No Rock And Roll Fun

GLASTONBURY 2007: Normally Michael Eavis keeps as tight-lipped as he possible can on the subject of who's booked for Glasto, but he's actually confirmed that the Sunday headliner in 2007 is going to be Eric "look, can we just try and forget that whole Enoch Powell business" Clapton; which we suspect is a ploy to try and flog extra tickets this year - because if you miss out in 2005, there's no festival in 2006, Clapton's just ruined 2007 which means you're looking at 2008 before you'll be able to enjoy yourself there.

Apparently Eric phoned up Michael Eavis up and asked him if he could headline this year, but Eavis had already lined someone up, so said "next time, Eric."

Interestingly, Clapton's repeated attempts to shake off the stain that comes from having been the twat whose gobbing-off inspired Rock Against Racism did once admit to being racist - although not like that. In what seems to have been an attempt to try and persuade people that he wasn't like that at all, he took the chance of an interview with Richard Skinner in 1990 to throw this in:

Once I got into Broonzy, I kind of very, and I realized that Chuck Berry was black, I quickly switched off white players. I mean I got very racist for quite a while about white musicians. And for instance when the people around Kingston at some point discovered Bob Dylan and it was a couple of ... before times are a changin' the freewheeling Bob Dylan became very popular. I was really anti it and on principle because I was going backwards in my search for the pure essential blues, you know, and when they were becoming interested in that particular Bob Dylan album, I was discovering Robert Johnson. And the more intense that got, the more dogmatic and purist I became.

Mind you, these days Clapton's support of Powell and his proclamations that Britain was becoming "overcrowded" would probably get him a job on the Tory Party front bench. Michael Howard's probably calling him up right now to find out his position on testing foreigners for diseases.

music glastonbury festivals eric clapton