Glastonbury Festival 2023: The Black Keys have ‘no interest’ in playing festival again after ‘insulting’ offer

The Black Keys have said they will never play Glastonbury again after an insulting offer to play at Worthy Farm.

The Black Keys have vowed to never play the UK’s top festival, Glastonbury, ever again. The news comes after an offer they said was ‘insulting’, as well as citing poor wages for their previous appearance  at Worthy Farm.

The duo best known for songs like Lonely Boy and Wild Child played the Pyramid Stage in 2014, a show that left fans and critics alike raving. The band is set to kick off their European tour in Paris on June 19 before playing their first UK headline tour in over 10 years.

The last time The Black Keys fully toured the UK was in support of 2011’s ‘El Camino’. Carney said: “We’ve done a lot of growing up in the last 10 years. Dan [Auerbach, frontman] and I have always been close but we’ve got a very deep friendship right now. We enjoy hanging out. Getting to go on tour with your friend, it makes the whole thing feel more exciting.”

When the band announced their upcoming tour fans were quick to notice that there was a gap in the schedule around the same time as Glastonbury and began to speculate.

However, the band themselves have now dashed those hopes in a recent interview with NME. Drummer Patrick Carney told the publication: "We got an offer from Glastonbury that was so insulting, we’re never going to play the festival again. We know it’s a big deal for people in the UK but the weight of what the festival is doesn’t translate to most Americans. We have no interest in playing it."

Glastonbury Festival co-organisers and father and daughter duo Michael and Emily Eavis have previously spoken about the cost of getting big acts to take to the Glasto stages, with Micheal saying: "I paid £200,000 for Paul McCartney and for Coldplay, and although it sounds a lot, they could have charged me far more."

In 2017, Emily spoke to BBC Radio 6 about how the festival’s performers are typically paid a tiny fraction of what they’d usually get for other performances. "We’re not in the same bracket as everyone else when it comes to paying artists massive fees."