With one of the most prominent slots at the upcoming Glastonbury Festival it could be assumed Rod Stewart was in for a tidy payday. However the iconic rocker, who will play the ‘legends’ slot on the pyramid stage on June 29 has claimed it is going to cost him money to perform at the festival due to their relatively tiny fees for acts. Rod is the rule rather than the exception and everyone from Paul McCartney to Coldplay have played for far less than they could usually demand for a show, something which has been confirmed by the festival’s founder Michael Eavis.
Rod recently told the Radio Times the paycheque he’ll get from festival bosses isn’t enough to cover his expenses and he will be left out of pocket. “It was about eight months ago when I was asked to do it, maybe a little longer. But it didn’t fit with my schedule because I’ve got to bring everybody back from America,” he said. Rod is currently heading up his own Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace on the Strip – and to perform at Glastonbury means flying the equipment, staging and all his crew back to the UK. He said: “It’s going to cost me £300,000 to do it and they only pay you about £120,000. So it’s going to cost me.”
Rod is believed to earn around $2.7million per Vegas show and his Galstonbury set will be an hour and 45 minutes, so not much shorter than his regular set despite the reduced fee. the legends slt has previously played host to artists such as Dame Shirley Bassey, Barry Gibb, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie.
While Glastonbury organisers have never disclosed exactly what artists are paid, they are very open about the fact the festival exists to make money for charity. They aim to donate at least £2million annually to the official charity partners Greenpeace, WaterAid and Oxfam, as well as other good causes. This can decrease in wet and rainy years, as the festival costs more to put on when that happens.
With the priority being fundraising all the performers have to compromise. Founder Michael Eavis once revealed in an interview that Coldplay and Paul McCartney were both paid around £200,000 for historic headline sets.
“Although it sounds a lot, they could have charged me far more,” he said. Indeed parade.com have reported Paul has grossed close to $6million for an individual concert in the past.
Michael and his daughter Emily, who now books the bulk of the acts along with her husband, have been very open about the financial arrangement saying the festival’s performers usually get “less than 10%” of what they could command from other festivals
In a 2017 interview with BBC Radio 6, Emily acknowledged: “We’re not in the same bracket as everyone else when it comes to paying artists massive fees.”
Their payment structure is well known on the festival circuit. Bestival organiser Rob Da Bank has previously said Glastonbury is “the one show that artists will play for free or for a reduced price.
“They cap their budget and even the headliners don’t get paid more than 500 grand, I think, which is cheap for some of the headliners and they’ve had a lot of them. So, that’s proof of its huge, huge influence,” he said.