of self neutering middle class boobs telling us to be nice to immigrants; you might call that art, I call it sententious pedantry.”
At the time, Saoudi told The Independent: “I don’t mind bands being dull or whatever, fair enough, but when you’re grandstanding on that woke ticket I just find that anathema to what rock n’ roll really is, which is the reprobates. This is freak country. We don’t bring that kind of thing in here.”
Talbot defended his own band at the time explaining that their motto is simply “love is the thing” and their political posturing is aimed to raise empathy and ensure important conversations are the forefront of art. During their set on the Other Stage they continued this message, leading the crowd in a chant of “fuck the king” and yelling “Viva Palestine”.
Idles’ set also an unexpected piece of performance art from Banksy. During the Bristolian punk’s headline set on The Other Stage, the anonymous street artist unveiled a new artwork as he cast an inflatable life raft holding dummy migrants out over the crowd as the band played the pro-immigration track, ‘Danny Nedelko’. That’s precisely the sort of on-the-nose performance the greased-up Saoudi seemingly stands against.
In a four-and-a-half star review of Idles’ set at Worthy Farm, Far Out wrote: “With their rough as sandpaper punk, Idles delivered the perfect antidote to the polished pop from Dua Lipa a short walk away on the Pyramid Stage. Evidently enthused to have been given such a prominent slot, the socially conscious screamers captured the energy of a firecracker let off in an elevator. Easily one of the most full-throttle and affecting sets of Glastonbury Festival so far.”
You can watch Fat White Family perform ‘I Am Mark E Smith’ below.
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