Glastonbury’s Emily Eavis says livestreamed sets could happen in place of cancelled festival
Emily Eavis has said that livestreamed sets from the Glastonbury festival site could happen this year.
The festival’s co-organiser, who earlier this week announced its cancellation for the second year running owing to the coronavirus crisis, said she would love to make an event that “can be watched at home by people all over the world”.
Today (January 22), Eavis told The Guardian: “A lot of big artists have been in touch offering to perform for us at the farm, so we’re doing everything we can to make that happen. We would love to build a show that can be watched at home by people all over the world, and of course it would be a useful way for us to make some very welcome income.”
Separately, her father, Glastonbury festival founder Michael Eavis, told LBC yesterday (January 21) that the team is thinking about putting on some autumn events. He said he hoped to hold a smaller event later in the year to belatedly mark the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury, which was originally set to take place last year.
“I would like to do something in September. I would like to do something smaller somewhere around the anniversary date of when we started,” he said, “which was the 18th of September 1970. I would like to consider possibly doing something around that time.”
When asked if it could involve big-name acts who have previously performed at Glastonbury, Michael said: “Yes, but I do need to get reassurance from the ethics people.”
A smaller event could potentially take the form of Glastonbury’s annual Pilton Party – a one-off concert held at Worthy Farm every September to thank workers and local people for their help in organising the festival.
Glastonbury festival was officially cancelled earlier this week. In their statement, Emily and Michael said: “In spite of our efforts to move Heaven & Earth, it has become clear that we simply will not be able to make the Festival happen this year. We are so sorry to let you all down.”
Tickets bought for the 2020 event will be rolled over to 2022, as was the plan for this yer’s now-cancelled installment.
Elsewhere in The Guardian interview Emily explained that organisers could not be “reasonably confident that there would be no or much reduced social distancing measures in place” by June, despite ideas of on-site testing and the scrapping of indoor venues, among other measures.
“Everything from restrictions on public transport capacities to availability of the medical staff we need to work at the event,” she said, “to the simple fact that mass gatherings are currently still legally prohibited and it’s not at all clear when that will be reversed” contributed to them ultimately pulling the plug on the 2021 event.