Emily Eavis has told Music Week that proposed Glastonbury spin-off festival The Variety Bazaar is “on the back burner”.
To remind you of the back story, ahead of the 2017 Glastonbury Festival, which won the Music Week Award for Festival Of The Year, co-organiser Eavis filled Music Week in on her plans for the new festival, saying it could take place instead of Glastonbury in 2021.
“The plan is, we’ll do another event in 2021, which will be called The Variety Bazaar, and that will be somewhere else,” she said at the time. “It’s not going to be an average Glastonbury but it will be [produced by] the team behind Glastonbury. We’re looking at three different sites elsewhere at the moment."
But, ahead of this year’s hotly-anticipated Glasto return after its traditional ‘fallow year’, Eavis told Music Week plans had changed and The Variety Bazaar would not now happen in 2021.
“That is very much on the back burner for now,” she said. “We have another run of five years here at Worthy Farm, taking us to 2023, and we are just focusing all our efforts on that for now, but I’m always open to new projects. I just don’t quite think anything could replace Glastonbury!”
There are lots of great new things for this festival which we’re really excited about
Emily Eavis
Glastonbury remains the UK festival circuit’s biggest draw, with tickets again selling out in 35 minutes, before a single act had been announced. Rival festival promoters will no doubt be breathing a sigh of relief that any expansion plans are on hold for at least the next few years.
Not that Emily Eavis and her father Michael have any shortage of things to concentrate on. This year’s festival, which takes place June 26-30, features headliners Stormzy, The Killers and The Cure, with other appearances from the likes of Kylie Minogue, Janet Jackson, Liam Gallagher and Miley Cyrus. The BBC will once again be providing extensive coverage across its TV and radio networks.
“It’s all shaping up so well so far and there is a fantastic atmosphere here on the build,” said Eavis as the Worthy Farm site started to take shape. “There are lots of great new things for this festival which we’re really excited about. I personally can’t wait to see to Arcadia’s new creation, Pangea, and Block9’s new field, IICON, which are both going to be epic, vast builds beyond the scale of anything we have done before. After all the planning, I’m really looking forward to see all that in action.”
* To read Music Week’s 2017 Emily Eavis interview, click here. To subscribe to Music Week and never miss a vital music biz story, click here.
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