Radiohead at Glastonbury 2016? A brief summary.

[johnny-yen]

Hi. I know there is a 300+ page thread of Radiohead that seems to now focus on their current shows but I'm just interested in their potential appearance at Glastonbury.  

Without having to trawl through all those pages can someone please summarise what we think will happen at Glastonbury this year.  

I've noticed on the rumours page they are down as a SR but no stage or day is suggested. 

What do we think will actually happen? 

Thanks. 

[cammie81]

Miybees aye, miybees naw.

[brownso]

In summary there are 3 outcomes.

1. They don't play 

2. They play a secret unannounced set

3. They play before Adele on the main stage, either announced on the poster or listed as special guests.

4. Pablo Honey

5.King of Limbs

The reasons for the belief that they will be playing essentially stems from some info Neil and some others (although its hard to know who has real info and who is just repeating the original info) which suggests they will be playing at some stage over the festival.  The belief that they may be playing the main stage before Adele is essentially because there is no info about who else may be in this spot, there was chat that it was Disclosure for a while, but now they seem to be on the Other stage at some point.  Also I believe the secret set they played a few years ago was a bit of a nightmare regarding the massive crowd on a smaller stage so the hope is that if they play this year it'll be on the main stage.

Additional support for the Adele subbing spot, is that its possible they are booked as an emergency headliner, incase Muse/Adele/Coldplay pull out, then they are pushed up to main act, and we all think this is incredible rather than just a sub being pushed up to fill in.  (obviously it'd be incredible either way) So they are there as emergency headliners, but prepared to play the Adele sub.

There has also been some info lately suggesting they are not playing the Adele subbing spot but may still be playing a secret set.

Essentially the other massive Radiohead post goes back and forth on the likeliness of them playing or not playing.

[johnny-yen]

2 hours ago, brownso said:

In summary there are 3 outcomes.

1. They don't play 

2. They play a secret unannounced set

3. They play before Adele on the main stage, either announced on the poster or listed as special guests.

4. Pablo Honey

5.King of Limbs

The reasons for the belief that they will be playing essentially stems from some info Neil and some others (although its hard to know who has real info and who is just repeating the original info) which suggests they will be playing at some stage over the festival.  The belief that they may be playing the main stage before Adele is essentially because there is no info about who else may be in this spot, there was chat that it was Disclosure for a while, but now they seem to be on the Other stage at some point.  Also I believe the secret set they played a few years ago was a bit of a nightmare regarding the massive crowd on a smaller stage so the hope is that if they play this year it'll be on the main stage.

Additional support for the Adele subbing spot, is that its possible they are booked as an emergency headliner, incase Muse/Adele/Coldplay pull out, then they are pushed up to main act, and we all think this is incredible rather than just a sub being pushed up to fill in.  (obviously it'd be incredible either way) So they are there as emergency headliners, but prepared to play the Adele sub.

There has also been some info lately suggesting they are not playing the Adele subbing spot but may still be playing a secret set.

Essentially the other massive Radiohead post goes back and forth on the likeliness of them playing or not playing.

Great concise reply, thanks. 

Why did you list a couple of their albums? Are they expected to feature just tracks from one album if they do play?

[cammie81]

1 minute ago, johnny-yen said:

Great concise reply, thanks. 

Why did you list a couple of their albums? Are they expected to feature just tracks from one album if they do play?

I think it's a reference to the main Radiohead thread as there have been lots of lists made and usually Pablo and TKOL are the bottom two albums.

[Abensie]

Isn;t it more likely that this is an Emily coup and they will do what they did last time - turn up unannounced on the Park Stage.  Seems they want more intimate gigs.  Why choose the Roundhouse for 3 dates when you could fill the O2 20 times over? I don;t think they want to do a huge tour and i think it is as much for them as the fans.  They are playing small gigs of legend.

I find it extremely unlikely that any management team/agent that has negotiated a Pyramid headline is going to be happy with the spotlight being taken off their client by a bigger and more popular band being slotted in beforehand.  Adele is probably pretty chilled about this stuff but it doesn't mean she will be unprofessional and de-hype her own slot so dramatically. I don't buy it at all.

My bet is The Park.  And knowing my luck i will miss it.  It is almost a bit of a ballache as i will have to be constantly checking my twitter feed, FB etc in the crippling fear that i might miss it.  Although, i have to say, their last Park slot was dire, the wind was up and the sound was so bad that i actually left.  It won;t be this time though. It'll be the gig of the decade.

[Gucci Piggy]

21 minutes ago, Abensie said:

Isn;t it more likely that this is an Emily coup and they will do what they did last time - turn up unannounced on the Park Stage.  Seems they want more intimate gigs.  Why choose the Roundhouse for 3 dates when you could fill the O2 20 times over? I don;t think they want to do a huge tour and i think it is as much for them as the fans.  They are playing small gigs of legend.

I find it extremely unlikely that any management team/agent that has negotiated a Pyramid headline is going to be happy with the spotlight being taken off their client by a bigger and more popular band being slotted in beforehand.  Adele is probably pretty chilled about this stuff but it doesn't mean she will be unprofessional and de-hype her own slot so dramatically. I don't buy it at all.

My bet is The Park.  And knowing my luck i will miss it.  It is almost a bit of a ballache as i will have to be constantly checking my twitter feed, FB etc in the crippling fear that i might miss it.  Although, i have to say, their last Park slot was dire, the wind was up and the sound was so bad that i actually left.  It won;t be this time though. It'll be the gig of the decade.

Did man just say Radiohead are bigger and more popular than Adele?

[Abensie]

You know what - when i read that back to myself i knew someone was going to say that but i couldn't be bothered to edit it.  I figured maybe they would let it go, knowing i meant that at Glasto, Radiohead will be more popular than Adele.  But thanks for helping me clarify that.

[Gucci Piggy]

2 minutes ago, Abensie said:

You know what - when i read that back to myself i knew someone was going to say that but i couldn't be bothered to edit it.  I figured maybe they would let it go, knowing i meant that at Glasto, Radiohead will be more popular than Adele.  But thanks for helping me clarify that.

Adele will be more popular at Glastonbury than Radiohead to be totally honest.

[Abensie]

 

1 minute ago, Will-2609 said:

Adele will be more popular at Glastonbury than Radiohead to be totally honest.

We can agree to disagree on that.  I think you can see from the hype on this forum that it clearly is not the case. everybody i know that is going (which is a sizeable sample) are saying they will be there for TLSP and RH and then bugger off for whatever is on the Other Stage (people are hoping LCD although that would be too good to be true).  Adele is huge, and there will be a contingency of older types with the picnic blankets, chairs and disapproving looks that will no doubt be camped out to listen to her regurgitated warbling. But there will be 80k Radiohead fans going mad and trampling them on the way in and way out if they play the Pyramid. And her agents will know that.

[SwedgeAntilles]

Whoa, TKOL is definitely better than Pablo Honey.

[Gucci Piggy]

2 minutes ago, Abensie said:

 

We can agree to disagree on that.  I think you can see from the hype on this forum that it clearly is not the case. everybody i know that is going (which is a sizeable sample) are saying they will be there for TLSP and RH and then bugger off for whatever is on the Other Stage (people are hoping LCD although that would be too good to be true).  Adele is huge, and there will be a contingency of older types with the picnic blankets, chairs and disapproving looks that will no doubt be camped out to listen to her regurgitated warbling. But there will be 80k Radiohead fans going mad and trampling them on the way in and way out if they play the Pyramid. And her agents will know that.

This forum is nowhere near representative of the Glastonbury audience as a whole. If it were, Sigur Rós and LCD Soundsystem would be headlining.

Adele will have the biggest crowd of the weekend easily. Only Coldplay will come close (although Radiohead not clashing with other stage headliners and having people waiting for Adele will bump their numbers up).

Radiohead generate more hype because people who like Radiohead tend to fucking love Radiohead. People who like Adele (without wanting to generalise) are more likely to be your casual radio listeners or your one-album-a-year kind of person, rather than people who post on music forums.

And I say this as someone whose favourite band is Radiohead and won't be going near Adele.

[Gucci Piggy]

3 minutes ago, SwedgeAntilles said:

Whoa, TKOL is definitely better than Pablo Honey.

Yeah that was baffling tbh

[Abensie]

3 minutes ago, Will-2609 said:

This forum is nowhere near representative of the Glastonbury audience as a whole. If it were, Sigur Rós and LCD Soundsystem would be headlining.

Adele will have the biggest crowd of the weekend easily. Only Coldplay will come close (although Radiohead not clashing with other stage headliners and having people waiting for Adele will bump their numbers up).

Radiohead generate more hype because people who like Radiohead tend to fucking love Radiohead. People who like Adele (without wanting to generalise) are more likely to be your casual radio listeners or your one-album-a-year kind of person, rather than people who post on music forums.

And I say this as someone whose favourite band is Radiohead and won't be going near Adele.

Hmm.  I concede you are probably right and times have changed. It's a sad state of affairs if you are.

[jparx]

The key thing for me in all of this is simple:

None of the 'sources' are offering an alternative. Only one band is linked with that slot, and that's Radiohead. Even when sources say it ain't happening, they still don't list an alternative. It all keeps coming back to Radiohead.

Of course it's possible that Radiohead are being mentioned a lot because they are playing, but it's a secret set elsewhere, and people are just assuming they would take the pre-Adele slot (when there actually is a huge secret being successfully kept under wraps).

But either way, Radiohead will be there in some capacity. I think that's about 90%(?) likely at this point.

[Gucci Piggy]

Just now, Abensie said:

Hmm.  I concede you are probably right and times have changed. It's a sad state of affairs if you are.

Yeah you won't find me disagreeing there

[Gucci Piggy]

2 minutes ago, jparx said:

The key thing for me in all of this is simple:

None of the 'sources' are offering an alternative. Only one band is linked with that slot, and that's Radiohead. Even when sources say it ain't happening, they still don't list an alternative. It all keeps coming back to Radiohead.

Of course it's possible that Radiohead are being mentioned a lot because they are playing, but it's a secret set elsewhere, and people are just assuming they would take the pre-Adele slot (when there actually is a huge secret being successfully kept under wraps).

But either way, Radiohead will be there in some capacity. I think that's about 90%(?) likely at this point.

Yeah even if these people who are saying it's not Radiohead actually believe that, if they don't have an alternative name it's entirely possible imo that they've been told it isn't Radiohead to try and prevent it from leaking.

[SwedgeAntilles]

I'll say again, Neil was being so cautious he didn't want to move Adele to TBC before she announced even though he effectively knew it was going to be her, he's now taking bets that Radiohead will be her sub. 

Even if he's working on a theory rather than confirmation I think that's massive. 

[jparx]

6 minutes ago, Will-2609 said:

Yeah even if these people who are saying it's not Radiohead actually believe that, if they don't have an alternative name it's entirely possible imo that they've been told it isn't Radiohead to try and prevent it from leaking.

Absolutely. If they do play that slot, I will almost guarantee that's why we've had people coming here and saying explicitly it's not happening. Going back to last week, it was so odd how we had info from numerous saying 'yep they're playing, and it'll be before Adele' then ONE DAY LATER the opposite info was coming out.

To address your point about this forum not being representative of the Glastonbury audience as a whole, I do agree with your point. However I also think that Radiohead are a much bigger deal in the mainstream now than after TKOL came out. All sorts of people I know have suddenly emerged as Radiohead fans and people I wouldn't expect to like them in the slightest have been saying how much they love the new tracks. They've also been on the radio a helluva lot more than in the TKOL era. AMSP was also #1 in the charts the week it came out.

Regardless of how many records Coldplay have shifted and have many stadium shows they have played recently, I firmly believe Radiohead playing before Adele would be the second biggest story of the weekend, behind Adele herself. And they would also have the second biggest crowd of the weekend.

Edited May 28, 2016 by jparx

[Comfy Bean]

54 minutes ago, Abensie said:

Isn;t it more likely that this is an Emily coup and they will do what they did last time - turn up unannounced on the Park Stage.  Seems they want more intimate gigs.  Why choose the Roundhouse for 3 dates when you could fill the O2 20 times over? I don;t think they want to do a huge tour and i think it is as much for them as the fans.  They are playing small gigs of legend.

I find it extremely unlikely that any management team/agent that has negotiated a Pyramid headline is going to be happy with the spotlight being taken off their client by a bigger and more popular band being slotted in beforehand.  Adele is probably pretty chilled about this stuff but it doesn't mean she will be unprofessional and de-hype her own slot so dramatically. I don't buy it at all.

My bet is The Park.  And knowing my luck i will miss it.  It is almost a bit of a ballache as i will have to be constantly checking my twitter feed, FB etc in the crippling fear that i might miss it.  Although, i have to say, their last Park slot was dire, the wind was up and the sound was so bad that i actually left.  It won;t be this time though. It'll be the gig of the decade.

My total guess remains an unannounced set on Saturday lunchtime in John peel.

Good way to get coverage for the new JP set up and the bbc will have cameras ready to watch folk running across the site etc.

Everyone who is asleep and misses it can then look forward to their headline set next year.

[clarkete]

10 minutes ago, comfortablynumb1910 said:

My total guess remains an unannounced set on Saturday lunchtime in John peel.

Good way to get coverage for the new JP set up and the bbc will have cameras ready to watch folk running across the site etc.

Everyone who is asleep and misses it can then look forward to their headline set next year.

Given the crowds when they played the park I can't see that personally.   However much they may enjoy intimate gigs elsewhere,  I think it would have to be bigger for safety, which trumps everything. 

[musky]

And there's not a hope in hell that they'll play the Park. Their's and Pulp's appearance last time round put an end to secret sets at the Park on H&S grounds. 

[johnny-yen]

I think the comments above being an emergency headliner replacement could be quite a good call. I think it's been reported that Adele has nerves about playing big shows and you don't get much better than headlining Glastonbury. Add to that the additional worry of not being surrounded by her devoted fans and she could quite easily bail out. The Eavis' must be aware of this and possibly arranged an escape plan.

Could she even take the sub slot, and promote Radiohead to headliner if the pressure got too much but still wanted to play?

[eastynh]

4 hours ago, Abensie said:

 

We can agree to disagree on that.  I think you can see from the hype on this forum that it clearly is not the case. everybody i know that is going (which is a sizeable sample) are saying they will be there for TLSP and RH and then bugger off for whatever is on the Other Stage (people are hoping LCD although that would be too good to be true).  Adele is huge, and there will be a contingency of older types with the picnic blankets, chairs and disapproving looks that will no doubt be camped out to listen to her regurgitated warbling. But there will be 80k Radiohead fans going mad and trampling them on the way in and way out if they play the Pyramid. And her agents will know that.

This forum means nothing really in regards to the size of a band. If you go off this forum then Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem and Radiohead are the three biggest bands in the world.

I love how you label Adele fans. Lets be honest though, Radiohead are not really the coolest band on the planet are they? 

[FatAmmy]

Just now, eastynh said:

This forum means nothing really in regards to the size of a band. If you go off this forum then Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem and Radiohead are the three biggest bands in the world.

I love how you label Adele fans. Lets be honest though, Radiohead are not really the coolest band on the planet are they? 

Nah, that's QOTSA