Bob Vylan frontman Bobby Vylan has said he does not regret his “death to the IDF” chant at Glastonbury, and would “do it again tomorrow”.
At this year’s Glastonbury Festival, the punk duo delivered a controversial performance on the West Holts Stage, using their platform to voice their support for the people of Palestine, call out the Israeli military and criticise the BBC, as well as the UK and US governments.
In the most provocative moment of the set, Vylan told the huge crowd, “have you heard this one?”, before leading a chant of “death, death to the IDF”. It led to a criminal investigation from Avon and Somerset Police, as well as the cancellation of multiple international shows and the revocation of their US visas.
Now, Vylan has given his first in-depth interview on the subject on The Louis Theroux Podcast on Spotify, in which he was asked whether he would lead the same chant on stage now.
“Oh yeah,” he replied. “Like what if I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes I would do it again. I’m not regretful of it. I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays. I’m not regretful of it at all.”
“Like the subsequent backlash that I’ve faced, it’s minimal. 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, then what is there to regret. Oh, because I’ve upset some right-wing politician or some right-wing media?”
Theroux quoted Damon Albarn’s criticism of the chant to Vylan, in which the Blur frontman said it was “one of the most spectacular misfires I’ve seen in my life, especially when he started to goose-step in tennis gear”.
When Theroux suggested that the comments might have been hyperbolic, Vylan responded: “I think there’s no space to be hyperbolic in that. Especially given what we were accused of. 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.”
“I take great issue with the phrase ‘goose-stepping’ being used because it’s only used around Nazi Germany,” he added. “That’s it. And for him to use that language, I think is disgusting. I think his response was disgusting, especially when you look at it in comparison to Chuck D’s response, who is as equally seasoned in this music industry. His response was again, not because it was more favourable to us, but because he understood. But naturally, of course, Chuck D from Public Enemy is going to understand where we are coming from with our politics. More so than Damon Albarn.”
Shortly after the Glastonbury set, Chuck D defended Vylan, saying, “when people say death to a country, they’re not saying death to a people. They’re saying death to imperialism, death to colonialism.”
“Bob Vylan ain’t got no tanks,” he continued. “They’re using words to say something must end. You can’t really kill nobody with a guitar or a microphone, but you could kill somebody with a drone and a fucking tank.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Vylan argued that the media storm around their comments might have a positive impact on the direction of public discourse on the subject of the Gaza crisis.
“Well, I think having to have that conversation about the chant as they were all having amongst themselves, it created this discourse within the media of, is the chant right? Is it okay to say, is it this is it that, and then that gave platform to certain people, maybe like Owen Jones, that would come on and say, well, actually this is what we should be focusing on,” he said. “We need to focus the attention back onto Gaza, back onto the people of Palestine, and he’s laying out facts and presenting his argument.”
“I think it allowed for that conversation to have a new life almost, because unfortunately, people have short attention spans and watching people being killed every day in real time for the last two years, so vividly, so prominently. I think a lot of people just got numb to it. They stopped even seeing these individuals as actual people, start seeing them as numbers. It’s disgusting. Who cares about the chant? Why is that the conversation that they’re having? But I do think within that conversation it allowed us to bring the issue back to the front page.”
Shortly after their Worthy Farm performance, Glastonbury organisers said they were “appalled by the statements made from the West Holts Stage by Bob Vylan”, while the BBC’s director of music stepped down from her role following the backlash to the set being livestreamed online.
The duo have previously spoken out to defend the set, claiming it was vital to “teach our children to speak up for the change they want”, and reiterating they were calling for the “dismantling of a violent military machine”, not the “death of Jews or Arabs or any other race or group”.
Earlier this month, the duo released their first new single since the controversy, ‘Sick Sad World’, which included the lyrics: “Keir’s smiling on the news, as if everything is fine / There’s a major malfunction, how’s this whole thing wired? / I got some priors on my name, they said I can’t get hired / I watch the BBC’s liеs, think I’m losing my mind / Hooray, it’s 2025, get a job in the mines.”
English (US) · 