Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free
Glastonbury is back in business this year and the full lineup has been announced, so the biggest question remaining is whether the weather will be any good.
With Stormzy , The Cure and The Killers all set to headline the Pyramid stage, festival-goers are keen to know if the British summertime will deliver a beautiful setting for performances from the world’s best live acts... or if they’ll need to pack a raft and some wellington boots instead of sunglasses and shorts.
The Met Office's Aidan McGivern previously said that this could be the hottest Glastonbury on record, with hot and humid air arriving from Europe predicted to push temperatures past the festival’s previous record of 31.2°C in 2017.
Show all 20 1 /2020 best Glastonbury performances 20 best Glastonbury performances 20. The Levellers – Pyramid Stage 1994 Sometimes quantity really does matter as much as quality. Without a steel fence to keep the gatecrashers away, Glasto was officially free and The Levellers played to what is reported to have been the festival’s largest ever crowd to date, estimated at 300,000. Imagine how many dogs were tied up at the gate.
Alamy
20 best Glastonbury performances 19. Kanye West – Pyramid Stage, 2015 As far as classic Glastonbury talking points go, nothing since Michael Jackson died has come close to Kanye’s 2015 slot. For all his claims to be “the biggest rock star on the planet”, nerves got the better of what was arguably Kanye’s highest-profile show ever. His attempt to echo Jay-Z’s rock-embracing “Wonderwall” from 2008 fell flat when he forgot the words to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and he had to restart “Black Skinhead”’ after comedian Lee Nelson invaded the stage pretending to be a surprise guest rapper. Nonetheless (look away now, Noel), some class this as another key victory in hip-hop’s Glastonbury takeover.
Getty
20 best Glastonbury performances 18. Primal Scream – NME Stage, 1992 The volume, according to some onlookers, was like listening to a car stereo playing ”Movin’ On Up” underwater three miles away. Yet Primal Scream bringing Screamadelica to the NME Stage in 1992 was more of a collective celebration of music’s most double-visioned zeitgeist. Generation “Loaded” came together as one, and rock and dance cultures mated furiously in the bushes at this peak of the Ecstasy rave explosion.
Youtube
20 best Glastonbury performances 17. T Rex – Main Stage, 1970 “Don’t touch my car!” Marc Bolan barked at Michael Eavis when the burgeoning festival don – en route to Minehead Butlin’s to replace The Kinks at what was then essentially a farmer’s party taking place on a stage held together with string – tried brushing leaves off his Cadillac. Yet Bolan’s T Rex stormed the inaugural Glastonbury (or the Pilton Pop, Folk & Blues Festival as it was known – £1 per ticket and all the milk you could drink). “Bolan played on and on and on as the sun was going down,” Eavis recalled, “all the hits, the full works, and it sounded fantastic.”
Rex Features
20 best Glastonbury performances 16. Portishead – Acoustic Tent, 1995 As many a troubadour will attest, it’s rare to find a crush of 15,000 people stuck outside the Acoustic Tent. But the arrival of local (ish) heroes Portishead bearing the sumptuous jazz lounge trip-hop of their hugely acclaimed debut album Dummy prompted just such polite chaos. The lucky few inside reported a bewitching set of very modern heartache – “Glory Box” and “Sour Times” capping a show of immense grace and emotion. As many tears inside as out.
Rex Features
20 best Glastonbury performances 15. The Killers – New Tent, 2004 The best sign of encroaching superstardom, they say, is when your John Peel Stage debut is as rammed and rambunctious as Theresa May’s leaving drinks. Arguably the first and finest example was the tsunami of fans descending on the New Tent early on the Saturday evening in 2004, to toast the arrival of Las Vegas indie pop showmen The Killers. The crowds stretched far outside the tent but even the ones on the outskirts bawled along to “Mr Brightside” and “All These Things That I’ve Done”. It was such a “moment” that the band returned to the stage (now the John Peel Stage) for a secret encore in 2017.
Rex Features
20 best Glastonbury performances 14. Orbital – NME Stage, 1994 Dance music had long-since conquered clubland, but its clout as a force to unify a vast festival crowd was unrecognised until Orbital took Glasto ’94 by synthetic storm. Drawing 40,000 ravers to the NME Stage for their headline set with little more than compulsive beats and headlights on their faces, the Hartnoll Brothers dazzled not just the millions watching Glastonbury’s first televised broadcasts on Channel 4, but Eavis himself. So much so, in fact, that he was inspired to open a dedicated Dance Tent the following year. It’s since grown into its own festival-within-a-festival in the Silver Hayes dance village.
Rex Features
20 best Glastonbury performances 13. New Order – Pyramid Stage, 1981 By 1981, Glastonbury had grown from its Pilton Pop, Folk & Blues roots, but not far. It was a CND charity gathering of around 3,000 bikers burning up the site as they waited for Hawkwind to come on. “It was our version of Altamont but without any trouble,” said New Order’s Peter Hook of their “spirited” support slot, but it was also the moment the band emerged from beneath the lingering clouds of Joy Division and proved themselves the silvery scouts of the new electronic age.
Rex Features
20 best Glastonbury performances 12. Beyoncé – Pyramid Stage, 2011 If Jay could do it, so could Bey. Following her husband’s celebrated 2008 headline slot (and pregnant with their first child at the time), Beyoncé delivered Glastonbury’s ultimate pop experience to date. “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)”, “Crazy in Love”, glitzy covers of both “Love to Love You Baby” and “Sex On Fire’, billowing ballads sung while kneeling on white grand pianos… even the bells had whistles on them. All of this was wrapped up with the most bootylicious of Destiny’s Child medleys.
Rex Features
20 best Glastonbury performances 11. Stormzy – Pyramid Stage, 2019 Boasting what was rumoured to be the most expensive Glastonbury set ever staged – a Banksy stab-vest! Ballet dancers! Chris Martin! – Stormzy may only have released one hit album, Gang Signs & Prayer, when he became the first black British solo artist to ascend to the revered Glastonbury headline slot in 2019, but he used it as a battering ram to break the new grime uprising onto the most respected stage in the world. Historic.
Rex Features
20 best Glastonbury performances 10. Happy Mondays – Pyramid Stage, 1990 By its very nature as a gigantic concave mirror on alternative culture, Glastonbury reflects and exaggerates music’s pivotal moments. Case in point: Happy Mondays roll onto the Pyramid Stage in 1990 – just as Ecstasy is reshaping youth culture into very bendy shapes indeed – and twist the melon of an entire generation with “Step On”, “Wrote For Luck” and “Hallelujah”. Where the Second Summer of Love (1988-1989) was an in-the-know affair, this set made it universally hip to be hairy, lairy, baggy and boggle-eyed.
Getty Images
20 best Glastonbury performances 9. Jay-Z – Pyramid Stage, 2008 Noel Gallagher wasn’t having it, but Glastonbury 2008 certainly was. Gently mocking Noel’s disgust as rap infiltrated rock’s most revered stage, Jay-Z entered with a ramshackle solo rendition of “Wonderwall”, then all but smashed his acoustic guitar as he burst into “99 Problems”. There followed a veritable firestorm of hip-hop classics – “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”, “Girls, Girls, Girls”, “Big Pimpin’”, “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” – almost as though Jigga was beating the spirit of Glastonbury into submission before forcing it to wear a Brooklyn Nets shirt. The festival’s mind was opened forever, that night.
Rex
20 best Glastonbury performances 8. Patti Smith – Pyramid Stage, 2015 Most so-called “heritage” acts go through the motions at Glastonbury – a stout chunk of their folky new record and, begrudgingly, a smatter of their old hits. Not Patti Smith. She attacked the Pyramid Stage in 2015 like a white-haired tornado. Ripping strings from her guitar by the fistful and hailing “Freedom!” at the top of her voice, she tore through “Land”, “Gloria” and The Who’s “My Generation” like the age-defying punk pioneer she is. She even found time to present the actual Dalai Lama with a birthday cake onstage and fall on her face, “because I’m a f****** animal!” Amen.
Getty Images
20 best Glastonbury performances 7. Oasis – NME Stage, 1994 Scenes become seismic events when they prove they can dominate an entire Glastonbury festival. Take Sunday 26 June, 1994, when a young, cocksure Liam Gallagher strode onto the NME Stage in a black jumper and shades and demanded of a distinctly mad-ferrit crowd: “Are you lot gonna wake up for some proper songs?” Songs rarely came so “proper” as “Cigarettes and Alcohol”, “Live Forever” and “Fade Away”, which joined “Shakermaker” and “Supersonic” in the wider public domain that day – bombardments from Britpop’s northern armies. The Nineties suddenly had some real fight in them.
Rex
20 best Glastonbury performances 6. Blur – NME Stage, 1994 By the time Pulp and Radiohead had played that same stage, that same day, in a line-up that Johnny Greenwood would describe as ”like the Champions League”, Britpop had officially arrived. To herald this cultural breakout, Blur rolled up in their Parklife charabanc at sundown for a coming-of-age party that saw “Girls & Boys”, “End of a Century” and the era-defining title track taken on as generational anthems, at a show as celebratory and momentous as any headline set. It took a year before the News at Ten caught on, but everyone at the NME Stage that day knew that Britpop already owned the decade.
Getty
20 best Glastonbury performances 5. Radiohead – Pyramid Stage, 1997 Radiohead’s 1997 headline slot is often cast as a battle – against the elements, malfunctioning stage equipment and their own despondency. “Everything broke onstage,” said Ed O’Brien. “It turned into the worst night of our lives. I don’t think we ever wanted to play a concert again.” But it’s better remembered as a battle against the formulaic post-Oasis rock landscape of Ocean Colour Scenes and Stereophonics, into which OK Computer landed like a laser-precision drone attack. “Lucky” rang out like an epic air-raid siren for the end of the century, and Radiohead’s fresh brand of ultramodern melancholia – “No Surprises”, “Karma Police”, “Airbag” – made it feel as though the future had chosen Worthy Farm for its grand unveiling.
RMV/REX/Shutterstock
20 best Glastonbury performances 4. The Smiths – Pyramid Stage, 1984 “I don’t want to sound revolutionary, or wild or dangerous, but hippydom… what does it mean?” So said Morrissey, hearing aid firmly in lughole, backstage at Glastonbury 1984 – shortly before The Smiths were resoundingly booed and bottled by a field full of Santana fans. Hippydom certainly wasn’t a bunch of effete Mancunians flapping around singing wiry pop songs full of wry, poetic teenage ennui such as “Hand in Glove”, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and “This Charming Man”. The performance inspired Glastonbury’s first stage invasion, but never would Glasto be defined as a purely “hippy festival” again. With The Smiths came a new subculture and a contemporary inclusiveness that reinvented the festival as a youth culture gathering that was indeed revolutionary, wild and a little bit dangerous.
Rex Features
20 best Glastonbury performances 3. Paul McCartney – Pyramid Stage, 2004 Sometimes all it takes to slip seamlessly into Glastonbury legend is the greatest songbook known to mankind. Sir Paul’s first ever UK festival show – no, really – was the singalong to end them all: “Eleanor Rigby” into “Drive My Car”, “Penny Lane”, “Get Back”, “Band On the Run”, “Back In the USSR”, “Live and Let Die”, “I’ve Got a Feeling”, “Lady Madonna” and a “Hey Jude” you could hear from Dunfermline. That was before the encore. McCartney has been semi-confirmed for 2020 – start refreshing the ticket page now.
Brent N. Clarke/Invision/AP
20 best Glastonbury performances 2. David Bowie – Pyramid Stage, 2000 Bowie’s reputation as an uncompromising art iconoclast preceded him for Glastonbury 2000. We’d seen him headline festivals before, playing hit-free drum’n’bass sets or onslaughts of screeching future metal that sounded like vaguely tuneful slow-motion car crashes. Needless to say, we weren’t exactly expecting “Changes”. Then he came on in a kind of Moroccan bathrobe affair and sang “Changes”. And “Life On Mars?” And “Ashes to Ashes” and “Rebel Rebel” and “Under Pressure” and “Starman” and “All the Young Dudes” and everything else you could possibly want David Bowie to play. You could’ve seen David Bowie live a thousand times, and this would be the set you remembered.
20 best Glastonbury performances 1. Pulp – Pyramid Stage, 1995 When The Stone Roses pulled out of their hotly anticipated Glastonbury headline set in 1995, few in the crowd had any idea who was replacing them until Pulp walked onstage. To say they stepped up is a vast understatement – they went down in history. Jarvis Cocker seemed born to prowl the world’s largest stage, chatting to the biggest crowd of his life like it was a mate down his local Voyeurs Anonymous meeting. The likes of “Babies”, “Disco 2000” and ”Common People” crystallised Britpop’s ascendance in 60 or so scintillating minutes. They even unveiled a new song seemingly penned for the occasion – “Sorted For E’s & Wizz” – and encapsulated the bewildering, otherworldly spirit of Glastonbury in 20 words: ”Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel?/ Or just 20,000 people standing in a field?” And to think, they asked Rod Stewart to fill in first.
Temperatures are now expected to hit 24°C for those arriving early today (Wednesday 26 June), and 25°C on Thursday with sunny skies.
Temperatures will peak at 27°C on Friday 28 June, before a slightly cooler weekend as temperatures drop to 25°C on Saturday and 19°C on Sunday, still with clear skies throughout.
Make sure you pack your wellies, however, as the site is reportedly muddy after rainfall earlier this week. And definitely take plenty of sunscreen, drink lots of water, and wear protective headgear to reduce your risk of heatstroke.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies