There’s been a lot of criticism of Glastonbury’s decision to invite veteran rock band Metallica to headline this years festival, with Scottish prog-rock band Mogwai the most notable fellow Glasto band to speak out and diplomatically label them as ‘shite‘.
Bands and fans speaking out about a line-up decision is always going to happen, but things have started to get a bit more serious for the ‘Metallica out’ movement with a Facebook petition now attracting almost 25,000 members.
The petition/page/group-type thing is called ‘Remove Metallica from Glastonbury for their support of Bear Hunting‘ – which succinctly tells you everything you need to know about their issue with the band.
Their beef stems from Metallica front-man James Hetfield’s involvement with a bear hunting programme on US TV called ‘The Hunt‘, and his general love of big-game hunting. The creators of the Facebook petition say that they ‘believe this is incompatible with the spirit of Glastonbury and brings its good name into disrepute.’
With Glastonbury being famous for its quite liberal standpoint and it’s support of Greenpeace, amongst others, you’d have to say they may have a point.
Here’s the latest post from them:
It’s very unlikely (i.e. inconceivable) that this will lead festival organisers to rethink Metallica’s headline slot, but the level of support the petition has garnered must be giving the Eavis’ a bit of a fright. At the minute the number of members stands at almost 25,000, which is about 10% of Glastonbury’s capacity – so it’s not an insignificant number and it will probably continue to increase.
Despite all this Glastonbury is still leading the way by a huge margin in our poll of what you think the best festival line-up is. You can still cast your vote in the survey here: Best festival line-up of 2014 poll.
Here’s how the poll currently looks:
