A-Z of Music: G is for... Glastonbury

Pyramid people: An early edition of Glastonbury in 1971
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Jochan Embley26 June 2020

On September 19 1970, the day after Jimi Hendrix died, a crowd of curious festival-goers gathered on a farm in Somerset. They had come for the inaugural edition of Pilton Pop, Folk and Blues, lured by a promotional poster that not only boasted a headline set from The Kinks, but also promised free milk and, excitingly, “an ox roast!”. Elsewhere, the poster confirmed, there would be a “lightshow, lightship, diorama and films, freaks and funny things”, all for the princely sum of £1.

As it turned out, The Kinks never turned up, and the crowd of 1,500 was rather less than the 5,000 people organiser and farm owner Michael Eavis had hoped for. “I’ll be very glad to get back to the cows again, I must say,” the crestfallen 34-year-old told the BBC once everyone had cleared out. “I wouldn’t say a disaster, but it hasn’t been as good as I hoped.”

Half a century later and Eavis is still tending to the cattle — but along with daughter and co-organiser Emily, he’s also at the helm of what is probably the best festival in the world. For many, Glastonbury is an annual pilgrimage; a pop-up metropolis hosting more than 200,000 revellers in a self-contained musical paradise. There’s an undefinable magic, one that almost seems to seep up from beneath the ground, a magic that no other festival can match. Whether you want to watch the world’s biggest musicians on the Pyramid Stage, or eat veggie curry from the Hare Krishna tent and listen to a dub poetry reading, or lose your mind at a psytrance rave, you can do it at Glastonbury.

Such an omni-sided thing could only have been 50 years in the making, and it's a time in which the festival has had to overcome some hefty obstacles. After that underwhelming first edition, the event returned as Glastonbury Fayre in 1971 (with a certain David Bowie on the line-up), and then again in 1979, this time a three-day event. But it made huge financial losses, and it wasn’t until 1981 — now called Glastonbury Festival — that a profit was turned.

Since then, there have been various court cases to contend with, brought by the local council over breach of license, and for years the festival struggled to stop hordes of gatecrashers from entering without tickets — in 2000, an estimated 150,000 people got in free of charge, which forced organisers to erect a huge fence around the farm. In 1994, the iconic Pyramid Stage burnt down just a couple of weeks before the festival was due to start.

Glastonbury 2019 from above - In pictures

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And then, of course, there’s the mud. It’s become a staple of British festivals to see people caked head-to-toe in brown sludge, and it’s a sight Glastonbury knows all too well. In 1982, the festival endured the heaviest rainfall recorded on a single day for 45 years, turning the ground into a squelchy mire. The 1997 edition is referred to as the "Year of the Mud", thanks to an unending torrent of rain that fell upon it.

But that’s what makes Glastonbury the festival it is today — and getting through it all has probably emboldened organisers to take some radical steps with their line-ups. In 1984 they booked The Smiths, a marked departure from the so-called “hippy acts” before and a leap towards the new brand of English music that followed. A decade later, electronic duo Orbital (that’s right, no guitars!) played a stunning set on the NME Stage. It was the moment that rave culture moved away from warehouses and the M25, and stepped into the mainstream. It changed Glastonbury, too — a year later, the Dance Tent arrived, and today the clubbing contingent of the festival line-up is invariably among its strongest.

The choice to book Jay-Z as the first ever hip-hop headliner in 2008 ruffled plenty of feathers — none more than Noel Gallagher’s, with the Oasis man lambasting the festival for abandoning “a tradition of guitar music”. The rapper responded directly, opening his set with a tongue-in-cheek rendition of Wonderwall, before launching into 99 Problems, suggesting that an outspoken Mancunian certainly wasn’t one of them.

Throughout it all, and as Glastonbury has grown from a subdued day at the farm into a festival that welcomes a yearly crowd roughly equivalent to the population of Norwich, it has managed to stick to many of its founding principles. Charity and activism has always been at its core — from the early 80s until the end of the Cold War, it was actually called Glastonbury CND Festival, in support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament — and these days it generates millions of pounds for the likes of Greenpeace and Oxfam, who in turn provide an army of volunteers to help run the site.

Its hippy origins haven’t been forgotten either — you can still find the crystal-loving yogis over in the Healing Field. They’ve been there since 1985, and the area is now more popular than ever. Peculiar enclaves like the never-not-wonky Shangri-La still retain all of their otherworldly charm, and there is always a secret stage or clandestine delight to be found hidden among some trees, or down a rabbit hole, if only you’ll look for it.

It’s what makes Glastonbury’s absence this summer such a wretched tragedy. The pandemic is, unsurprisingly, the biggest setback the festival has ever had to overcome. But with all that has happened before it, let's hope Glastonbury is well placed to return stronger than ever in 2021. We’ll see you there.

Listen: Orbital Live at Glastonbury 1994-2004

Watch: Glastonbury (Julien Temple, 2006)

Read: Glastonbury 50: The Official Story of Glastonbury Festival by Emily and Michael Eavis

A-Z of Music: So far

G is for... Glastonbury