Bob Vylan Tells Louis Theroux He ‘Does Not Regret’ Glastonbury IDF Chant, Would ‘Do It Again Tomorrow’

ByMF Jones

Bob Vylan may have been dropped by their agent, dropped from every festival line-up in Europe, and had their US tour cancelled, but the punk duo insist they do not regret starting the infamous ‘Death to the IDF’ chant at Glastonbury.

Frontman Bobby Vylan, who remains under investigation by Avon and Somerset Police over the performance, spoke to Louis Theroux this week and claimed he was “not regretful” of the chanting at all.

He said: “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.”

The singer continued: “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.”

Vylan also fired back at Damon Albarn, who called it “one of the most spectacular misfires I’ve seen in my life, especially when he started goose-stepping in tennis gear”.

Vylan told Theroux: “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.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Theroux suggested that Vylan could have said something more toned-down, like “F*** the IDF”, which would have been easier to defend than calling for “death to the IDF’.

Somewhat hilariously, Vylan said that wouldn’t have worked because the chant had to rhyme.

He said: “Because that is what we are up there to do. We are there to entertain. We are there to play music. I am a lyricist. “Death, Death to IDF” rhymes. Perfect chant.”

Well, fair enough really. Unfortunately for Bob Vylan, it seems they will face the consequences of that performance for perhaps the entirely of their careers, so I suppose they may as well stand by what they said.

Interestingly, Bob Vylan also told Louis Theroux that the BBC ‘congratulated’ him on the performance… before realising it had p1ssed off their overlords.

He said: “We come off stage. It’s normal. Nobody thought anything. Nobody. Even staff at the BBC were like ‘That was fantastic! We loved that!’.”

When Theroux astutely pointed out that bands receive that sort of reaction when coming off a stage, Vylan replied: “But that was like, this was a couple hours later because it took us a little while to get back. Nobody at the BBC at that time was there like, ‘oh my gosh’. You know?”

Make of that what you will.

Personally, I thought his celebration of the death of Charlie Kirk was way worse than the IDF chant.

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