Neil Young will headline Glastonbury 2025 after all. After writing in a blog post this week that the BBC was exerting “corporate control” over the sponsorship-free, nonprofit festival, he backtracked in a new post this morning. “Happily, the festival is now back on our itinerary and we look forward to playing!,” he wrote, blaming “an error in the information received,” without elaboration.
Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis wrote on Instagram this morning, “What a start to the year! Neil Young is an artist who’s very close to our hearts at Glastonbury. He does things his own way and that’s why we love him.”
The BBC has been partnered with Glastonbury in an exclusive broadcasting deal since 1997, long before Young last headline, in 2009. But Young lamented in his earlier post that the broadcasting company, which is government-owned, had “wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in.”
It remains to be seen how much, if any, of Young’s set will be televised or uploaded online, as is customary for headliners. In 2009, the BBC said Young had limited the broadcast of his set to five songs after months of negotiations. BBC News notes that Mark Cooper, who was then the executive producer of the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage, said at the time, “They believe in the live event and retaining its mystery and that of their artist. You probably won’t find too many Neil Young performances available freely on TV or online. He generally prefers the audience to find his albums.”