Glastonbury organisers have announced that nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, will not be welcome in the King’s Meadow area of the festival this year.
A statement from Liz Eliot, the co-ordinator of Glastonbury’s Green Fields, was published earlier today in which it is claimed that the King’s Meadow area (also known as the Stone Circle) has “lost its way” amid festival-goers using it as a place to take drugs.
“It’s become known as a place where people take nitrous oxide, a damaging drug which pollutes our beautiful field with noise, litter and N2O gas (a greenhouse gas which is 298 times more polluting than carbon dioxide),” Elliot writes. “Nitrous oxide is also dangerous: an exploding canister was the source of a major injury at last year’s Glastonbury.”
Two tonnes of empty nitrous oxide canisters were picked up, by hand, at Glastonbury 2014 and organisers are keen to restore the stone circle to its original purpose; a place representing the major stars of constellation Cygnus.
Foo Fighters and Kanye West will headline Glastonbury 2015, with speculation recently mounting over the identity of the third artist joining them at the top of the bill at this year’s festival.
Michael Eavis recently hinted that the identity of the final Glastonbury headliner will be revealed on June 1, also appearing to imply that the headliner for the Sunday leg would be composed of two artists, rather than one. He also added that they will “most likely” be British and that Coldplay’s Chris Martin may be involved.
However, Emily Eavis later addressed her father’s comments via Twitter. Responding to a fan who asked “any truth to the rumours of a Sunday night charity super group arranged by Chris Martin?”, Eavis replied: “ah, don’t get confused by the two bands together story! We are announcing one band as headliner but a great penultimate too”.
Coldplay are 3/1 favourites to headline Glastonbury with bookmakers William Hill, though Emily Eavis has previously ruled them out of playing. Muse and AC/DC have concerts elsewhere on June 28, so will not be the final headliner.
Other artists confirmed as performing at Glastonbury include Alt-J, Florence And The Machine, The Maccabees, Suede, Jamie T, The Chemical Brothers, Alabama Shakes, Jungle, FKA Twigs, Catfish And The Bottlemen, Belle & Sebastian, The Vaccines, Super Furry Animals, Patti Smith, Hot Chip, Run The Jewels, Future Islands, Charli XCX, Peace and Circa Waves.