Rock star Rod Stewart to play Glastonbury Festival next year

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LONDON (AP) — Rod Stewart will play the “legends” slot at Britain's Glastonbury Festival next year, more than two decades after he headlined the music festival, the organizers said Tuesday.

Stewart, 79, said on social media that he was “proud and ready and more than able to take the stage again to pleasure and titillate my friends at Glastonbury in June.”

The rock star, who headlined Glastonbury in 2002, was the first musical act announced for the June 2025 festival at Worthy Farm in the southwest of England.

Shania Twain starred in the coveted legends slot for this year's festival, which drew some 200,000 music fans and was headlined by Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA.

Stewart leaped to stardom in the London blues scene of the late 1960s, fronting the Jeff Beck Group, then joined the rowdy rock act the Faces before launching a successful solo career with hits including “Maggie May,” “Tonight’s the Night” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

Stewart, who turns 80 in January, recently said he was ending large-scale world tours but added he had “no desire to retire" after six decades in music.

“I love what I do, and I do what I love. I’m fit, have a full head of hair, and can run 100 metres in 18 seconds at the jolly old age of 79," he wrote on Instagram last week.

Glastonbury organizer Emily Eavis said bringing Stewart back was “everything we could wish for," before the festival takes a break or a “fallow year" to allow the farmland that hosts the festival to rest.