Mumford & Sons: ‘We considered cancelling Glastonbury’

Marcus Mumford confirms band would have scrapped all gigs to wait for Ted Dwane's recovery

Mumford and Sons have revealed that they considered cancelling their headline performance at Glastonbury 2013 after bass player Ted Dwane recovered from brain surgery.

Dwane, who recovered in time to play the Worthy Farm festival, reveals in this week’s NME that he had wanted to go back onstage as soon as soon he left the hospital.

“We were talking about just cracking on and just doing it,” he said. “I felt fine – those 10 days before I was in such pain, but soon as I came out of the operating room I felt, comparatively, a million dollars…These guys very wisely said, ‘Maybe not’.”

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Confirming that they would have pulled out of Glastonbury if Dwane was too ill, Marcus Mumford added: “Everything was on the cards and everything is less important than Ted so we were ready to cancel the rest of the summer, definitely. And we wouldn’t play a gig without him – it’s four of us, or it’s none of us. Ted wanted to play the day he got out! The three of us had to sit down and be like, ‘Dude, it’s alright, let’s just can these. Go and sleep!'”

Mumford & Sons’ second album ‘Babel’ climbed 15 places on the Official UK Albums Chart to hit Number One following their Glastonbury performance. The band subsequently claimed that their own ‘Gentlemen of the Road’ gig at London’s Olympic Stadium was “shitloads” better than headlining the festival.

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