5:00 p.m. Update: According to URB.com, which has a history of teaming up with festival producers GoldenVoice on promotions, is reporting no Radiohead, Bowie, or Daft Punk for Coachella ’09…
With the lineup announcement for this year’s Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival imminent, the rumor mill is starting to go haywire. However, as we learned today, two of the biggest acts floating around as possible headlining candidates won’t be appearing in Indio, California, at least not between April 17 and 19, 2009.
According to Billboard, despite rumors to the contrary, Faith No More will not reunite at Coachella, quashing hopes for the band’s first live performance in more than 10 years. That’s not to say there won’t be any presence of the legendary California outfit; former frontman Mike Patton will reportedly grace the Coachella stage for a set with beat boxer Rahzel.
Of course, the biggest rumor that hit the web over the weekend was that of David Bowie and what was rumored to be a headlining performance of the musician’s classic 1972 album, Ziggy Stardust. The possibility was first raised on Friday by Australia’s Undercover.com and gained steam on earlier this morning when The Daily Star reported a similar story, but as we learned today, courtesy of NME of all places, the 62-year-old legend will not be resurrecting Ziggy anytime soon. A spokesman told the U.K. based music outlet that “the singer has no plans to play.”
So who is in fact playing this year’s Coachella? Well, there’s still much unknown and until the official announcement is made, which could come any hour now, we won’t know for sure. But if you head on over to our Coachella outlook page, you’ll notice that 28 acts are currently “independently” confirmed either through MySpace, an interview, or other third party outlets. Among the latest names to join the list include N.A.S.A., Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Knux, Christopher Lawrence, and Sir Paul McCartney.
Yes, according to the source who also tipped us off about The Killers and Franz Ferdinand, both of which are shoe-ins to appear, the former Beatle will perform a headlining set at this year’s Coachella. Of course, we would like to stress that nothing is officially confirmed until Coachella says so. Hopefully, that will be sooner rather than later.
