Coachella Bumps Stone Roses, Makes Blur Headliners
This year’s Coachella has packed quite a few surprises already, from violent sandstorms to R. Kelly dueting with Phoenix. Now, with the festival’s second weekend only two days away, organizers have pulled an unprecedented move: they’ve bumped Friday night’s headliners, the Stone Roses, in favor of their openers, Blur.
Coachella 2013: The Stone Roses and Blur Storm the Desert
On Wednesday afternoon, the Coachella website quietly displayed a new lineup for April 19th that showed the Stone Roses would start their set at 9:55 p.m. and Blur would close the same mainstage at 11:35 p.m. No reason has been given for the switch, though the Stone Roses drew a conspicuously thin crowd for their much-hyped reunion appearance last weekend. Blur, by comparison, pulled larger and more raucous attendance in their preceding show, which Rolling Stone called “the night’s best performance.”
Neither band has released a comment yet about the lineup reshuffling, though it is hard to imagine the famously sullen Stone Roses sitting in silence for long. They are set for a mini-tour of their native England in June, where they are widely celebrated as progenitors of Brit-pop and linchpins of the Madchester psychedelic dance-rock movement.
UPDATE, 4/18/13, 1:30 P.M.: A rep for Goldenvoice, which produces Coachella, tells Rolling Stone that the time swap was always part of the festival’s plan, as the Stone Roses and Blur are billed as co-headliners on the poster.