The Music Thread

Rod Stewart’s Glastonbury legends slot feels like wringing out the dregs of a career

Story by Mark Beaumont

Read the room, Rod. To a slow-growing Pyramid Stage crowd – several regretting their choice of leopard-print leggings and mullet wig – Stewart arrives on a lavish Vegas stage in a Liberace jacket, fresh from pleading with the UK to “give Farage a chance”.

A chance to demonise immigrants, dismantle the NHS, ruin us all with die-bankrupt health insurance and let multi-millionaires off with a bargain bin one-off tax payment for life, yes? Looks like Rod the Selfish Sod will have to put on a barnstormer to carry off the most pre-tainted legend slot in Glastonbury history.

Unfortunately, his famously grainy and lived-in voice is now totally shot, and he initially lacks much of the field-wise goodwill that carried Diana Ross through against similar odds in 2022. For a good hour, despite valiant work by a host of glamorous backing singers and beaming fiddle players in razzle-dazzling attention away from Rod’s punctured instrument, it’s often preferable to spend the set mentally reworking the songs’ titles rather than concentrating too hard on their wincing renditions. “Some Guys Have All the Luck,” he wheezes early on. Some sadly now sing like a set of knackered van brakes. The first cut may be the deepest, but the first note isn’t even the flattest. It’s an earache, more like.

There’s also some awkward kowtowing to the Glastonbury mindset, which comes across as disingenuous damage limitation. “Music brings us together!” he cries ahead of a painful take on Sam Cooke’s “Having a Party”. His urging of the world’s nations to “join hands, start a love train” during a cover of The O’Jays’ “Love Train” is his response to “a lot of talk about the Middle East, and rightly so” – presumably landing on the condition that it isn’t routed through the Chunnel. That he does all this wearing trousers with two stars on each buttock seems an unwitting self-review.

Come “Maggie May” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” the crowd begin to carry the songs for him (hear that, Rod? It’s called compassion), particularly when a song like “Young Turks” requires any sort of energy or oomph. He copes much better with the gentler material: the lower end of Etta James’s “I’d Rather Go Blind” or a heartwarming “I Don’t Want to Talk About It”. But the most enjoyable parts of the latter stages come when he gets Michael Eavis on for a birthday hug, or leaves the stage to change into a hot pink or bright green suit while his effervescent backing singers do “Lady Marmalade” or “Proud Mary”.

His “surprise” guests, announced long before they make an appearance, make for a cornucopia of corn. Mick Hucknall wanders out for a duet on “If You Don’t Know Me by Now”, presumably here only for his even more withered voice to make Rod’s sound altogether powerful. Ronnie Wood adds meat to “Stay With Me” and Lulu some much-craved vocal prowess to an otherwise hoary-to-the-max “Hot Legs”.

By the final “Sailing”, a modicum of event status has amassed, but the overall sense of the set is of the wringing out the dregs of a career. Far more than Neil Young last night, Stewart’s show suggests that the old guard’s time has well and truly passed, and that in future all legend slot bookings need to involve a fresh audition tape.

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Rod Stewart tried his best, bless him, but he is beyond knackered. He said he had a cold for 1 week and nearly cancelled this slot.

I thought Neil Young’s setblast night was good, but not spectacular.

Raye was fabulous. She kind of reminded me of Amy Winehouse.

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Why the fuck would anyone want to go and watch 80yr old men who weren’t even that good first time round?

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From a Musical opinion, I thought Kneecap were impressive chirpy, cheeky rappers, enthusiastic and the songs were really catchy and dancey. I like the way they have good answer (from the context of their background and residence) to the criticism they got from all the right wing media and politicians and passed their sell-by date celebrities. They gave a fantastic performance.
They kind a reminded of the Prodigy. Not sure if they have a long duration as a band, but they certainly were abit refreshing in the bands category.

Olivia Rodriguo’s set is just making me sleepy, so switched to watching Bayern v Palmeiras.

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The real Prodigy are on.

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They are playing Electric Picnic(Ireland) again this year, main stage this time. Last year they were fantastic so hoping for that again, but suspect it’ll be more difficult this time round to get near the front.

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I love their energy on stage and also they perform their native Irish language which is unique and promoting it, to get the youngsters to learn it.

Most everyone in the south learns it in school,the problem i found growing up is it wasn’t made interesting enough nor used widely enough to want to learn it properly.There are now many gaelscoils(all irish speaking) around the country which are very popular and growing every year.Personally i think every school should be a gaelscoil which would mean every kid has a real working knowledge of the language by their teens and groups like kneecap are helping the language look “cool” to those learning it.

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The rise of Welsh in Wales was absolutely helped by the number of native speakers there were in the Cool Cymru era of the late 90s - early 2000s. The release of Mwng was enormous for the street cred of being able to speak it.

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Gruff Rhys came to one of our parties once. Dewi Prysor too. :wink:

Previous post moved to An Comhrá na hÉireann - The Ireland Thread!

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Just back home from Glastonbury. Absolutely shattered but had a great time. None of the headliners this year really excited me compared to the last two year’s (which i also went to).

I got the West Holts an hour before Kneecap were due on as i knew it’d end up super busy (they shut access down). My mate was near the front as he was there watching Bob Vylan so i found him and got to watch the last 20-25 mins of Vylan, including the IDF bit.

Kneecap were super entertaining and spoke quite a bit (about Gaza/Isreal, as well as Northern Ireland occupation). Not had chance to see any of it back so no idea what was shown on TV. Had a good mosh pit going, which i steered clear of :sweat_smile:

Missed Prodigy (no Keith just makes it less exciting). Ended up at Olivia Rodrigo with the wife and our friends, 15 mins in me and a mate ditched the group and went to see the last hour of Overmono.

Other highlights for me were Sonny Fodera, Blossoms, Lewis Capaldi (tear jerker), CMAT. Also caught the last half an hour of Mo Stewart’s set.

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Great until the gorilla song.

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