Yorke talks Glasto 09

Radiohead singer praises the festival

13 Mar 2008 - Thom Yorke's dropped a hint about playing Glastonbury next year.

He posted comments on the Radiohead web site clarifying an article in The Sun, where he was quoted saying they couldn't play the festival because it's not green enough. Lack of public transport was mentioned in the article. 

Yorke said he's actually pretty impressed with what Glastonbury are doing to minimise car use. He explained why Radiohead aren't playing Glastonbury, choosing to play London shows instead this summer.

"Not because of transport issues but because the festival goers at Glastonbury were more than likely sick of the sight of us," he said.

"It felt a little early to be doing it again, we felt as if we had only just played there. Unfortunately, as is the way with such newspapers my words were taken out of context and implied we were not playing Glastonbury because there was no public transport infrastructure."

"It felt a little early to be doing it again."
Thom Yorke

Yorke has since written to the Glastonbury organisers setting things straight.

"I have been talking to the Eavis's about this and apologised for any misunderstanding and they are totally cool with it," he said. "Today Emily and Michael sent me though some stuff about how they are trying to minimise car use as much as they can with buses and train trips etc.

"To be honest it's pretty impressive. They have obviously been busting a gut about it. I wish more people were thinking as hard them."

He added: "Have good Glastonbury and maybe see you there in 2009? Maybe?"

Glastonbury organisers said that since 2004 they have worked even harder to improve their record in shifting people out of cars and onto public transport - reducing the number of public cars on site from 60,000 in 2000 to 36,000 in 2007.

Michael Eavis said: "Thom Yorke's actually put a great page up today saying Glastonbury has the best transport policy, the greenest, least CO2-polluting policy that there is.

"So it's great, I just can't believe it - I wrote to him yesterday and asked him to do it, you see."

Andre Paine