The Who have claimed that they were “sabotaged” at Glastonbury last month, and that they were last-minute replacements as Sunday night headliners for Prince, “who decided not to come this year”.
The band make the claims in a posting on their website, believed to have been written by a trusted member of their crew. The blog says the Who had loaded in their equipment in the early hours of Sunday morning, but as their crew prepared the changeover after Paul Weller’s set finished, “we found someone had sabotaged the carefully-tested audio connections for much of our gear. We’ve never seen that before, but we’re good at plugging things in, so all damage was repaired in time. Was it Mr. Weller or Lionel, no way. Dalai Lama — hmmm ... he did steal the show already.”
The posting highlighted some of the problems faced by bands playing festivals: “There’s a famous saying ‘A festival is nobody’s best show!’ - which basically means that no one gets to use their own lighting rig, sound system, no sound checks, many things different to normal touring operation. Our lighting guys have to program a whole show with different lights than usual, run the rig from the stage ... They had to think “out of the box” and make a new set just for our one show here — and try to be different than everyone else while supporting the music tastefully.”
It also addressed some of the problems faced specifically by the Who, noting that “within a few songs, we knew something was wrong. The band were playing more than a little loose ... Pete [Townshend] was growing angry right away”. The Who apparently suffered from echoes that affected their timing and synchronisation, with Townshend feeling “it was one of the very worst [shows] the band had ever played”.
Nevertheless, the Who hailed “one of the most fervent audiences we’ve ever had”, and contrasted the crowd to that at their headline show in Hyde Park a few days earlier: “This crowd of 20-30-somethings was not waiting to be entertained; they were part OF the entertainment.”
