Pink Pigs Might Fly

Stories saying Glastonbury Festival turned down Pink Floyd have raised a few eyebrows at Worthy Farm, where festival organiser Michael Eavis was quick to deny it ever happened.

It looks to have started when guitarist David Gilmour picked up Q magazine’s Outstanding Contribution Award and said it was sad that Floyd keyboard player Rick Wright – who died from cancer in September – was unable to fulfill his wish to play the famous event.

Although Gilmour didn’t actually say the festival passed up on the chance of booking the act, which has been a rarity thanks in part to internal squabbles and legal battles, a couple of U.K. papers have taken it that way.

“Pink Floyd were rejected from this year’s Glastonbury festival, it has been confirmed, due to the logistics of major festival programming,” said The Guardian.

Although many consider it’s more likely to see pink pigs flying than the surviving members of the act ever getting on the same stage again without a team of lawyers – apart from the exceptional one-off they did at Live 8 in 2005 – The Sun also reported that Glastonbury turned down Floyd.

The band was down to play Glastonbury in 1971 but had to pull out because it couldn’t get its backdrop and special effects on the stage.

Eavis freely admits that he turned down a 2008 appearance by Gilmour, who would have likely had Wright in his band, but said the bill was already confirmed and he wasn’t prepared to meddle with it.

“The same thing happened with Paul McCartney the year before he played and he didn’t make a fuss about it,” Eavis told Pollstar. “I told his people that the bill was finalized but I’d love to do something the following year, and we managed to sort it out on that occasion.”

Otherwise, the award ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel Oct. 6 appears to have been a good-humoured affair.
Chris Martin of Coldplay, which picked up a couple of gongs including best album, warned the crowd he was going to “bore the pants off them,” before launching into a rambling acceptance speech.

“I don’t think we’re the best act in the room, let alone the world,” he said when picking up the award for “best act in the world today.” He said Coldplay won only because U2 and Radiohead are on holiday.

“It’s good to be standing here. It’s very good to be standing, actually,” said Adam Ant, who got the Q Icon Award.

Kaiser Chiefs gave their “best live act” trophy to their tour manager, crediting him with getting them on flights at 5 a.m.
The other winners included The Last Shadow Puppets (best new act), Duffy (breakthrough artist), John Mellencamp (classic songwriter), Meat Loaf (classic song for “Bat Out Of Hell”), and Glen Campbell (Q Legend).