Glastonbury festival has announced its first act for 2025, with Rod Stewart booked to perform on the Pyramid stage in the Sunday teatime “legends” slot.
Stewart said he was “proud and ready” to play at the festival, adding that – at the age of 79 – he was “more than able to pleasure and titillate” the crowd.
It means he will become one of the oldest artists to perform a major set at the festival, though not the very oldest: Burt Bacharach played the Pyramid stage in 2015 at the age of 87, while in 2022, Paul McCartney headlined the week after his 80th birthday.
Stewart has enough hits to mean this will almost certainly be a well-attended and rapturously received set. His successes date back to 1971, when he topped the UK singles chart solo with Maggie May and had a hit with Stay With Me, fronting the Faces. Since then he has had No 1s with songs such as Sailing, Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? and his version of The First Cut Is the Deepest, in a career with 11 No 1 albums that have spent a total of 1,189 weeks on the charts.
While he may no longer be scoring hit singles, his albums remain reliably popular: three of his last five have reached No 1 in the UK, including the most recent, Swing Fever, a collection of big band numbers made with Jools Holland and released in February.
Stewart already has tours booked in Europe and North America next year, stretching into August, but last week he said he will then retire from “large-scale world tours”.
He added: “But I have no desire to retire. I love what I do, and I do what I love. I’m fit, have a full head of hair, and can run 100 metres in 18 seconds at the jolly old age of 79. I’d like to move on to a great American songbook, [then a] Swing Fever tour the year after next – smaller venues and more intimacy. But then again, I may not.”
Also uncertain is the future of his classic sports car collection. Earlier this month he lamented that, “because of the potholes on our roads, I may have to find new owners for them”. Stewart has previously undertaken ad hoc road repairs near his home in the Essex countryside, saying at the time: “People are bashing their cars up. The other day, there was an ambulance with a burst tyre. My Ferrari can’t go through here at all.”
Glastonbury’s legends slot has hosted Shania Twain, Yusuf/Cat Stevens and Diana Ross since its return after the Covid-19 pandemic, and has previously featured Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Paul Simon and more.
Other pop veterans are being rumoured for the festival’s three main headline slots, including Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder, alongside younger stars such as Olivia Rodrigo, Sam Fender and the 1975.
