Royal Blood Explain Why They Flipped Off The Audience At Radio 1’s Big Weekend

Two weekends ago, singer and bassist Mike Kerr from the English rock duo Royal Blood made headlines by flipping off the crowd while exiting the band’s set at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival, following a perturbed rant about how no one in the audience for the pop-focused fest was responding to rock music. This was fun fodder for blog posts here in America, but in the UK it spiraled into a career-threatening pile-on, as media personalities and online randos alike mocked the band for their petulant behavior. (Think of it as the British equivalent of the public meltdown after Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift.) Today, in what appears to be an attempt at a face-saving gesture, Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher sat down with Radio 1’s Greg James to discuss the incident.