The reason Prince pulled out of playing Glastonbury Festival
Most performers might think that playing Glastonbury would be considered one of the main highlights of their career. After slogging it out in dive bars and trying to get the most out of half-empty halls that could care less about you, this is the moment where everything comes together, and people finally give you your flowers as one of those who truly arrived. At least, that might be how some people feel, but when you’re Prince, you’re going to do things the way you want to do them.
Then again, Prince was always a man who played by his own rules, especially when it came to his stage show. Throughout his time in the 1980s, Prince would never expect anything less than perfection from anyone he was working with, usually working people down to the bone and even firing production gurus Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis from the time for missing one gig.
When it came time for him to play Glastonbury, though, things started to get a little bit testy between him and the press. Although ‘The Purple One’ would have felt right at home on that stage, his greatest nemesis was the media, who constantly claimed that he would be making an appearance every year and then failing to show up.
For years, it had been speculated that he would play, with the press promising it in 2014 before being replaced by Metallica and again in 2015 when he was replaced by The Who in the headline slot. 2014 may have been the closest he came to headlining the festival, but Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis claimed the papers got to him before they could.
In a statement released later, Eavis told NME that Prince pulled out of performing because of all the drama surrounding his appearance, saying, “We wanted him to play, and it got to the point where his people were talking to us about him doing it, but before he confirmed he got really upset because he thought we had advertised that he was playing. We hadn’t, but with social media, rumours get everywhere, and one of those rumours was that Prince was coming”.
This wasn’t new for Prince. He had never meant for his name to be used just to sell tickets, even telling The Guardian years before, “They use my name to sell the festival. It’s illegal. I’ve never spoken to anyone about doing that concert, ever”. You could call it Prince being a diva if you want to, but maybe the idea of people using his name still hit too close to home.
Prince had spent most of his career fighting with Warner Bros over the use of his songs, and the fact that he changed his name to a symbol to differentiate himself from his old work was a good indicator of how devoted he was to people seeing him as a commodity. So when a newspaper still plans on using your name to sell a little more, it makes sense why you’d be pissed all over again.
The festival would never have the chance again after 2016, with Prince passing away after an accidental overdose in his home at Paisley Park. 2014 may have been the golden opportunity for English audiences to be bathed in the Purple Rain, but considering all of the media attention surrounding it, this was like having a wide-open goal and still managing to miss.
