Paul McCartney is to headline the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury in June next year, organisers announced on Monday.
“Hey Glasto - excited to be part of your Anniversary celebrations. See ya next year!” the 77-year-old former Beatle tweeted. McCartney will be the headline act on the festival’s main Pyramid Stage on Saturday, June 27th, according to the Glastonbury Twitter account.
Tickets for the 2020 event went on sale in October and were sold out in just over half an hour, according to the festival’s website
McCartney’s representatives were not immediately available for further comment, but McCartney had heavily hinted he will be performing at the Glastonbury festival in 2020.He posted an image on his Twitter featuring Philip Glass, Emma Stone and Chuck Berry: Glass-Stone-Berry, or Glastonbury.
McCartney has been one of the more strongly rumoured names to headline the landmark edition of the festival. In April, Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis said he hoped McCartney would play again, “hopefully for the 50th”.
In September, McCartney said in a BBC radio interview: “People are saying that it will be good if I did it, so I’m starting to think about whether I can or whether it would be a good thing … It’s starting to become some remote kind of possibility.”
He would be the second artist to be confirmed for the festival, following the announcement of Diana Ross as the Sunday teatime “legend” performance on the Pyramid stage.
McCartney has headlined once before, in 2004, when he played a mammoth 33-song set spanning the Beatles, Wings and his solo material, including two encores. It featured a segment paying tribute to his Beatles bandmates, with Here Today – his 1982 song that poignantly addressed John Lennon in the wake of his death – segueing into George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, and Yellow Submarine, originally sung by Ringo Starr. There was also an outing for In Spite of All the Danger, a song he recorded in 1958 with Harrison and Lennon in pre-Beatles band the Quarrymen. – PA & Guardian
