LONDON (AP) \u2014 A two-week-long music festival in central London has cancelled its final night after Jeff Lynne\u2019s Electric Light Orchestra pulled out of the headline slot on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Lynne, 77, who was billed to play alongside his band Sunday at the The BST Hyde Park festival, withdrew on Saturday on the advice of doctors as a result of what was termed a \u201csystemic infection.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, the festival organizers said the event will \u201csadly be cancelled\u201d and that ticket holders will be refunded and contacted directly by their ticket agent with further details.<\/p>\n
Stevie Wonder will be taking to the London stage on Saturday evening in what will now be the festival\u2019s final event of 2025. This year\u2019s festival, which started on June 27, hosted the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Van Morrison and Neil Young.<\/p>\n
U.S. rock band The Doobie Brothers and Steve Winwood were among those slated to perform on Sunday ahead of ELO\u2019s headline performance.<\/p>\n
In an earlier statement, BST said Lynne was \u201cheartbroken\u201d to report that he could not perform.<\/p>\n
\u201cJeff has been battling a systemic infection and is currently in the care of a team of doctors who have advised him that performing is simply not possible at this time nor will he be able to reschedule,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe legacy of the band and his longtime fans are foremost in Jeff\u2019s mind today \u2014 and while he is so sorry that he cannot perform, he knows that he must focus on his health and rehabilitation at this time,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
It comes after the band, best known for \u201cMr Blue Sky,\u201d pulled out of a performance at Manchester\u2019s Co-Op Live on July 10.<\/p>\n
The band was formed in Birmingham in 1970 by Lynne, multi-instrumentalist Roy Wood and drummer Bev Bevan, and first split in 1986. ELO are known for fusing classical music, Beatles-style pop and futuristic rock visuals, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.<\/p>\n
Lynne resurrected the band in 2014.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: July 12, 2025 at 12:01 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 A two-week-long music festival in central London has cancelled its final night after Jeff Lynne\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,10841,4884,2843,257,269,12,2535,6417,16,15,99648,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-259856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-festivals","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-rock-music","17":"tag-things-to-do","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-weekend-wire","21":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}