UK band Fat White Family have spoken out after they were ejected from Splendour In The Grass by police on Friday, 22nd July.
Speaking with The Music, Fat White Family frontman Lias Kaci Saoudi says that while reports of the band’s police escort are correct, the reason for the eviction wasn’t violence or alleged damage to the backstage area, but an intoxicated friend of the band who the singer says he hadn’t seen in five years.
“Eventually one of them got too drunk and he fell asleep and I put him in our backstage room, which was a little bit messy, like any backstage room five hours into a festival,” Saoudi says.
“It hadn’t been smashed to pieces, it hadn’t been shat on, it hadn’t been pissed on, hadn’t been spray painted, none of this had gone down.”
Saoudi claims that Splendour In The Grass organisers called police because of his friend’s intoxication. “They told us that we all had to leave the festival then and there immediately under police escort because my friend was drunk,” he says.
“Now, why he wasn’t just taken care of and we were sent off our own way… I don’t know. [Splendour organisers] took a disliking to us I think from the moment we walked in there. I think they took offence to the fact I took all my clothes off on stage.
“But I’m an artist, I’ll do whatever I want… they know what they’re booking when they hire the band. It’s something that I’ve done on multiple occasions.
“A couple of our party might have said a few swear words in the direction of the festival organisers and production staff, but you’ve gotta take in mind that these guys have just flown 7000 miles to play this party and now they’re being asked to leave and they haven’t actually done anything wrong… that’s naturally going to happen.”
Saoudi dismisses any allegations that Fat White Family trashed a fellow Splendour act’s dressing room, and says the band are still open to playing the festival again in the future.
Initial reports of Fat White Family’s eviction from Splendour were accompanied by claims that the band had trashed someone’s van and that Saoudi had been seen with a bleeding and broken nose.
A statement posted to Fat White Family’s Facebook page has since attempted to clear up those allegations, and to praise the band’s Aussie fans for being generally awesome.
“Nobody’s nose was broken, there was no violence or blood, we didn’t trash and raid anybody’s dressing room and the police were only involved because a dear friend of ours was found, heaven forbid at a music festival, inebriated to the point of being asleep in our backstage room,” the statement reads.
“I only bother to write this because outside of our experience at Splendour playing in Australia for the first time has been fucking phenomenal, the venues, the crowds, the treatment we received along the way, the GHB, it’s been as good a time as one can have doing this job.
“Australian fans are the only ones out there that give the Glaswegians a run for their money, and for that we salute you!”
Read Fat White Family’s full statement, below. Splendour In The Grass is yet to publicly comment on the band’s eviction from this year’s festival.
Watch: Fat White Family – Whitest Boy On The Beach
