Eminem to play at new Bellahouston Park festival

ORGANISERS of T in the Park are to launch a major new event in Glasgow - at the height of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Rap superstar Eminem is the first headline act to be announced for the event, which will be spread over ten days at Bella­houston Park and include up to five gigs in its first year.

As many as four acts will appear on the bill for each gig on a site that promoters DF Concerts has used to stage gigs by Coldplay and Snow Patrol.

Tickets for Eminem’s gig on 20 August are on “pre-sale” today, with details of the other bands playing at the “Glasgow Summer Sessions” due to be revealed in the next few weeks.

It will be three years since the rapper last appeared in Scotland, at T in the Park at Balado, and his gig is expected to coincide with the release of a new album.

Geoff Ellis, chief executive of DF Concerts, said: “We’re delighted to announce Eminem as the first major act for Glasgow Summer Sessions. His performance at T in the Park and his previous stadium show at Hampden were spectacular, so this will be one of the events of the year.

“As it’s one of the most important music destinations in the world, we’re also excited about what else we have to announce for the Glasgow Summer Sessions. We’ve been looking at doing something like this for around two years now.

“A lot of the big acts are touring throughout August, and although we’ve had the odd one-off gig, Glasgow has never really had a proper festival like this.

“We think it will still appeal to people who buy tickets for T in the Park, and it will allow us to bring some really big names in to Scotland, especially as we will have a bit of flexibility over dates.

“We’ll have a capacity of up to 35,000, which we won’t always need, depending on the artist, and we’ll be using a part of the park pretty similar to the one we used for the papal visit a couple of years ago.”

DF Concerts has previously staged gigs at Glasgow Green, featuring the Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and will be bringing the Stone Roses to the same venue in July.

The promoters was responsible for the long-running T on the Fringe in Edinburgh, but was forced to scale down its gigs, including deploying Meadow­bank Stadium and Princes Street Gardens, following the withdrawl of sponsor Tennent’s.

The Edge Festival, T in the Fringe’s successor, was scrapped last summer. Mr Ellis added that noise restrictions over staging gigs at Meadowbank had worked against using the venue for more than one gig.

He added: “I really liked putting gigs on at Meadowbank, and we had some great nights, with bands like Radiohead and the Foo Fighters. However, we did have noise restrictions put on us, and it makes it really difficult to put on more than one gig in terms of trying to get a licence from the council.

“That doesn’t mean we are not going to do another gig there during the Fringe and we will still be putting on some shows, but the finances of putting on a full programme don’t really work for us without a sponsor.

“We are having to pay to put shows into the Fringe, and it felt like we were effectively subsidising the Fringe.”