Why Beyonce Is NOT A Bad Booking For Glastonbury Festival 2011 (Glastonbury/ Beyonce Feature)
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Written by Dave Ball
Since the announcement earlier this month that pop diva Beyonce Knowles will be the closing headliner for 2011’s Glastonbury festival, internet forums have been buzzing with people hammering their keyboards with every reason imaginable why the booking is terrible and a travesty. Something I’ve read several times is 'it’s not Glastonbury’. For me Glastonbury is absolutely about this sort of booking.
First off, I should probably get one thing straight. I’m not going to start quoting sales figures for either her solo career or when she was part of Destiny’s Child. Some of the very best live acts I’ve seen don’t sell huge numbers of albums so that’s not the be all and end all, although at least a handful of mainstream hits are required for a successful headliner, as Damon Albarn admitted after Gorillaz ill fated set last year. I’m also far from being a fan of hers, I will without question be at a different stage while she’s performing. However, that is just one of the reasons why people shouldn’t have a problem with this.
If you’ve only ever watched Glastonbury from the warmth and shelter of your front room then it’s easy to feel like the Pyramid Stage is the be all and end all of the festival. BBC’s coverage, although admirable in its number of hours, rarely delves into the smaller stages in its main programming (the addition of red button options for other stages has helped in this respect). If you’ve been to the festival you will know that the Pyramid stage, as iconic and awe inspiring as it is, fills only a very small role in the festival's character.
Anyone lucky enough to have been to the festival will tell you the size of the site and number of stages is something you cannot completely comprehend until you have attended yourself and most of the fun is had away from the main stages. While Beyonce is headlining there will be another major act playing the Other Stage, as well as brand new bands who you may or may not have heard of, classic acts, DJ’s and all sorts of weird and wonderful other artists to spend your evening with. That’s all without the various areas such as Shangri-La which only truly comes to life after dark.
Over the years what is now the John Peel stage has given countless up and coming bands prime slots (including The XX and Mumford & Sons last year), as has the Other Stage whose headliners are usually carefully booked to offer an alternative genre to the Pyramid. The recent addition of Emily Eavis’ creation ‘The Park’ has also provided many highlights, especially from ‘secret’ performers which last year included Biffy Clyro and Thom Yorke.
It’s this diversity which makes Glastonbury so special and an event revered around the World and having acts like Beyonce performing headline slots doesn’t take anything away from this - it enhances it. Over the years Glastonbury has defined itself by being undefined. Unlike most other festivals such as Reading & Leeds, Download and Bestival, Glastonbury doesn’t have a genre or a theme. The whole ethos of what Michael Eavis created 41 years ago was that it would be all inclusive and accept everyone and everything.
Glastonbury’s ideal of giving the bands they like a chance, whatever they sound like and whoever they appeal to is what sets it apart and gives it the unique place it has, not only for music fans but for the performers themselves. Over recent years, standout performances on stages bigger than usual, to people who wouldn’t normally have heard their music has acted as a springboard to countless bands, especially when their ‘Glastonbury moments’ are screened on TV. Elbow’s beautiful Pyramid set in the sunshine in 2008 launched them into the public eye, with their performance of ‘One Day Like This’ melting hearts across the country and since earning them royalties from almost every TV show you can think of.
If you look through just the last ten years of line-ups you can see numerous places where headline bookings have at the time seemed controversial but usually turned out to be masterful. The closest comparison would have been in 2005 when Kylie Minogue was due to close the Pyramid before she was diagnosed with cancer (Basement Jaxx replaced her) but even the bookings of ‘cooler’ bands were often seen as a bit dodgy at the time.
In 2004 Muse headlined for the first time when many claimed they weren’t big enough and the same was said for Arctic Monkeys (2007) when people grumbled they weren’t ready with only a two album back catalogue. Legends such as Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young in 2009 were questioned over their relevance at that time and the comebacks of The Verve (2008) and Blur (2009) had all sorts of potential problems attached with them. The recurring theme through all of these performances was that they were massively attended and widely enjoyed.
Which brings me to my final argument for Miss Knowles, which happens to be about her husband. When Jay-Z was announced as Saturday night’s headliner in 2008 there were howls of derision from all corners. Noel Gallagher famously proclaimed ‘it’s just not Glastonbury is it?’ while Jay Z maintained a dignified silence before blowing away most of his doubters (and I’ll admit, I was among them) with a performance which has rightly gone down in Glastonbury history. During his set the huge crowd at the Pyramid stage bounced on demand and ‘showed their diamonds’, which I’ll admit I’m still slightly confused by, while he rattled through a hit-filled set. And hits are one thing none of us can argue Beyonce doesn’t have.
So, you tell me Beyonce as a headliner is not what Glastonbury’s about? I say taking a risk like this is exactly what Glastonbury is about.
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If you’ve only ever watched Glastonbury from the warmth and shelter of your front room then it’s easy to feel like the Pyramid Stage is the be all and end all of the festival. BBC’s coverage, although admirable in its number of hours, rarely delves into the smaller stages in its main programming (the addition of red button options for other stages has helped in this respect). If you’ve been to the festival you will know that the Pyramid stage, as iconic and awe inspiring as it is, fills only a very small role in the festival's character.
