In a year of major musical loss, it is fitting that the world’s most major music festival mark these – and Glastonbury is finalising plans for tributes to David Bowie, Prince and Lemmy.

According to The Guardian, organisers told of plans for hundreds of commemorations celebrating the music of the three to be staged at the upcoming festival – including what they dubbed “participatory aspects” for the crowd to honour David Bowie, who died of liver cancer on 10 January this year. It is thought that attendees will be asked to join in a “flash mob” set to Starman.

Hot Chip has been confirmed to pay tribute to Prince, whose death in April has been recently attributed to an opoid overdose. Details of the tribute to Lemmy, who died in December of last year, are yet to be revealed – but it is said to be a set involving a giant sculpture.

The festival spokesperson said attendees can expect a great number of cover versions of Bowie and Prince’s songs particularly. They told The Guardian: “Some of the stuff we don’t even know about because there’s so much happening, particularly Bowie, because he was such a key character.”

David Bowie played for free to an audience of 6,000 at the Somerset festival in 1971 – he was aged 24 and a relative unknown. He returned to the farm as an icon in 2000, playing to 100,000 festivalgoers.

Lemmy played the festival just last year with Motorhead, but Prince had never performed there – despite the efforts of organiser Michael Eavis.

Glastonbury’s full 3,062 act strong line up was revealed last week. Beck, PJ Harvey and LCD Soundsystem are among the acts confirmed.

The July 2016 issue of Uncut is now on sale in the UK – featuring our cover story on Prince, plus Carole King, Paul Simon, case/lang/viers, Laurie Anderson, 10CC, Wilko Johnson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Steve Gunn, Ryan Adams, Lift To Experience, David Bowie and more plus 40 pages of reviews and our free 15-track CD

Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.