Sandwiched between a surprise Foo Fighters set and headliners Arctic Monkeys, Royal Blood take to the Pyramid stage on Friday night in second billing – a milestone, or stumbling block, for any great band. But the stakes are higher still for the West Sussex duo, as they emerge from an international incident at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Dundee, when singer Mike Kerr lashed out at a “pathetic” crowd that failed to appreciate their rock bona fides, before flouncing off stage with middle fingers raised.
The vainglorious outburst was rooted in the authenticity fetishism that is at the heart of every argument about rock’s supremacy, which explains its intrigue, and hilariousness, to a streaming-era audience that is broadly not factional and genre-agnostic. Then again, in an age of asinine, media-friendly posturing, it was so uncalculated as to be almost admirable – a rare case of a band whipping up a PR storm, in these enlightened times, not by patronising pop-star women or consorting with far-right provocateurs, but through the old-fashioned medium of being a bit of a dick.
