Glastonbury 2015 headliners The Who have revealed that they were asked to step in by the festival’s organisers after Prince dropped out.
Though Prince was never confirmed as a headline act at this year’s festival, a member of the band’s crew posted a new blog on their official website claiming that they were called in to replace the legendary singer, writing: “After crowd-pleasing sets by Lionel Richie and Paul Weller, it was time for The Who to close out the festival weekend, starting again just as the sun was setting. (Not many know that we were a last-months addition to the show, replacing Prince who decided not to come this year.)”
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While Prince had been rumoured to play the festival this year, its organisers never officially stated that this would be the case, with The Who being announced as the final headliner in May. The blog doesn’t reveal the reasoning behind Prince’s cancellation, but it does elaborate upon the disappointment that the band felt regarding the quality of their set, including accusations that somehow had “sabotaged” their gear prior to them taking to the stage. “As we began to prepare our coming changeover, we found someone had sabotaged the carefully-tested audio connections for much of our gear,” the blog post reads. “We’ve never seen that before, but we’re good at plugging things in, so all damage was repaired in time. Was it Mr. Weller or Lionel, no way. Dalai Lama – hmmm…. he did steal the show already.”
However, despite fixing their audio connections, the blog reveals that guitarist Pete Townshend in particular wasn’t pleased with their performance: “Within a few songs, we knew something was wrong. The band were playing MORE than a little loose, rather sloppy in fact. Pete was growing angry right away, yelling at one point that the band ought to play “like we’re in the same f*ing band” and telling brother Simon to pay close attention to their sync together.”
The blog continues: “Pete mentioned to everyone that they’d hoped to be “better” musically, and mentioned the lack of a sound check, but it likely wouldn’t have mattered much. It just sounded weird up there, and there were odd echoes making the timings sound off much of the time – leading the musicians all over the place. Later he did apologize for his radical behavior onstage, admitting such a show was a challenge at best.”
The blog also reveals that Townshend felt that the show was “one of the very worst the band had ever played.”
The Who concluded this year’s Glastonbury, playing a headline set on the Pyramid Stage on Sunday evening. It was recently revealed that Lionel Richie drew the biggest crowd of the entire weekend, playing to over 100,000 people and somehow managing to garner more attention from attendees than main headliner Kanye West.
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