Who has been banned from performing at Glastonbury Festival in the past?
For a festival of such mainstream stature, Glastonbury affords the thousands of artists on their voluminous programme a wide berth for political dissent.
Thrust to the centre of the free speech debate in light of the furore surrounding Irish Republican hip-hop trio Kneecap after brandishing a Hezbollah flag at a show last year, festival founder Michael Eavis and his co-organiser and daughter Emily have resisted overwhelming pressure from the Zionist lobby to kick them off the bill, including a cabal of music industry bigwigs from WME, CAA, Metropolis talent agencies sending a secret email to Worthy Farm HQ firmly pushing to cancel the group.
According to Labour MP David Taylor, the Eavis family commendably “did not bother” to respond to his correspondence. Without an authentic connection to its social democratic founding and culture of protest against the injustices of the day, Glastonbury would die a death.
While it is naive to think every ticket-holder is a left radical or flowered-up hippy, Michael’s humanist Methodism courses throughout the festival’s history and every inch of the site, holding little time for the censorious muzzling of acts across that special weekend salivated for by sad Tory types and risible Israeli shills.
You can seemingly say what you like on any of their hundred-odd stages. Levellers have a long history with Glastonbury, first playing in 1990 and then upgrading to the Pyramid Stage in 1994, despite criticising the erection of its maligned wall and the cutting off of the Travellers field yet still returning to play numerous times since. Eavis has it in him to let bygones be bygones too, Noel Gallagher’s infamous lambast of 2008’s booking of New York rap legend Jay-Z not stopping his High Flying Birds from playing in 2022.
Gone but not forgotten: Glasto’s awkward contradictions
The artists explicitly banned by Glastonbury, albeit at times temporarily, appear arbitrary and at odds with the festival’s otherwise sanctuary for running your mouth off. Off the back of a UK number-one record with 1992 – The Love Album, drum machine grebos, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine headlined that year’s Friday night slot with a compromised set length due to the day’s overrunning before them. Unhappy, guitarist Les ‘Fruitbat’ Carter slagged off Michael Eavis on stage, resulting in an alleged tense backstage encounter and a letter notifying the pair of their eternal ban.
Another name on Michael’s naughty list was perennial post-punk miserablist Mark E Smith. Throughout the 1980s, the event was called Glastonbury CND Festival in official solidarity with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament during the height of the Cold War. According to Smith, Michael didn’t appreciate his pro-nuclear weapons statements at the time and booked his The Fall band below James in 1992. Displeased, Smith spouted a colourful tirade against the festival organiser and left a red mark on his name.
Smith would make an appearance in 2010 with Gorillaz on their collaborative ‘Glitter Freeze’ number, complaining that the backstage was “full of newsreaders’ daughters and politicians’ daughters”. This didn’t stop The Fall from returning in 2015 and playing the Park Stage to acclaim.
Further away from the Eavis’ oversight, but “two-bit rave punk band” Killdren was scheduled to play the South East Corner’s artfully hedonistic Shangri-Hell International TV stage in 2019 before the area’s organisers realised the quartet had released ‘Kill Tory Scum (Before They Kill You)’ the year before. Shangri-La explained their billing was “all about positivity and pacifism, unity and love”, which feels mealy-mouthed as Glastonbury holds strong against a band charged with terror offences six years later.
