My dirty weekend in Glastonbury's Hippy Land
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/29/dirty-weekend-glastonbury-tanya-gold
We sent the most anti-festival (and anti-music, anti-mud,
anti-dancing) writer we could find to Glastonbury. Did the Green
Fields work their magic?
Tanya Gold
29 June 2009
Hello, my name is Happy Fairy Tanya. I used to be Bitter Journalist
Tanya, but then I went to Glastonbury. If you do not address me by my
new title, I will rip your eyeballs out with my shimmering fairy wings.
I never wanted to come here. In my previous non-Fairy incarnation I
hated music except Barry Manilow dancing, drugs, camping, mud and
dysentery. I live in Hampstead, which is like living in a nice
patisserie. So why am I here? I came because the Guardian lied to me
and said I didn't have to camp and that Barry Manilow was coming.
Then they changed their minds and said that I had to camp, "to get
the authentic Glasto experience". (They used the word "authentic"
several times.) Then they threw a tent at me; the same one Charlie
Brooker used two years ago at his first Glastonbury, they said, as if
it were holy. I think it still has pieces of him in it.
So I obediently go to Glastonbury and trudge down postcard-pretty
lanes carrying some baby wipes. There are showers at Glastonbury,
they say, but there are long queues for them, like in Soviet Russia.
"Follow the Yellow Hay Road," a steward in an orange jacket is
singing, "follow the Yellow Hay Road." I can see St Michael's tower
on Glastonbury Tor. The tor is supposed to have some deep mystical
significance for druids, and also possibly for dentists. The tower
looks like a far-off tooth.
I join a crocodile of people. There are hippies, babies, baby
hippies, lads, music industry executives and aristo-junkies who bray
incomprehensible things at each other, such as:
"CassieislatebecauseherGPShastotallymalfunctioned
haveyougotanyweedwhereisTobyishehereyetandareyoucampinginthe
greenfieldsorstayingwithSerena'sparentsattheirhouseyoupussy
loveyourhathaveyougotanycondomsbecauseyoucangetthemfreeinthe
medicaltent? Man." The "man" feels like a slap in the face with a
mouldering coronet.
Nearly all the women look like Peaches Geldof. Glastonbury is a world
of replicating Peaches clones. It may be an alien invasion. I'm in a
tribe of one. I'm a ghoul in a cagoule. I feel like an outsider. I'm
not a music person. I still think the Black Eyed Peas are a recipe.
I pass the Wall. The Wall was built to deter gatecrashers, after a
famous battle between festival security and new age travellers, and
it entirely surrounds the site. It is like the wall in
Israel-Palestine, but less musical, and of less interest to Barack
Obama. It gives the festival the air of a splice between a
concentration camp and a silly-hat convention. There are many silly
hats and many angry T-shirts; also inflatable sheep on poles, a
life-size papier-mache elephant and banners that say "I Love David
Bellamy", with a photograph in case you have forgotten who he is. The
silliest hat is a Louis Vuitton second world war German army helmet
(presumably the Red Army was in Dior). The angriest T-shirt says,
"Will Fuck For Coke".
I tramp through the site, which for some reason triggers a genetic
memory of my family living in Poland in the 18th century. Is it the
mud? The cow shit? This is a dairy farm and a significant proportion
of the earth is cow shit. The faint and growing sense of persecution?
I quickly realise that there is a hierarchy at Glastonbury; it is
about as much of a commune as the Royal Bank of Scotland. First there
are the normal people. They dance at night and they puke at dawn.
They spend days queuing to recharge their mobile phones so they can
call their friends, who are also queuing to recharge their mobile
phones so they can call their friends back. By breakfast, they look
suicidal, and then they drink cider and look happy again.
In the distance I can see Michael Eavis, the owner of Glastonbury,
zooming around in a Land Rover. He is a poster-boy for the world's
most unfashionable beard. It is sub-Amish; he looks like one of the
baddies in Witness. I wonder if he grew the world's most
unfashionable beard solely to spite the global music community. He is
supposed to be a sort of hippy philanthropist, who would never
support an evil system of hierarchies and VIP areas and mysterious
golden access-all-areas passes.
Yet he has allowed music industry people to siphon off a field in the
middle of the festival and name it "the Hospitality Field". As in
"the Hospitality Drain" or "the Hospitality Binbag" or "the Hospitality Nappy".
The Hospitality Field has proper flushing toilets and a coffee shop
where a latte costs £3; so everyone at Glastonbury is fighting for
access to a cow field. As in "Do you have a wristband for the
Hospitality Field? You don't? Oh no. I'm so sorry." (To be said with
a kind look by a slender flower child with a gold-plated Amex card.)
Lily Allen walks across the Hospitality Field every 15 minutes
carrying a child, pursued by a herd of paparazzi, and wearing a wig.
It is full of minor bands looking bored when no one approaches them,
and angry when they do. I hear a man say, "I'm more famous than I was
15 minutes ago", before taking off his mirrored sunglasses, and
staring into them, like Narcissus transported out of myth and into Hollyoaks.
When I am admitted into the Hospitality Field for the first time, a
man comes up to me. He looks a bit like Goose from Top Gun. "Do I
look like Goose from Top Gun," he asks me. He then follows me around
for about half an hour, shouting, "Do I look like Goose from Top
Gun?" Cocaine can do terrible things to the human spirit. Another man
approaches. "What is your name?" he asks. "Tanya," I say, "What is
your name?" "Tanya," he replies. He has forgotten his name, and has
borrowed mine. He apologises and, after much discussion, we decide
that his name is Tony. Probably.
By 9pm it is raining. I do not want to camp in the rain. So I run up
the hill to the Wendy House City. This is a collection of painted
wooden huts containing airbeds. Cool media people stay in them, and
look ridiculous, because a cool media person emerging from a Wendy
House is ridiculous. It is like watching Chairman Mao mount a
trampoline, or seeing Hitler speeding past on a tricycle. But at
Glastonbury the Wendy House is the Marriott. I beg Bearded Bob from
Wendy House City to let me have a free night in exchange for
favourable coverage in the Guardian "How I love, love, love the
Wendy House City!" He says yes, and here it is.
Later, someone is shouting, "Michael Jackson is dead!" It is me. A
friend texted to say that He is Dead. At last, I have something to
say to people who like music, and I run around telling everyone.
"Michael Jackson is dead," I tell some Welsh people who are wearing
miners' hats. Then I add some detail: "Heart attack." I stick out my
lip, as if I were with Michael at The End. "You are lying," they say.
"You just think that is a good rumour to spread at a music festival."
"Michael Jackson is dead," I tell some aristojunkies.
"OhmyGodisittruePoppycheckonyouriPhonehaveyougotcoverage
ohmyGodlet'splayDirtyDianahowawfulisittruehaveyougotanycondomsbecause
youcangetthemfreeinthemedicaltent?" they reply. I spend the rest of
the night telling people that Michael Jackson is dead. By 11pm,
people are playing Thriller. By midnight, RIP Michael Jackson
T-shirts are on sale and Michael Jackson himself has been contacted
by a psychic hippy from the Green Fields (Hippy Land) who says he is
fine. Every-one has a sound system here the Pyramid stage, Jazz
World, The Funky'n'Chunky Fish and Chip shop but they have all
become one sound. It is one deep, low scream under the earth. The
worms all die of stress-related heart attacks in honour of Michael.
At 5am, it stops.
The next morning, we are covered in mud. It is as if aliens have
flown over in a spacecraft, and dumped a mixture of mud and cow-shit
on everyone at Glastonbury, as some kind of terrible punishment,
perhaps for Coldplay.
I don't want to leave the Wendy House. I telephone my sister. "I
don't want to camp," I moan. "I will get trench foot. I want to stay
in the Wendy House." "Refuse to leave the Wendy House," she says.
"Become the Wendy House One." I call to beg Bearded Bob for another
night but he says no. He has cool media people fighting to occupy my
Wendy House, and waving vast wads of notes at him. So I go and pitch
the tent by the toilets near Hippy Land. My tent is a coffin made of
dust and plastic. It is my own homage to Michael Jackson and, later,
I do manage to sleep in it.
I try to use the toilets. But the toilets at Glastonbury are like the
film Casablanca every-thing people say about them is true. They are
Hell, with or without big-name headlining acts. You walk up a rickety
metal staircase and open the door. You can see through the hole to
the communal shit pit below, starred with sad little piles of toilet
paper, like distress flags that say, "Do not enter unless you want to
get dysentery, and who will give you casual sex after Rolf Harris if
you have dysentery?" I stare into the toilet. The toilet stares into
me. And I vomit, although I never meant to. The area outside the
toilets is full of people vomiting. As one, we vomit. It is one big,
beautiful communal expression of love, and disease.
I spot a topless fairy called Emma, 29, from Bournemouth, twinkling
out from the crowd. She says that, "being a fairy allows me to be
myself". I meet Emma in the Green Fields, which is full of CND and
Greenpeace cam-paigners and people dressed as stag beetles, because
they are trying to publicise the genocide that garden decking has
inflicted on the beetle's habitat. "We're terrible fliers," moans one
"beetle". Another says, "We fly like a bus."
I go to the Fairylove shop to meet Shelley Fairy. Shelley Fairy is a
slender Australian with glitter on her exposed breasts and a crazy
look in her eyes. She likes dressing people as fairies, she says,
because she thinks it liberates them. So she transforms me into a
fairy with a tutu, a wig, a wand and big, glittery feathery
eyelashes. Then I prance around waving my wand at people and cuddling
cross-dressing pirates and grown men in nappies. I love it. I am
beating all the other exhibitionists to a pulp. You're dressed as a
banana? Ha! A tiger? Feh! A sheep? Baa! I am a big, fat shimmering
fairy and I am off to my own funeral.
I was walking the Green Fields in my fairylike way, and I saw a man
with a coffin inside his yurt. He is called Peter and he runs Light
on Life: Ceremonies for all Life Events. Peter believes that waiting
until you are dead to have a funeral is pointless. Why be the centre
of attention when you can't hear or sit up, because you are dead? So
he is giving me a "living funeral". He has spoken to my friends and
family and written down their tributes to me.
And, dressed as a fairy, I stand outside his yurt while he tells
passersby that they have to come into the yurt to celebrate my life.
Insanely, they obey. I sit on a "throne" while Peter eulogises. I am
"a traveller in time", "a potential heroine" and "the leading lady in
my life story". I should love it, but I am just incredibly
embarrassed. And I panic that everyone will leave. They will walk out
of my funeral! They don't because this is Hippy Land. I feel
absurdly happy. For a bit. Then my leg swells up. It looks like some
kind of vegetable.
I walk back into the real festival, to find Michael Eavis's car
surrounded by drunk people from Manchester. He is on his way to the
Neil Young concert, and they are mobbing him, and sticking their
hands through the window to touch him, and the car cannot move. Eavis
is smiling a smile full of hate. When the car lurches forward, it
nearly squashes the fans. But they don't care. Marv and Chloe are
gibbering: "He is a legend! The best person ever! He owns
Glastonbury!" Their eyes bulge with emphasis. But his driver tried to
kill you, I point out. You have grounds to sue Michael Eavis you
could theoretically repossess his cows. "I don't give a shit!" they
scream. "I think I've wet myself! I can't talk! I'm too moved!" I
follow them to the Pyramid stage for Neil Young.
Neil Young is very old and he looks very angry. His group are also
very old they look like a veterans bowling club given some musical
instruments to play with. Neil stands in a spotlight and plays a
shuddering anthem of notes on a very big, old, angry guitar. Then the
stage goes dark, presumably so Neil's drip can be replaced. I am not
a rock journalist but I think that he is like a butcher playing a
side of beef. He caresses it, he drools on it, he almost gnaws on it.
I am also very curious about his hair. Is it styled or did it come like that?
He pauses, and says. "How ya doin?" Thirty thousand drunken people
yodel back "WdgfuegfoufgbjkvgiuYGBCVHWFJ, Neil Young!!!!!!!" "Good to
see ya," Neil replies. "Whgd3fgyIHGUWQHFJABVH, Neil Young!!!!!!!" the
crowd wails back. And that is Neil Young talking. I try not to
imagine Neil Young wearing a little butcher's hat for the rest of the set.
The following night, I go to watch Bruce Springsteen. He is not like
a butcher. He is more like a very needy dog. "Do you like the Boss?"
he shouts, bouncing up and down in his little boots. The crowd moans
its joy, but it's not enough the Boss needs more. So he moves to
the railings, twanging his guitar/penis and lets the screaming crowd
stroke his guitar/penis. He loves it. "Glastonbury!" he screams.
"Glastonbury! Glastonbury! Glastonbury!" He is like a madman shouting
at a taxi driver. I return to the tent and lie down. I am awoken by
the silhouette of a man. He is pissing on my tent.
As I wander through the mud and the dead Coke cans, occasionally
lying in ditches to avoid the Peaches Geldof clone army, I hear
people talking about "the meaning of Glastonbury". After careful
investigation, I believe that this is like talking about "the meaning
of Little Chef". There is no meaning here in the shit fields of
Somerset; there never was. Glastonbury is a collection of tents
surrounded by fast-food outlets, motorways made of mud and people
wearing bacteria. But where else can you be a big, fat glittering
fairy, and be loved?
--
View Tanya's ordeal in pictures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2009/jun/28/glastonbury-festival-tanya-gold?picture=349481705
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The changing face of rock festivals
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e7689d4c-61de-11de-9e03-00144feabdc0.html
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Published: June 27 2009
Two years ago Glastonbury festival's founder Michael Eavis, the
hippy-turned-dairy farmer on whose fields the event is hosted,
fretted about the wrong sort of festival-goer.
"People say we're getting middle class, which is stretching it a bit
far, but we're getting the 30- and 40-year-olds in, which changes the
character of it," he said, lamenting the depletion of Glastonbury's
"spunky" teenagers in the manner of a conservationist flagging up a
threatened species.
Yet for all Eavis's fears, the not-quite-young and the middle-aged
continue to descend on Glastonbury in their Crocs and cagoules.
"Please do not bring a gazebo," organisers have asked the 137,000
campers attending this weekend's extravaganza: a poignant plea from
the world's most celebrated rock festival.
Still, this year's line-up is hardly designed to deter the more
mature festival-goer, with headliners Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen
and Blur acting like catnip to rock's older fans, unlike last year's
controversial experiment with Jay-Z, the first rapper to headline Glastonbury.
No business likes driving customers away. For all its countercultural
rhetoric, Glastonbury is no different. At bottom it recognises that
festival demographics in the UK are, if not greying, then getting a
paunch and a couple of kids. The appetite for events offering
something classier than shantytown squalor, greasy noodles and the
strewn sunburnt bodies of drug-addled revellers has correspondingly grown.
The modern rock festival prides itself on its cosmopolitan nature:
organic food, theatre and literature tents, child friendliness,
proper sanitation.
Latitude, which takes place next month near the picturesque Suffolk
seaside town of Southwold, boasts a poetry arena and radio tent where
BBC Radio 4 programmes will be beamed out to Middle England. A family
campsite is on hand to host children's entertainment. "The Cabaret
tent will contain nudity. The Comedy tent will contain swearing," the
organisers warn parents. No innocents will be corrupted at their festival.
Glastonbury, once the scene of feral hippy kids running wild while
mum and dad nodded off to Hawkwind, now has a "Kidz Field" with a big
top, fairground rides and a feelgood motto: "It's never too late to
have a happy childhood, or enable someone else to."
Comfort is another area where festivals have transformed themselves.
While it's impossible to banish their great enemy, rain as
Glastonbury's inhabitants will discover if the thunderous downpours
that have been forecast materialise it has nonetheless become
possible to experience them in a greater degree of sumptuousness than
from a flimsy tent inadvertently pitched downwind from the lavatories.
Gazebos may be frowned on but an array of other des res accommodation
options are available, at a price. Weather-proof "podpads" small
plywood huts with carpets, lighting and airbeds, inaugurated at
Glastonbury in 2005 are available at most of this summer's festivals.
Other enterprising companies offer the use of pre-assembled yurts and
tepees, though, as the Glastonbury website warns, "[Tepee] dwelling
is an incredible and elemental experience but not a luxury one": a
polite way of saying they might let the rain in.
So-called "boutique festivals" have given birth to the "boutique
campsite", an exclusive outdoor equivalent of the boutique hotel. At
next month's world music festival Womad, sited in the grounds of a
stately house in Wiltshire, you can stay in a "Royal Maharaja shikar
tent" in a walled garden with a VIP bar, "luxury toilets" and 24-hour
security. Its cost is £1,850, including a ticket to the festival. In
comparison, three nights in a junior suite at the Ritz in London over
the same period of time would come to £1,470.
However, the gold standard for opulence belongs to Camp Kerala, a
private campsite situated in a field adjoining Glastonbury's site.
Comprising 50 shikar tents from Rajasthan, each costing £7,000 plus
VAT for two adults to hire for the duration of the festival, the camp
offers holistic massages, hairdressing, cocktails mixed by a barman
from a hotel in Val d'Isère and backstage tickets to the festival.
Camp owner Jennifer Lederman, who opened it in 2005, is cagy about
this weekend's clientele. "If I told who was here then I'd have to
shoot you," she jokes. "Basically the people who come here are the
people who have been coming for years now, and they're families who
love the festival." Glastonbury's transformation into St Tropez with
rock music and rain showers is under way.
--
www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk
www.latitudefestival.co.uk
www.womad.org
.
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