Paul McCartney, this year’s would-be Glastonbury headliner, does not expect the festival to go ahead in 2021.
The former Beatles star told BBC Radio 4: “100,000 people closely packed together with flags and no masks – you know, talk about super-spreader. I’d love it to [happen], but I have a feeling it’s not going to.”
McCartney said the festival was not in his 2021 calendar. This week Glastonbury co-organiser Emily Eavis told the BBC that they are doing “everything we can” to ensure it takes place next year.
She said: “The hard part is understanding exactly what we’ll be planning for, and what impact that will have on what we’re able to do. But right now I’m not sure there’s anything we could do that would completely ensure we can welcome 200,000 people to spend six days in some fields in June 2021.”
Eavis said that if the festival could not happen in its traditional form, the organisers will consider inviting artists to perform on the farm for a series of live streams.
McCartney appeared on Radio 4 to discuss his new solo album, McCartney III, written and recorded solo in lockdown, which the Guardian called “the most straightforwardly enjoyable and certainly the most personal McCartney album since 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard”.
He also said he wanted to encourage people to get the Covid-19 vaccine: “If I am allowed to get it, I will.” In April, he blamed Chinese wet markets for the spread of the coronavirus and described eating bats as “medieval”.
