Taking place in July, the show will bring Rowntree back together with his Blur bandmates Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Alex James for their first headline performance since 2015 – and their first ever gig at the England football team’s home.
Rowntree said the show has been a long time in the making.
“Turns out it’s incredibly difficult to arrange something like this, you know, the technical resources, the staff, the places to play. All of these things are in very, very short supply.
“So it went right up to the wire, but it’s very hard to turn something like that down.
“We’re a band that’s done almost everything it’s possible to do… what an iconic place, what an iconic venue. It’s just incredibly exciting.”
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Rowntree, who is also a former Labour councillor, said that while Blur played Wembley Arena back in the day, Wembley Stadium – which has a capacity of around 90,000 – would be a first.
“It’s one of these iconic places that are secretly up on your bucketlist, even though you pretend they’re not,” he said, adding: “I sincerely hope we are a band that can fill a stadium like that. I don’t want there to be four people and a dog.”
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The Battle of Britpop
Blur rose to fame in the 1990s, releasing debut album Leisure in 1991 followed by Modern Life Is Rubbish in 1993, before really breaking through with third album Parklife in 1994.
Featuring singles including Girls & Boys, End Of A Century and the titular Parklife, it was the first in a series of five successive number one albums and a string of hit singles – including Country House, Charmless Man, Beetlebum, Song 2, Tender and Coffee & TV – which helped shape British music in that decade.
In 1995, the release of Country House on the same day as Roll With It, by rivals Oasis, spawned the “Battle of Britpop” – with Blur winning that first round as they claimed the number one spot in the UK charts.
More than 30 years since they formed, Rowntree joked that Blur are now “kind of embarrassing granddads” in music but said he was looking forward to playing the hits once again.
“You only get to play for an hour and a half at these big shows so almost all of [that] is going to be full of songs that people won’t let us out of the stadium if we don’t play,” he said. “But I think we’ll try to squeeze a few surprises in there.
“I think once we didn’t play Song 2 and the audience refused to go home. They felt short-changed.”
Rowntree said that even after so many years, the nerves can still be there.
“The nerves these days come about half an hour before a show,” he said. “I go from sort of relaxed, kind of sitting around reading a book, to suddenly sitting bolt upright a half an hour before [the] show, pacing the room and kind of suddenly going, ‘Oh my God! What if I can’t remember the songs?'”
And while he says the bandmates “don’t go and hang around each other’s houses every night like we used to”, they are still good friends and support each other.
“Damon’s always doing loads of interesting stuff. Alex has got a great festival we all troop out to every year, and Graham’s got all kinds of stuff on the go as well.
“We all live in different areas of the country now, so it’s really nice to see each other when we do hang out.”
Fans can catch them hanging out at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 8 July, with artists including British rapper Slowthai, Mercury Prize nominee Self Esteem and London-based electro-pop duo Jockstrap also on the bill.
Hollywood celebrities are among thousands of people to have been evacuated from their homes as fires rip through areas of Los Angeles.
Sky News’ US correspondent Martha Kelner reported that Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Reese Witherspoon were all evacuated on Tuesday as wildfires continued to spread in the Pacific Palisades suburb of LA.
The area, which is home to billionaires as well as Hollywood A-listers, is located between Santa Monica and Malibu.
Other celebrities who have fled their homes include the award-winning actor James Woods, who said last night he had been safely evacuated from his home in Pacific Palisades.
But he added in a post on X: “I do not know at this moment if our home is still standing.”
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Actor Mark Hamill, best known for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, also posted on social media last night saying he evacuated his home in Malibu and his family were “fleeing for our lives”.
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This Is Us actress Mandy Moore was also forced to leave her home due to the fires.
She said in two Instagram stories she had fled the Eaton fire, which is raging near Altadena, with her children, cats and dog. They have found temporary refuge with friends.
The actress said: “Trying to shield the kids from the immense sadness and worry I feel.
“Praying for everyone in our beautiful city. So gutted for the destruction and loss. Don’t know if our place made it.”
According to Velvet Ropes, which maps celebrity properties, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Matt Damon, Steven Spielberg, Hilary Swank and Sally Field all have homes close to where fires are raging.
Dr Dre, Adam Brody and Leighton Meester, Tyra Banks, Martin Short, Anna Faris, Milo Ventimiglia, Linda Cardellini, Mary McDonnell, Adam Sandler, Miles Teller, and Jennifer Love Hewitt are also said to have houses in affected areas.
In neighbouring Malibu, which was also affected by fires in December, stars including Beyonce and Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish are said to be among the celebrity residents.
The Palisades blaze has already burnt through more than 11,000 acres of land while the Eaton one has caused the death of two people, Los Angeles County fire chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday.
The two other fires are known as Woodley and Hurst, after the main areas affected.
All four blazes are still growing, Mr Marrone said.
A reality TV personality known for appearing on shows like The Hills and Made In Chelsea has told Sky News her family have lost their homes in the California wildfires.
Stephanie Pratt, a model and the sister of fellow reality TV celebrity Spencer Pratt, lives in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, where more than 30,000 people have fled their homes due to the fast-moving blaze.
Los Angeles fire chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday that the Palisades fire is still growing and that “well over 5,000 acres” have been burnt.
At least two people have been killed so far, with around 1,000 buildings destroyed.
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House surrounded by flames during wildfire
California governor Gavin Newsom earlier declared a state of emergency over the four wildfires in the south of the state.
Speaking to Sky News from London, an emotional Ms Pratt said: “It’s just so crazy, I had no idea what was happening.
“I talked to my dad yesterday and he said ‘The Palisades is burning’. He said that he was at my brother’s house on Chautauqua [Boulevard] and they were just watching the flames come.
“The firefighters came and said you got to leave.”
‘I don’t know if my house is there’
Ms Pratt said her parents and brother Spencer, who like her starred in the reality series The Hills, were safely evacuated from the area.
However, the 38-year-old added that “all of the phones are disconnected” and that she doesn’t know what had happened to her home.
“I talked to my neighbour last night and she told me that [Palisades Charter High School] had burnt down, and that’s directly behind me, and so had Gelson’s Supermarket which is adjacent,” she said.
“I just can’t reach anyone to see if my house is okay. I just Googled it and it said that it’s destroyed and terrible… I don’t know if my house is there.”
When she asked her dad about Spencer, 41, who is married to 38-year-old Heidi Montag – another co-star of The Hills – Ms Pratt said he told her “I’ve never seen him like this”.
“I’m assuming he’s just completely catatonic,” she added. “We don’t care about the material things or anything like that, but this was their family home.
“This is where they raised their two little kids.”
The Palisades fire is one of five blazes currently burning in southern California– evacuation orders were in place on Tuesday in Altadena after another fire, called the Eaton fire, started near a nature preserve.
A third blaze, called the Hurst fire, also ripped through Sylmar in the north of the city.
And according to the state department Cal Fire, two more blazes – the Woodley fire in Los Angeles and Tyler fire in Riverside – broke out on Wednesday.
Two School Of Rock co-stars, who met at the age of 10, have got married.
Caitlin Hale and Angelo Massagli, who played Marta and Frankie respectively in the 2003 classic alongside Jack Black, tied the knot in New York on Saturday.
The couple brought some of the original cast of the film, which centres on a pretend substitute teacher turning a group of musically gifted school children into a rock band, together to celebrate their nuptials.
Posting on Instagram, Hale, 33, shared various images of the day, including a photobooth picture with a handful of their former cast mates.
The former actress, who now works as a sonographer, wrote under the post: “Special thank you to everyone who contributed to an unforgettable day!”
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Rivkah Reyes, who played bass player Katie in the film, also posted about the wedding, sharing a video on TikTok.
The clip, set to Stevie Nicks’s Edge Of Seventeen, included cameos from Brian Falduto, who played Billy, Joey Gaydos Jr, who played Zack, and Aleisha Allen, who played Alicia, among others.
The use of the song was a nod to one of the scenes from the film where Black and Joan Cusack, who plays headteacher Rosalie Mullins, sing the song in a bar.
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“Celebrating the marriage of Caitlin & Angelo with my forever fam #schoolofrock #wedding,” Reyes wrote alongside the video, which showed them all dancing together.
After appearing together in the film the only contact Hale and Massagli had was through a WhatsApp chat set up with the entire cast, according to The New York Times.
The pair then both left show business and coincidentally reconnected while studying in schools in Florida.
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Massagli, 32, who now works as a lawyer for TikTok, according to The Times, told the paper the familiarity they both had due to working together when they were younger “cut through some of those early relationship hurdles”.