No Rock And Roll Fun

BOOK NOW FOR SUMMER 2005: Melvin Benn reckons that two of the three headliners for next year's Reading Festival are booked (and, of course, for next year's Leeds, too). He's not at liberty to reveal any details of course - because, erm... if people knew... you know... then they'd know.

The Virtual Festivals interview with Benn also considers the bottling of 50 cent:

VF: Were you surprised by his aerial bottling bombardment? It was certainly a passionate reaction from the crowd.
MB: Well it was an oddity and I was surprised, yes. We have had hip-hop acts for many years at both Reading and Leeds, in fact it’s unusual for us not to. It’s important to reflect different types of music but for some reason it just didn’t work for 50 Cent. Maybe it was because he was billed just before Green Day. Perhaps we should have put him before The Darkness.

VF: Well at least it got him dancing. Will it change your booking policy?
MB: Not really no. It’s had a bearing and we’ve taken notice but we’ll still be looking to include an element of hip-hop. I can’t see why that will change. Maybe we need to be a bit more careful to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

... all of which seems to imply, again, that it's still seen as the rock crowd having a problem with hip-hop; why can't they even start to think about if it was simply 50 Cent the crowd had a problem with?