Rod Stewart fans fear he could be 'replaced' at Glastonbury following cancelled shows
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Glastonbury Festival fans are speculating about potential replacements for Rod Stewart amid concerns over his health. The celebrated musician, who has had to cancel several concert dates leading up to the Worthy Farm extravaganza, has left fans worried he might not be fit to perform at Glastonbury this year.
While there's no official word on whether the 80-year-old rocker will need to be replaced in the festival line-up, uncertainty looms after Stewart was struck down with the flu, leading to scrapped shows in the US. Expressing his regret, Stewart shared: "So sorry my friends. I'm devastated and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience to my fans. I'll be back on stage and will see you soon."
His followers are crossing their fingers for his recovery, especially since a reunion with guitarist Ronnie Wood was announced for the Worthy Farm event.
Additionally, Stewart has teased that a new album from The Faces is in the pipeline, which would be their first since the 1973 hit 'Ooh La La'.
However, should the 'Maggie May' and 'Hot Legs' singer have to withdraw from Glastonbury, users on the r/GlastonburyFestival Reddit page have been throwing around ideas for his replacement.
One fan posed a question on the subreddit, asking: "Thoughts on Legend substitute if Rod can't play? Do you think they move around the line up to give another act that slot, maybe Pulp? Or bring in an entirely new artist..."
A festival enthusiast has shared their thoughts on the potential shake-up if Stewart were to withdraw from the festival. They suggested: "Nile Rodgers and Chic would get bumped, and a replacement (if any) would be added earlier in the running order."
Festival-goers seem to concur that this would be the most probable move. A user commented: "This seems the obvious answer.
"Getting someone suitable for the legend slot at short notice won't be easy but I imagine bumping Nile then rearranging some other timings/stages a little or offering someone who's already on site an extra set would be relatively straightforward."
(Image: Jim Dyson, Redfernsvia Getty Images)
Some fans are convinced Stewart will remain on the lineup, citing his dedication as seen when he performed despite suffering from food poisoning.
A fan expressed confidence in Stewart's commitment, writing: "He isn't pulling out. He played [...] with food poisoning. All the cancellations are so he can get better for Glastonbury."
Reflecting on a past performance, Stewart mentioned in a 2012 interview that despite feeling "groggy" he was determined not to miss the iconic Copacabana concert where he entertained an astonishing crowd of 3.5 million people.
Speculation continues among those unsure about Stewart's appearance at Glastonbury Festival, with suggestions of alternative acts like Robbie Williams being floated, although some doubt his willingness, with one fan writing that they "don't think he would do it."
A second user said: "Stevie Wonder is touring in the U.K from the 3rd of July..." A third fan commented: "It will all come down to how much notice he gives the festival. Pulling out 24 hours before is very different to pulling out a week before. I've got a feeling the slot won't be filled if he does pull out."
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
No camping chairs here! Inside Glastonbury's VIP accommodation where guests can visit the hairdresser and party in the pool (and even have a shower!)
The countdown for Glastonbury has officially begun - at least for those lucky enough to have secured their tickets to the UK's largest music festival. Every year, thousands of revellers descend on Worthy Farm - following a heated bid for tickets - to catch some of the world's biggest musical acts live on stage. For most, a stacked line-up is reason enough to endure muddy wellies and compost loos while sharing cramped tents pitched on the festival grounds. Those with deeper pockets, however, might find themselves swayed by more premium glamping experiences offered by The Pop Up Hotel - located 10 minutes from the festival site and not affiliated to Glastonbury. The most luxurious among them is a stay at the Tipi Tenthouse Suite that can accommodate up to 10 people and costs an eyewatering £28,999 to book for a five-day stay. Not a stinky loo in sight, the sprawling tent features real beds, en-suite showers, flushing loos, and all-important power sockets for charging up devices. It is fully equipped with fresh bedding and linen, toiletries, fluffy towels, hanging rails for guests' festival-ready outfits, carpeted floors, and deck chairs to unwind in. And this year, The Pop Up Hotel has expanded its offerings for guests at its boutique tents - including the Tipi Tenthouse - to include access to a Sephora salon that will put the 'glam' in 'glamping'. Guests will be able to book on-site hair and makeup sessions with pros or, if they prefer, get Glastonbury ready at the self-serve beauty stations stocked with with complimentary tools and 2025's most viral products. They will have access to a 24-hour bar, serving up a selection of delicious cocktails made with premium spirits such as George Clooney's tequila brand Casamigos, and multiple fine-dining options. Instead of waiting in line for a burger, The Pop Up Hotel's inhabitants can treat themselves to fabulous meals at an all-new al fresco restaurant, an a la carte restaurant or a 24-hour deli. As well as having a snug bed to cosy up into each night, hotel guests will be able to luxuriate in the swimming pool, indulge in spa facilities, and revitalise their festival weary bodies by booking bespoke IV infusions and compression therapy sessions. Curated wellness sessions as well as lively pool parties are both on offer at the hotel, so guests can spend their time away from Worthy Farm either recovering from all the action - or hyping themselves up for another day at Glastonbury. They will also be provided with a personal concierge as well as dedicated customer service teams, luggage and buggy service and 24-hour private security for guests' privacy. Prices for the accommodation start at £2,999 for five nights for a Classic Room, which is priced for two but can host up to four people. The Tipi Tenthouse Suite is the hotel's most indulgent offering and will set its inhabitants back by £28,999 for the duration of the festival. With tickets to Glastonbury notoriously difficult to get, however, most fans will have to contend with watching the festival from their own homes. Hopefuls were left fuming on Sunday after resale tickets sold out within minutes as organisers noted an 'incredible demand' for passes - especially since they'll have to wait until 2027 to try again. Final sales for the popular music festival were available on Sunday, but due to popular demand were gone within just 20 minutes. The official X account for Glastonbury posted an announcement after fans were furious at not being able to snap up tickets last weekend. 'On a morning of incredible demand, all of the tickets in today's resale have now been sold,' the post read. 'Thank you to everyone who bought one, and sorry to those who missed out.' Fans seemed to be gutted about the new system, with many suggesting it affected their chances at grabbing tickets for the extravaganza at Worthy Farm. Last November, festival bosses announced changes to its booking process, with the introduction of an automatic queue system. Rather than refreshing a holding page, they will be 'randomly assigned a place in the queue' once tickets are available, meaning people who join later will automatically be placed at the back of the line. The system is similar to the one used for major concerts by Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Oasis. By cutting out the need to constantly refresh the website, it reduces the load on the ticketing system and may even speed up the process for users. As in previous years, fans need to be registered for tickets in advance. Taking to X, one person wrote: 'You're not sorry! I'm sorry, actually crying here. Gutted isn't the word. Well done bots.' Another disappointed fan said: 'Please reinstate the old system for 2027. This year has been ridiculous. 4 tries and didn't get anywhere near close.' During last year's edition of the iconic festival, organiser Emily Eavis confirmed that 2026 will be a fallow year 'to let the land rest'. This means festival-goers who missed out on tickets for this year's edition of will have to wait 24 months for another opportunity to attend. 'The festival before a fallow year is always a fun one to plan, because you almost have to fit two years into one,' Emily told The Sun at the time. 'It's got to be the best one yet. Every single one of our vast, incredible crew is crucial to making this event work.' This year's headliners include English pop-rock band The 1975, US pop-punk songwriter Olivia, and legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young. Other big names set to dazzle Worthy Farm include Charli XCX, Loyle Carner, Raye, and Rod Stewart.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The eye-watering cost of glamping at Glastonbury with two teenage daughters: ‘It's the same as a fortnight in Greece'
It's Saturday night, close to midnight, in a field in Somerset. I am with my daughters Clemmie, 16, and Sasha, 18, gyrating, as much as the thousands of surrounding sequin-clad bodies allow us, and bellowing along to rapper Central Cee and his unprintable lyrics about b***hes and obscure sexual positions. Right behind us Zoe Ball is keeping an eye on her teenage daughter, who's in the thick of the rapturous crowd. Beside her, going almost unnoticed, rapper Stormzy is quietly grooving along. Welcome to Glastonbury, which I remember as a gathering in the boonies for smelly hippies, where you bought a ticket, without queuing, for £58 from your local record shop (or you simply climbed over the fence). Today it has morphed into the event of the summer, with more than 2.5 million people trying to get their hands on the 200,000 available tickets, paying £378.50 to watch some of the biggest stars in music. Highlights of this year's festival, which starts on Wednesday (and on the BBC on Friday), include Olivia Rodrigo, Rod Stewart, the 1975 and Alanis Morissette. To spend eight hours a day seeing everything Glastonbury offers over five days would take an estimated 30 years. Still, for the past couple of years my family has given it a good go. For me, it's extra poignant because I'm a returning veteran. I first hit Worthy Farm (the rest of the year the site's a working dairy farm) fresh out of college in 1993, subsequently completing four Glastos in a row. That run ended after the miserable mudbaths of 1997 and 1998. Yet, two children later, two years ago I braced myself to return. The girls had finished their A-levels and GCSEs, and Sasha was desperate to see her idol Lana Del Rey, who was headlining the Other Stage. The clincher was the camping situation. Glastonbury diehards deem me pathetic, but even when I was young and gung-ho I loathed sleeping on a deflated airbed under sweaty canvas in a sardine-packed field, with no washing for five days. And let's not even discuss the portable loos, which – in rainy years – overflowed. Yet during my absence, upmarket glamping sites have sprung up all around the festival's edges. Ours cost the same as a fortnight in Greece (we're talking at least £2,000 for five nights in a pre-erected bell tent, slightly cheaper if you bring your own bedding, more if you stay in one of the sites that boasts extras such as swimming pools). But not struggling with guy ropes, sleeping on a camp bed under a duvet, with access to hot water and flushing toilets is priceless. The overall cost for the three of us when you add up food, ticket price, accommodation and getting there comes in at around £3,580. It's the cost of a holiday so I decided to treat it exactly like one, putting my out-of-office on, and carving out the budget to pay for it. Accommodation sorted, next was the business of not humiliating my daughters. When I was a teenager, the notion of going to a festival with my parents would have been preposterous. But times have changed. I've never been clubbing with the girls, but they're happy to watch with bemusement as I sing along word-perfect at the sets of Gen X idols such as Blondie (Debbie Harry very much still rocking it at 79). In return, I accompany them in shimmying to Gen Z favourites The Last Dinner Party and the aforesaid Del Rey, where at Sasha's insistence we push up to the stage barrier. 'This is the best moment of my life!' she screams. Yet 30 minutes later, Lana still hasn't appeared – not unusual diva behaviour, but unacceptable by Glasto's hyper-organised standards. She mutters an excuse about having to do her hair. 1993 Forty-five minutes in, having exceeded the midnight curfew, she's abruptly cut off. We see her on her knees begging a sound man in a fleece to continue, but he's unswayed. Sasha's devastated. I give her a lecture about professionalism and the importance of punctuality. 'Shut up, Mum,' she yells. I can't pretend I'm completely down with the kids. There are moments when I sound like the High Court judge who'd never heard of The Beatles – take the moment the girls freak out at the sight of the rapper Aitch passing in a limousine. 'Ooh, is that H from Steps?' I ask excitedly, while the girls groan in humiliation. Sometimes we go our separate ways – me to see my teenage heartthrob Billy Idol, now fronting Generation Sex, and them to Weyes Blood (who?). 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Clemmie says: 'I don't want you to be cool. I want you to be my mum.' WHAT WE SPENT TRANSPORT £80 TICKETS APPROX £1,000 GLAMPING APPROX £2,000 GOOD AND DRINKS £500 TOTAL £3,580
The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
When time ran out for the Glasgow Apollo
The venue's peak came during the Seventies and for those of us who were there then, it, and the many gigs we saw there, remain among the defining images of that decade. Alongside, perhaps, the Old Grey Whistle Test, John Peel's cult radio shows, and enthusiastic reading of the music weeklies – Sounds, NME, Melody Maker for news of the latest vinyl and tour dates. Not to mention, of course, the music of the time, whether it was punk and new wave, the Eagles, the Stones, prog, glam, heavy metal or soul. The Apollo memories are imperishable. Many of the bands that played the venue are, like the Apollo itself, no more, having broken up for one reason or another: 'musical differences', frustration over a lack of success, a desire to follow individual dreams. But a gratifying number of groups are still thriving today: Neil Young, the Stones, the Cure, Status Quo, Rod Stewart, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Robert Plant, the Rezillos, Robin Trower, AC/DC, Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, Eric Clapton, Hawkwind, Jethro Tull, Jackson Browne, Van Morrison. Santana, too. Led by Carlos Santana, who turns 78 next month, they entertained the OVO Hydro just a few nights ago, nearly half a century after their last appearance in Renfield Street. And then there's Paul Weller, of course; it was his old band, The Style Council, who brought the curtain down on the Apollo on Sunday, June 16, 1985. Time has been busy catching up with other Apollo acts. Black Sabbath are bowing out with a huge farewell gig at Birmingham's Villa Park on July 5. That same night, a few miles away elsewhere in the city, Jeff Lynne's ELO will play the first of five last-ever concerts – two in Birmingham, two in Manchester, and one in London's Hyde Park. Elkie Brooks, who experienced the Apollo on a handful of occasions in the latter years of its existence, is on a Long Farewell Tour. In August, The Who will embark on their North America Farewell Tour, To look through the comprehensive gig listings curated by the people behind the excellent Glasgow Apollo website is to be reminded the astonishing wealth of gigs that took place there, across so many genres. The names of some of the acts – Renaissance, Rare Bird, drummer Ginger Baker's group Baker-Gurvitz Army, the all-female US rockers Fanny, Gentle Giant, Kokomo, Glencoe, Golden ('Radar Love') Earring, the Groundhogs, Traffic, Japan's Sadistic Mika Group – are familiar to fans of a certain vintage today. Less familiar, possibly, are Tea, who supported Baker Gurvitz Army in 1975; Dave and the Mistakes, who opened for Elvis Costello and the Attractions in 1981; and Sandii & the Sunsetz, another Japanese group, who were the support act for (of course) Japan in 1982. It's interesting to look back at the music weeklies and see what they made of certain concerts. Here's a small selection: * 'Heat, dust, smoke, lasers and Genesis combined to turn the Glasgow Apollo into a replica of Dante's Inferno when the band descended on the city on Friday night' – Melody Maker, July 1976. * 'Rory G[allagher] made it however, and played an undeniably proficient over two-hour set to the most rapturous reception I've seen in ages. The audience was crazy, drunken, happy, and collectively about as intelligent as the average tree-stump: in short, all the jolly working-class virtues that made me leave Glasgow in the first place' – Sounds, April 1978. * 'Fred Turner [of Bachman Turner Overdrive] is a real sweathog of a bass player. Whether he's hungrily engulfing chip sandwiches in a Glasgow hotel under the lights of a documentary film crew, or bouncing all over the Apollo stage until the lighting towers begin to develop major instabilities, you gotta admit the dude is, like, heavy, man. He ought to do a seesaw act with Leslie West' – NME, May 1975. * 'As a unit [Lynyrd Skynyrd] peaked with 'Tuesday's Gone', which took on a church atmosphere – in Glasgow the audience even started the Terrace Sway.... In Glasgow, the entire audience sang 'Free Bird' in its entirety. That's freaky (good-freaky), 3,000 people singing homage to a guitarist [Duane Allman] they've never seen' – Sounds, February 1976. * 'Backstage at the Apollo the theatre photographer is taking a group shot of the Rolling Stones receiving their trophies earned by selling out the three shows there. 'More ANIMATION pleeeze,' Jagger shouts good naturedly to the nervous photographer. 'When the Faces played here they could only afford one trophy', Woody [Ron Wood] informs the gathering, 'so we gave it to Tetsu [Yamauchi] to make him feel wanted'. Tonight each band member gets their own special souvenir. Just another memory. Keith gives his to Marlon [his son]' – Sounds, April 1976. * 'For Scotland, the Pretender changed tactics. Wearing a tartan wool scarf, he concentrated on rock 'n' roll. It was such good rock that it made me think maybe the Eagles aren't the best American rock 'n' roll band. Maybe the best American rock 'n' roll band is Jackson Browne ... Browne's initial self-centred introspection gently fades away. The Glasgow Apollo was cold, and Jackson Browne wanted to warm the place up with some powerfully generated rock. I almost thought he'd do 'Whole Lotta Shakin'' – Sounds, December 1976. The Apollo was noted, then, for many things: for its unassailable place on the Scottish gig circuit, for the rampant fervour with which many groups were greeted, for the less-than-salubrious nature of its backstage facilities. It all added up to a brilliant, authentic venue. The Apollo was living on borrowed time 40 years ago, however. The outcry that had greeted an earlier closure date, in 1978, when the venue's operators were granted a licence to turn it into a bingo hall, was decidedly more muted in the run-up to the Style Council farewell in 1985. As to why, David Belcher, the Herald's music writer, had this to say: 'The answer on everyone's lips is the Scottish Exhibition Centre, which has been bruited as having the ability to stage five to 10 10,000-seater per year along with up to 40 annual 2,000-seater shows'. Belcher also noted that the Apollo was damp and crumbling and that its fabric had deteriorated alarmingly over the last five years – not surprisingly, perhaps, given that the place had opened, as Green's Playhouse, back in 1927. The Apollo's time was up, then. But who could possibly have guessed in 1985 that its absence would be mourned, four decades later? RUSSELL LEADBETTER
