Every year when we announce who’s playing at Glastonbury there are complaints and often outrage. We’re well used to that. Scrutiny of our headliners has become something of a national pastime. We’ve had it in recent years with Jay Z, Beyoncé, Metallica and plenty of others. We even had it in 1984 when we booked the Smiths, because people wanted Hawkwind again! This year is no different.  In normal circumstances, we wouldn’t add to the story by commenting. But given the enormous amount of media coverage from all corners of the globe we felt compelled to respond this time.  The Glastonbury festival of contemporary performing arts is the full name of our festival, and my dad and I love doing what we do: working with great, creative people and being able to curate so much music, art, theatre and circus, not to mention the political and green debate.  It’s a feast of culture and diversity that is spread out over 1,000 acres for everyone who makes the pilgrimage to Worthy Farm to enjoy. The people that come here are, we hope, open-minded and they come to experience and devour all of this. At any one time, there are hundreds of things to see and do.  We think the story this year should not be: “Why is Kanye coming?” but: “How amazing is it that Kanye is coming?” One of the world’s biggest superstars and a music legend, always interesting, never boring. He has agreed to play a festival where headliners get paid a fraction of their normal rate in support of Oxfam, Water Aid and Greenpeace as well as thousands of other worthy causes. We think that’s pretty great.  To say that our headliners should be “rock” is, I think, a bit silly. Those acts never have been limited to rock, and they never will be. Stevie Wonder, the Prodigy, Curtis Mayfield, the Chemical Brothers, Jay Z, Gorillaz, Beyoncé and plenty of others prove that.  I’ve realised over the years of announcing line ups that, literally, whoever you reveal will be met with some hate online. I have such faith in humanity, but believe me, some of the vitriol being thrown around this week has made me question the dark underbelly of the web. Who are those people silently shouting in disgust, throwing out threats from behind their screens? It certainly isn’t pleasant to be on the receiving end of that. I can’t even imagine how it makes Kanye feel.  I’ve seen people this week saying that Kanye shouldn’t appear because, in their opinion, he’s not a positive role model or because they think he’s too self-assured. We book our acts by choosing the best and most challenging musicians on the planet – not by applying some kind of arbitrary morality test.  But I would also remind people that this a man who made a version of a worldwide hit single which highlighted the social issues that conflict diamonds cause in west Africa. And wouldn’t you have a bit of a spring in your step if you’d won 21 Grammys?  It’s important to point out that the signatories of the petition are not limited to ticket holders. From what we can see, an awful lot of them aren’t even from the UK. Even the originator of the petition admits that he has never actually been to the festival.  Clearly, the petition has given sections of the worldwide media a pretext upon which to hang a negative Kanye story. But I’m told that there were only four more requests for ticket refunds on the day after we announced Kanye’s performance than there had been the previous Tuesday. The overwhelming majority of our 135,000 ticket-holders are clearly not too concerned by that particular two-hour slot on one of the 100 stages at our five-day event.  Our message to the man who started the petition is that like any other ticket-holder, he is very welcome to get a refund. But better still, come to the festival and open your mind to some wonderful music and performances from all corners of the world. We work year-round with the goal of making the event as good as it can be. Hopefully, once you’ve been to the festival, you’ll be more willing to give us the benefit of any doubt.  Ultimately, there is no question in my mind that we have got one of the greatest artists of his generation headlining, and we have no regrets at all about booking him. As the late, great Glastonbury regular Lou Reed said about Kanye:“The guy really, really, really is talented. He’s really trying to raise the bar. No one’s near doing what he’s doing, it’s not even on the same planet.”And we’ve got him coming to our farm! In rural Somerset! That’s great, right? I certainly can’t wait to see his performance.
The online campaign to remove Kanye West from Glastonbury’s headline slot is bizarre, hateful and vitriolic, says Emily Eavis. Isn’t our festival a celebration of talent, open-mindedness and diversity?