The only way to understand Glastonbury properly is to take part in it. For three days, CoS Senior Staff Writer Tony Hardy breathed the Somerset air, battled rain, mud, and sun and managed to see the bands you can read about below. It’s really a snapshot but one that we hope gives you a flavor of the richness of the place and might encourage you to make the trip when the festival returns in 2013. That’s right, it’s taking a break next year while the London Olympics take center stage and the Glastonbury pastures recover from this year’s human invasion.
The first thing that greets you as you arrive at Glastonbury is the sheer scale of the place. Access to the site is smoothly efficient, depending on how many people are trying to get in at once of course, and then the view from the hill greets you. It’s a vast panorama of sprawling humanity; a sea of colorful tents, stages, big tops, insect-sized people, and once grassy fields turned to expanses of mud. As dark clouds gathered overhead around Friday lunchtime to dispel the morning sun, it looked daunting. Even a fest too far?
The festival is in its 41st year. Back in 1970, it cost £1 to get in and that included free milk from the dairy farm that plays host to the festival. The two-day event pulled around 1,500 people to see acts that included Marc Bolan, Al Stewart, and Quintessence (two points if you can whistle “Dive Deep”). In 2011, a ticket will set you back £195 (more than $300) and over 170,000 of them sold out in hours. The growing commercialism of the festival has given rise to cries that Glastonbury has sold out and now exists to take the corporate dollar from growing numbers of celebrities sporting designer wellies, posing for the paps and pitching up in their helicopters and Winnebagos.
Photo by Laura Page
The truth is somewhat different. True it’s increasingly a white, middle class audience; people who can afford to get in and purchase a range of festival-goer paraphernalia from fold-up chairs to tipis. And copious quantities of beer and cider to wash down ethnic and not so ethnic fast food. Yet the age demographic is much broader. While young people are predominant, you get families with babies and young children through to the odd octogenarian. Mums in their forties or early fifties enjoying a Mother’s Day treat with their college-age daughters are much in evidence and baby boomer parents are everywhere.
There are still vestiges of the Spirit of ‘71 when Glastonbury was a free festival, David Bowie was among the progressive rock, and folk acts that formed the core line-up and the very first Pyramid stage came into being. Dread-locked travelers, troubadours, green activists, performance artists, and all manner of eccentric exhibitionists are here in numbers. Some are involved in helping to build or set up the festival, or are performing on the fringes. You have to admire the organization of the festival, especially given the scale of it. For all the signs that may point in ever so slightly the wrong direction and lead you to dead ends, and the High School kids working on site who haven’t quite studied their own map well enough to tell you where the John Peel stage lies, the logistics are a thing of wonder. Bands appear on time, the sound systems are awesome, the security guys chat to you and ply the audience with fresh water, and there’s always someone around to help you.
Photo by Adam Gasson
You will find all things at Glastonbury and the weekend is very much what you want it to be. How you spend your time is dictated by whether you’re here for the music, or more for the experience. OK, we’d want both but the geography of the site allied to the effects of rain on earth puts breaks on those choices somewhat. There were over 2,000 acts performing on something like 60 stages across Glastonbury’s 500-acre site. These were some of them…
-Tony Hardy
Senior Staff Writer
Feature image by Laura Page.
Friday, June, 24th
The Vaccines – Other Stage – 2:50 p.m.
Photo by Adam Gasson
With a plethora of new talent to supplement the established and older guard at Glastonbury, post-punksters The Vaccines seemed a reasonable first stop on Friday. Getting on site through the ankle-deep mud had prevented earlier hoped for incursions into the further reaches of the festival site. Formed just a year ago, the band hit big over here with their debut What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?. The four-piece breezed through some accessible tunes with “If You Wanna” getting a wintry looking large crowd on its feet. (Not that they were exactly sitting down in the mud earlier.) Come to think of it, singer-guitarist Justin Young calls to mind Editors’ Tom Smith. Nonetheless, The Vaccines may be something of a one-trick trip, but it was a fun set and no rocket science was used in the making.
Andrew Morris – Mandala Stage – 3:30 p.m.
This year, the sound traveled a long way from the Other Stage, which was second only to the Pyramid in size and billing. Looking at the schedule it was going to be hard to find time to visit the hippy paradise that is the Green Futures. So I decided to listen to the last couple of Vaccines numbers while traversing towards the Mandala Stage (no misspelling as it has nothing to do with Nelson) to catch what I could of Andrew Morris’ set. Green Futures is like a large version of an English village fayre, has less people (and mud), and you can get a coffee for £1. The acts on the three stages dotted across the Futures can be hit and miss but are invariably endearing. Andrew Morris brought a touch of class to the proceedings with an assured set of songs, delivered with strident solo guitar and customary vocal passion and verve. A regular at Glastonbury, this guy needs to move up to a bigger stage right now.
Little Dragon – West Holts – 4:45 p.m.
Leaving the relative serenity of the green fields behind after a brief food stop, the walk towards the Pyramid Stage took you past some niche stages and into a fairly big open expanse, leading up to West Holts. This stage featured global music with the accent on the more chilled dimensions of dance music. It was also due to host some of the weekend’s biggest names across the spectrum, from Cee-Lo Green to Kool and the Gang. On stage at the time were Swedish ambient soul outfit, Little Dragon. The band created some sweet music on-stage with vocalist Yukimi Nagano showing off some odd, snake-hipped moves, and at one point she danced with a tablecloth over her head. At times, the bass synth threatened to advance the onset of tinnitus but overall the band came across as having more of a light touch than that with crisp percussion and soft grooves to the fore. An extended “Feather” and the end piece “Swimming” were stand-outs and the band fully deserved its warm reception by the end of the set.
Biffy Clyro – Pyramid Stage – 6:15 p.m.
Photo by Jason Bryant
Scots trio Biffy Clyro took the stage topless in a show of north of the border machismo, or they might just have been hot. Curiously a guest guitarist was also on stage looking out of place in a white suit. Hot or not, the crowd was slowly getting damper though in good spirits, showing that this band works off a strong grassroots base. Much of the set was drawn from their last album, Only Revolutions. “The Captain” was a particularly storming opener and got the crowd singing the choruses. Tattooed main man Simon Neil sings in a kind of mid-Atlantic drawl but his diction is clear and the rhythm section adds some strong harmonies. At Glasto, Biffy Clyro came across as rock archetypes yet dealt some anthemic tunes, played with passion, and worked hard to hold the audience. I snuck off though to catch the opening of Fleet Foxes thinking I had heard enough for the night.
Fleet Foxes – Other Stage – 7:15 p.m.
Photo by Adam Gasson
Wading through thick mud in wellies is hardly conducive to covering distances in a short time so it’s helpful that these two stages weren’t that far apart; not as good news for some of the more outlying stages, however. Fleet Foxes would have been ideally suited to a balmy summer’s evening but they did their best to disperse the drizzle with the chiming instrumental “The Cacades”, followed by a sublime “Grown Ocean”, and worked their way through a proficient set drawn from their two albums. There was a cry from the audience to turn the vocals up to which Robin Pecknold playfully twisted an imaginary switch on his chest. Whatever he did, it worked wonders. “Mykonos” inspired some chorus singing and the ever-growing audience really came alive during “White Winter Hymnal” with its contrastingly summery Beach Boy soundbites. The set died off a little bit from then on in terms of dynamics but it was still rich, accomplished stuff, savoured by the crowd and capped by the excellent “Helplessness Blues” to finish.
Radiohead – The Park – 8:00 p.m.
Photo by Jason Bryant
Around the time Fleet Foxes were starting to draw their set to an end, “mystery guests” Radiohead were kicking off theirs on the most southerly stage on the site, The Park, curated by Emily Eavis herself. We know how CoS readers love their Radiohead so you will find the full story and videos here.
Just to add to a feeling that someone had just spilt the entire cookie jar, Morrissey was also ready for action on the Pyramid Stage. It’s at times like these that you regret being bound by the laws of physics (and mud).
Mumford & Sons – Other Stage – 8:45 p.m.
Photo by Jason Bryant
Compensation was at hand at the Other Stage with the imminent arrival of the UK’s current favourite sons, Mumford & Sons. The crowd had been big for Fleet Foxes but was looking enormous for Mumfords. It was a reminder that with 177k people on site you get more than one massive crowd forming at any one time. Mumford’s set proved to be a triumphant homecoming. The sheer energy these guys expend and the passion they play with is an absolute joy. How often they must have performed most of these songs, drawn from Sign No More and with four newbies thrown in, and yet they sounded fresh and as vigorous as ever.
There’s an enduring humility about Mumford & Sons, as evidenced through their brief opening display of nerves: the way Marcus Mumford addressed the audience and how the whole band radiated the privilege and pride of playing live. Highlights? I counted 14 but “Sign No More”, “Little Lion Man”, “White Blank Page”, “Roll Away Your Stone”, and “Awake My Soul” particularly roused the passion of the throng that the band just fed from. Of the new songs, “Lover’s Eyes” came across as an immediate crowd pleaser with a majestic hymnal quality to it, a great build, and one hell of a sustain. Eventually, “The Cave” brought the house down at the end, inspiring such communal pride, singing, dancing, and crowd hugging as I’ve never seen before. Simply brilliant.
U2 – Pyramid Stage – 10:00 p.m.
Photo by Adam Gasson
Follow that. Well you could do worse than have U2 next on the agenda. Getting to the Pyramid stage from Mumfords’ gig and sacrificing Primal Scream in the process, wasn’t quite a breeze. I arrived late and missed an abortive attempt by direct action group, UK Uncut, to raise an inflated banner asking Bono and crew to pay their taxes! U2 had been criticised for moving its commercial operations to the Netherlands, where royalties on music incur virtually no tax. The band were running through songs from Achtung Baby, with some urgency maybe trading off nerves with adrenalin. The music was greeted with enthusiasm from large pockets of the vast crowd but compared to Mumfords, no one nearby seemed to be having quite the time of their life.
Photo by Adam Gasson
Maybe this is a generational thing, or maybe it was the rain, but things hardly improved when Bono treated everyone to an accompanied rendition of “Jerusalem”. For humility, read sanctimony. Actually that might not be fair to the man but for me the set pieces in this show were not coming off. Referencing leylines alongside jetlag and engaging help from a space station astronaut to recite lyrics from “Beautiful Day” make it seem like the blarney has taken over. The Edge was on form, however, and “Where the Streets Have No Name” really hit the spot along with similar out-and-out classics like “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, “Beautiful Day”, and “With Or Without You”. Committed U2 fans seemed to relish songs like “Elevation”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, and “Vertigo”, but U2 might have scored bigger with the less fervent members of the crowd if they’d kept a couple of the surefires back for the encore. The last three were a bit more “without” than “with you”.
SixNationState – Greenpeace Stage – 12:45 a.m.
Reprising tracks from their self-titled debut album and some new pipeline material, the entertaining London four-piece known as SixNationState delighted a small but enthusiastic crowd down at the Greenpeace stage. The brave souls who sloshed their way in pelting rain down to the small stage were rewarded by permission to sing and dance themselves silly. Opener “Keep Dancing” set the tone while frontman Gerry del-Guercio entertained with his energetic style and fine baritone voice. SixNationState has that rare ability to make an immediate impression even with unfamiliar songs. The band trades in foot-tapping strong and simple melodies and deserves a proper crack at the big time.
