The Coronas' Danny O'Reilly on Glastonbury 2025 : "It has that sort of prestige for a reason"

We had a flight from Cork to Bristol yesterday and landed about midday. We were afraid that we wouldn’t get to our set on time, the flight was a little bit delayed and it's another hour from Bristol to the site in Glastonbury.

Obviously, at the festival you don't have sound‑check and stuff, but you just want to make sure you get access to the stage beforehand, so we were a little bit stressed. As soon as we got on site it was just lovely, it had a really nice vibe.

We got backstage and bumped into loads of people we knew and got our passes sorted. Everything was really smooth. There's always the festival jitters of, 'Oh, we've no sound‑check, is everything going to be all right?' It was a 20‑minute changeover, which is something that we're not usually used to, but in fairness to our crew, they worked three times as hard and pulled it off, and the gig was great.

 

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We weren't sure what sort of size the Acoustic Stage would be, but it was a big, big tent. It says “acoustic,” but it's definitely not. We weren't sure what to expect - it's such a big festival, and you can get swallowed up and lost amongst the stages and the size of it.

We had a ball. The crowd we had were great and up for it with Irish flags in the air. It went as well as we could have hoped, really. We only had 50 minutes, so we banged out some Corona stalwarts, as well as one or two brand‑new songs from the new album, and it went down really well.

I said it on stage: the amount of messages I've gotten this week - from people who are good friends of mine but know what I do and would never message me about a gig normally - saying “Oh my God, I see you're playing Glastonbury!"

It has that sort of prestige for a reason. Even just before we went on stage, we said, “Lads, this is great, we need to celebrate the wins, and this is a win.” We finally got to play Glastonbury after 15 years of being a band—and it was an honour, it was and a privilege.

Something I really noticed about the festival that's different to others we played before is the size of it; the vastness, and the amount of people. We walked around 20km yesterday going to different stages and seeing different acts. There really doesn’t seem like there’s much security or high-vis people either. There’s loads of kids around as well. Everyone just looks after each other; there’s no trouble. I didn’t even see any drunk people being obnoxious or overzealous or anything like that. It was just a really nice vibe. It's not corporate. The bars aren't big and sponsored; there's all these little bars, and it's done really nicely.

There weren't even big queues for the food vendors and bars, which is hard to believe because it's 250,000 people at this thing. It's an amazing atmosphere that's hard to really explain. We've obviously been to a lot of festivals in our day, but it has something different for sure.

At our stage as a band, I wouldn't really be up for two days of the festival, but today we're buzzing about going back in and walking around and seeing some more music.

There's a good few acts we want to see today.  We'll probably check out Olivia Rodrigo, and we could do the Prodigy if the energy levels are there. My brother was a huge Prodigy fan  - them and Oasis were our first two bands that we loved and I remember going to see them in Slane.

Festivals are the best opportunity to hang out with your bandmates and watch other bands, as well as you, to do it together and talk about sound and nerdy things like “low‑end” and “changeovers.”

We went to see HAIM, who played a surprise set yesterday, and it was incredible. The crowd went crazy. It was really an experience.

We saw almost all of Neil Young. I heard mixed reports from his Dublin show, but we went over and we loved it. It was mixed quieter than any of the other sets we saw, and it sounded great. The vibe was really good and he was in really good form. When he plays those old songs like 'Harvest Moon' and 'The Needle And The Damage Done',  you just go “Wow.” It was incredible.

We had already been to Kneecap and HAIM, which were so busy, so I think we were ready for a bit of Neil Young - we weren’t ready to go to Charli XCX and dance with the kids! We were feeling like old men; we just wanted to sit in the field, sip on a beer and watch him play 'Harvest Moon.'

 

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We did get to see the crowd at Kneecap for the first two songs before we had to leave for our own set. It was the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen for a stage that size. They were sending out warnings 20 minutes before Kneecap even started not to go see them because it was too full. They had to stop letting people into the arena. I'm picking figures out of my head here, but it looked like there was probably 40,000 people in a big outdoor stage that maybe should have held 25,000.

And it was just a really nice vibe. There were a lot of Palestine flags and there wasn't any messing. The music is great as well, which people sometimes forget because of everything that comes along with it.

 

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The Acoustic Stage also seemed to be a really good place for Irish musicians. I met Paul Charles, who's one of the bookers for that stage, and he's had a long history of working with different Irish bands over the years.

It is an amazing time for Irish music, it’s really special. I saw a clip of Cliffords on BBC, which is amazing for a new band to get that sort of traction. They're brilliant - they supported us in the Marquee last year, and I have a feeling they're going to have a serious year.

It’s a great time for Irish music, and I suppose we’re happy to be still in the conversation!

 

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