'What Is There To Regret?': Bob Vylan Frontman Reflects On Glastonbury Chant Backlash

Bobby Vylan of Bob Vylan performing at Glastonbury earlier this yearThe frontman of the punk rap duo Bob Vylan has insisted he stands by the chant he performed at this year’s Glastonbury that landed the group at the centre of backlash.Over the summer, the band provided Glastonbury with one of the year’s most talked-about sets, where they made headlines after leading the crowd in chants of “free Palestine” and “death to the IDF”, referring to Israel’s army.At the time, the pair faced condemnation from Glastonbury’s organisers, the BBC – who broadcast the set live on its iPlayer service – and even the prime minister Keir Starmer.Local police also said shortly afterwards that they were opening a criminal investigation based on both Bob Vylan and Kneecap’s Glastonbury sets, though this has since been confirmed to have been dropped.During his first in-depth interview since the controversy arose, Bobby Vylan maintained on The Louis Theroux Podcast that he has no regrets about anything that transpired.“If I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes I would do it again,” Bobby insisted. “I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays. I’m not regretful of it at all.”He continued: “The subsequent backlash that I’ve faced – it’s minimal compared to what people in Palestine are going through.“If that can be my contribution and if I can have my Palestinian friends and people that I meet from Palestine, that have had to flee, that have lost members in double digits of their family and they can say, ‘yo, your chant, I love it. Or it gave me a breath of fresh air or whatever’ – and I don’t want to overstate the importance of the chant. That’s not what I’m trying to do – but if I have their support, they’re the people that I’m doing it for. They’re the people that I’m being vocal for. “[In that case], what is there to regret? Because I’ve upset some right-wing politician, or some right-wing media?”The vocalist and guitarist went on to say he didn’t anticipate the backlash Bob Vylan’s set would go on to receive, particularly as in the moment, even members of the BBC team said it had gone well.“It wasn’t like we came off stage, and everybody was [appalled],” he claimed. “It [was] just normal. We [came] off stage, [it was] normal. Nobody thought anything. Nobody. “Even staff at the BBC were like ‘That was fantastic! We loved that!’.”Bobby also had choice words for Damon Albarn of Blur, who previously called Bob Vylan’s chant “one of the most spectacular misfires I’ve seen in my life”, alleging the frontman was “goose-stepping in tennis gear”.“There’s no space to be hyperbolic in that. Especially given what we were accused of,” Bobby responded. “Being accused of being anti-Semitic, it was disappointing. Because it lacked self-awareness, I think, his response.“I just want to say that categorising it as a ‘spectacular misfire’ implies that somehow the politics of the band or our stance on Palestinian liberation is not thought out. And as a more senior, experienced, veteran artist – he’s been in this industry for a long time – I think that there were other ways that he could have handled that question being fielded to him.”He added: “I take great issue with the phrase ‘goose-stepping’ being used because it’s only used around Nazi Germany. That’s it. And for him to use that language, I think is disgusting. I think his response was disgusting.”Shortly after Glastonbury, the members of Bob Vylan said in a joint statement: “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine. A machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.”“The government doesn’t want us to ask why they remain silent in the face of this atrocity. To ask why they aren’t doing more to stop the killing. To feed the starving. The more they talk about Bob Vylan, the less they spend answering for their criminal inaction.”READ MORE:Bob Vylan Frontman Slams Politicians And Mainstream Media's Stark U-Turn On Gaza

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