The controversies continue following last week’s performance by Bob Vylan at the Glastonbury Festival, impacting on other festivals, as well as the BBC and, of course, the punk duo themselves.
Organisers of Manchester’s Radar Festival have spoken about what led them to cancel the band’s performance at their event this weekend. Stressing that they wanted the performance to go ahead, promoters say that discussions between the festival’s venue, the O2 Victoria Warehouse, and local authorities left them with a stark choice: cancel the headliner or cancel the festival.
Meanwhile at the BBC, the broadcaster’s Director Of Music Lorna Clarke has reportedly stepped back from her day-to-day duties. Those reports emerged as Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told MPs that she expects “accountability at the highest levels” over the BBC’s failure to cut its broadcast of the Bob Vylan performance as soon as the band started making controversial statements about Palestine and Israel.
The BBC has now issued a more detailed statement about the broadcast, although that includes the admission that it foresaw the potential for controversy, which has made its critics even angrier.
During last Saturday’s performance on Glastonbury’s West Holts stage, Bob Vylan’s vocalist - who uses the performer name Bobby Vylan - instigated chants of “Free Palestine” and “death, death to the IDF”, a reference to the Israeli Defence Forces, before citing the common and often controversial refrain, “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be - will be - free”.
Before the festival took place, the band were one of seven acts playing Glastonbury this year that were “deemed high risk” by the BBC following “a risk assessment process”. However, BBC chiefs decided that the risk of offensive content could be mitigated with “content warnings”, meaning there was no “need for a delay” in the live broadcast. This was “clearly not the case”, the BBC now admits.
A delayed stream of a performance - even if that delay is only thirty seconds - is a tactic broadcasters sometimes use to mitigate risky content that might breach their content guidelines or cause legal issues, as it allows broadcasters to cut or edit content on the fly if necessary.
Bob Vylan themselves are also dealing with the fallout from their Glastonbury set. Various upcoming shows have now been cancelled in addition to the Radar Festival booking. Meanwhile
London’s Metropolitan Police are investigating comments the band made at a recent Alexandra Palace show, which were reportedly more extreme that what was said last weekend.
Radar Festival
A set at France’s Kave Fest and a support slot at a Gogol Bordello show in Germany are among the bookings Bob Vylan have seen cancelled in the wake of last week’s Glastonbury set, though it’s the cancellation of their next big UK show - at Manchester’s Radar Festival - that got the most attention.
It issued a short statement earlier this week saying, simply, “Bob Vylan will not be appearing at Radar Festival this weekend”. In response, Bob Vylan posted on social media, “Silence is not an option. We will be fine, the people of Palestine are hurting. Manchester we will be back”.
Promoter Catherine Jackson-Smith has since spoken about the decision to remove the band from her festival’s line-up, telling the 2 Promoters 1 Pod podcast that, “we didn’t want to pull them, it was out of our hands”. The decision was forced by unknown higher ups, who also insisted that the festival’s official communications provide no context or explanation for the band’s removal.
Radar Festival takes place at Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse, which is independently owned, though its music programme is delivered by Live Nation-owned Academy Music Group, and operates as the O2 Victoria Warehouse, as part of AMG’s wider sponsorship deal with the phone company.
Jackson-Smith says that her contacts at the venue have been very supportive, but that conversations took place that she was not part of, which possibly also involved the local licensing authority, local police force and local politicians. Following those conversations, she was told that the Saturday programme of her festival would not be allowed to proceed if Bob Vylan were still the headliner.
“It became apparent that there was not an option for Bob Vylan to step on stage on Saturday”, she tells the podcast, before adding, “I can not express clearly enough that I wanted Bob Vylan to perform at our festival”. However, with 41 other bands also booked to play the event, who have already incurred travel and other costs, neither she nor her co-promoter could afford to pull the show on a point of principle.
That said, at least one of those other bands has decided to pull out of the festival in support of Bob Vylan. In a statement, Irish band The Scratch stress that their decision not to play Radar this weekend is not a criticism of its organisers, adding they understand that the promoters were put in an “incredibly difficult and complex situation”.
However, they have decided not to play in order to demonstrate “solidarity with Bob Vylan and any artist who may face similar treatment in the future”. They add, “shadowy government influence and wealthy lobbying groups should not be allowed to dictate who is given a platform and what can be said on it”, and things will only get worse “unless we, as artists, support one another and take action”.
The BBC controversy
In political circles, it’s the BBC’s live broadcast of Bobby Vylan chanting “death to the IDF” and “from the river to the sea” that has caused the most controversy.
Critics of the punk duo obviously see those elements of the performance as antisemitic, and/or an incitement to violence, something Bob Vylan and their supporters deny, insisting they were simply expressing anger at the conduct of the IDF in Gaza. However, in its latest statement, the BBC is clear that it considers Bobby Vylan’s on-stage statements to be “offensive and deplorable”, and antisemitic.
Expressing deep regret for broadcasting those statements, the BBC says it would like to “apologise to our viewers and listeners and in particular the Jewish community”, before adding, “we are also unequivocal that there can be no place for antisemitism at, or on, the BBC”.
In a separate statement, Chair of the BBC board Samir Shah says “allowing the ‘artist’ Bob Vylan to express unconscionable antisemitic views live on the BBC” was “unquestionably an error of judgement”.
Following a meeting of the board, Shah adds, BBC bosses have “agreed to put in place a set of strengthened editorial practices and policies for live music programming”.
The main BBC statement reveals that this includes a new rule that any artist considered “high risk” at events it is involved in will never be broadcast or streamed live.
While not specifically stating that a high level sacking will be required to end the current controversy at the Beeb, Shah concludes, “I am satisfied that the executive is initiating a process to ensure proper accountability for those found to be responsible for the failings in this incident”.
Police investigation in London
While Avon And Somerset Police continue their investigations into whether anything Bobby Vylan said on stage at Glastonbury last weekend constitutes a criminal offence, London’s Metropolitan Police have confirmed they are also reviewing footage of the band’s performance at a show in May at Alexandra Palace, where they were supporting Iggy Pop.
While the chant of “death, death to the IDF” has prompted outrage from some quarters - with claims it’s basically a call for the murder of individual Jewish Israelis currently doing mandatory military service in the Israeli army - supporters of Bob Vylan argue that it’s actually a call for the army as an entity to be dismantled because of its conduct in Gaza.
However, according to the Evening Standard, in the new footage that has emerged of the Alexandra Palace show, Bobby Vylan reportedly says, “Death to every single IDF soldier out there as an agent of terror for Israel - death to the IDF”. Which is rather less open to interpretation.
Although, the duo’s supporters might say that in the context of a punk gig, a certain poetic licence is being employed and no one is meant to believe Bobby Vylan is really calling for the deaths of actual IDF soldiers.
After all, on the other side of the political spectrum, journalist Rod Liddle this week wrote a piece for The Spectator responding to all this which proposed that a nuclear bomb be dropped on the next edition of Glastonbury. Which is presumably meant to be read as satire.
Whether or not Bobby Vylan’s more overt call for violence against the IDF constitutes a criminal offence remains to be seen.
A Met Police spokesperson told reporters earlier this week, “Officers are investigating comments allegedly made during a concert at Alexandra Palace earlier this year. The decision to investigate follows the emergence of footage which appears to have been filmed at the venue on 28 May 2025”.
Bob Vylan’s response
Back on their social media, Bob Vylan continue to insist that the ongoing controversy around their Glastonbury set is being used as a distraction.
Which is to say, some in the British media are focusing on the backlash to their performance rather than putting the spotlight on ongoing events in Gaza, or other political developments that the band consider to be more newsworthy.
Sharing links to reports about some of those other developments, Bobby Vylan writes that these are “news articles you may have missed over the past few days while politicians and the media debate the dangers of a punk band. From starving children to proscribing activists as terrorist groups - do not be distracted”.