The Vaccines have criticised Glastonbury festival for booking the Who as Sunday- night headliners at this year’s event.
The band’s frontman Justin Young told Digital Spy that the veteran mod band are “such a safe booking” and that he would sooner have seen the slot handed to a newer act. The Who, who formed in 1964, already have experience of headlining the Pyramid stage when they closed the festival in 2007.
According to Young, the festival should have plumped for a female artist instead. He said: “I would’ve had Florence headline. I know she’s playing anyway, but people are complaining about the lack of women at the top of festival bills and the lack of new artists. There’s a great artist who’s huge as well and progressing in more than one sense of the word. Whether that’s your thing or not, I think it would’ve been a really big statement if Glastonbury put her at the top of the bill.”
The band’s guitarist Freddie Cowan agreed, saying: “Headlining a festival is really self-fulfilling and if you give someone the opportunity like Florence, she’d just take it and run with it and the year after she’d be headlining everything. She’s definitely a strong enough artist to step up to the plate.”
This year’s festival is headlined by another older act on the Friday night when Foo Fighters top the bill, but has made a bolder choice on the Saturday night by booking Kanye West. This announcement caused controversy at the time, with some fans going as far as to set up a petition asking the festival to remove Kanye from the bill. The Vaccines, however, thought enlisting the rapper was a good call.
Young said: “It’s awesome, it’s amazing. He’s the biggest, most important artist on the planet, so he should be playing the biggest, most important festival on the planet.”
The Vaccines released their third album English Graffiti on 25 May. Glastonbury festival runs from 24-28 June.
