Arctic Monkeys, Fred Again, Raye, Lana Del Rey and Guns N’ Roses all astounded. And if everyone knew Foo Fighters would turn up, just who might share the stage with Elton John was the stuff of rumours
This year’s Glastonbury festival site seemed to be as awash with wild speculation as ever. Sunday’s headliner Elton John would supposedly be performing with special guest Britney Spears – for some reason, a post on Spears’s Instagram account featuring a photograph of a segmented apple was held up as incontrovertible proof that she was boarding a Somerset-bound helicopter. Others were convinced that Elton was going to bring on Harry Styles: after last year, when you could barely walk a few feet without hearing someone sagely informing someone else that Styles was definitely going to turn up on stage with Paul McCartney, or Billie Eilish, or Kendrick Lamar, or perhaps dishing up pad thai in a food stall just south of the Other stage, the former One Direction heart-throb now appears to be a permanent fixture of the Glasto rumour mill. Most lurid of all, there were those who insisted that the final British show of John’s record-breaking farewell tour was going to be enlivened by the spectral appearance of a hologram of the late George Michael.
Nevertheless, what was supposed to be the weekend’s biggest surprise turned out to be its worst-kept secret. Stories that the mysterious band who appear on Friday afternoon’s Pyramid stage bill as the Churnups are actually Blur or Pulp – two Britpop heroes currently reformed and playing shows – have long died out: everyone seems to know it is actually Foo Fighters, playing more or less the same slot at the festival as they did 25 years ago, when they were making their Glastonbury debut. Still, the audience gamely play along, roaring as if it’s an incredible and welcome revelation when the Churnups’ logo vanishes from the stage-side screens and is replaced by that of Dave Grohl and co.
