Glastonbury: It's still all about the music despite 40 years of changes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/27/editorial-glastonbury-40-years
Michael Eavis's vision has kept the Glastonbury festival alive as a
great annual celebration
27 June 2010
There are contradictory accounts of what the Sixties counterculture,
felt by some at the time to be a kind of revolution, actually
achieved. Conservatives think it opened a Pandora's box of moral
permissiveness and created a cult of adolescent narcissism
masquerading as self-discovery. Liberals see it as a vital
emancipation from oppressive establishment dogmas, leading to radical
advances in political rights and new forms of creative expression.
But for most people it was all about the music. The same is true of
the sprawling festival currently convulsing rural Somerset that
started life as the Pilton Pop, Blues and Folk Festival 40 years ago:
Glastonbury.
Opinion is divided about what it has become; over whether the hippy
vibe of its early years has been preserved or traduced. It is hard to
see the festival as anti-establishment when it receives royal visits
and depends on the multinational record industry. Glastonbury
achieves many wonderful things, but sticking it to the man is not
among them. But that isn't what motivates people to keep coming year
after year.
The festival has one great claim to continuity with its roots in the
form of Michael Eavis, the dairy farmer on whose land it has been
held since the start and who runs the show for charitable causes. His
philanthropic vision, combined with a kind of gentle, dissident
determination, has kept Glastonbury alive as a great annual
celebration… but of what?
The druidic solstice? For a few. Of the Sixties spirit? A little bit.
But mostly it is a celebration of music (plus, this year, the
sunshine and the football) and how it can bring tens of thousands of
strangers together, peacefully, for a massive party.
No one can agree on the legacy of the counterculture, because so much
of it became mainstream culture. Sometimes, perhaps, it feels as if
the hippies all sold out. From inside, Glastonbury it feels as if
they took over the world.
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Outside Edge: Never trust a festival over 40
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/020e7006-809f-11df-be5a-00144feabdc0.html
By Lorien Kite
June 25 2010
If nothing else, the visit of Prince Charles to Glastonbury this week
tells us that the world's most famous music festival is entering a
very respectable middle age. Forty years after Michael Eavis first
opened the gates of his Somerset farm to the counterculture, the
event has become what all scourges of the establishment eventually
must: a national treasure.
The milestone should make me worry, for the festival and I have grown
up together. My parents were there at the outset, my mother becoming
one of the faces of the Glastonbury Fayre in 1971 when she appeared
on the cover of a booklet accompanying the festival LP. My father,
for his part, had a cameo in Nicolas Roeg's film about the event,
flashing past in a conga-line of hippies. A hiatus followed, but by
the time the festival was revived in 1979 I was around to participate
in what was to become an annual pilgrimage.
This should put me in the camp of those veterans who bemoan
Glastonbury's transformation from an idealistic gathering of 1,400
into a global media event, where the BBC alone has despatched 400
staff to deliver real-time updates on everything from
the headline acts to the interiors of celebrities' luxury motorhomes.
I see their point, of course, but to join them would betray my
younger self because to be honest, I never quite got with it.
In fact, I came to dread that weekend in late June. I recoiled from
the mud, the crowds and, most of all, the Augean squalor of the open
toilets that became such a part of Glastonbury legend. Sulking in my
tent, I would prefer the company of books to that of the older
generation as it went about recapturing the spirit of '71. Remember
the prime minister who had run away from the circus to work in the
City? Youthful rebellion can take strange forms.
True, a few moments punctured my determination to be unimpressed:
seeing the vast crowd silenced by the anti-nuclear oratory of the
historian E.P. Thompson, for example; or, better still, being the
only 11-year-old in Glastonbury collecting ring pulls for a Blue
Peter charity appeal, an exercise that earned me one of the
programme's coveted badges for young do-gooders.
By the early 1990s, I was old enough to opt out of the Glastonbury
experience at the precise moment, inevitably, that my friends
decided en masse to opt in. But already the festival was changing.
High ticket prices and even higher security did much to tackle a
seamy underside that had at times appeared to threaten the festival's
future. Glastonbury became a little more like the world outside its
perimeters and the world outside became a little more like Glastonbury.
Yet through it all, one thing has remained constant, and will shape
the experience of the 170,000 who descend on the festival this
weekend just as it did that of the early pioneers. The toilets are
still truly awful.
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Pioneer promoter inspired 40 years of music festivals
June 22, 2010
Iconic images of the mud-covered flower children of Woodstock in 1969
may have made waves throughout the world, but it was a hugely
influential event much closer to home which inspired Glastonbury
Festival founder Michael Eavis to start his own music festival.
Held at the Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet between June
27-28, 1970, the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music
featured a superb line-up of some of the world's most successful bands.
The event was the brainchild of promoter Freddy Bannister and wife
Wendy, who held the smaller Bath Festival of Blues at the city's
Recreation Ground the previous year.
But they set their sights on something much bigger in 1970 and
estimates put the crowd in Shepton Mallet at as much as 150,000.
Legendary DJ John Peel took care of introducing the bands, who
included Johnny Winter, blues hero John Mayall and acclaimed folkies
Fairport Convention.
Pink Floyd, yet to release their landmark albums Dark Side of the
Moon and Wish You Were Here, premiered their new suite, Atom Heart
Mother, at the festival.
Introduced on stage as the rather less catchy Amazing Pudding, the
performance featured a brass band and choir. Due to major delays, the
band didn't hit the stage until 3am.
Steppenwolf, at the peak of their success following the inclusion of
their songs Born to Be Wild and a cover of Hoyt Axton's The Pusher in
counterculture landmark movie Easy Rider the previous year, and
American blues rockers Canned Heat, were among the other notable acts
on the opening day.
Just to prove that British festival weather never changes, Sunday
suffered from a downpour which saw Jefferson Airplane have to curtail
their set and the Moody Blues cancelling their appearance due to a
waterlogged stage.
Delays meant the festival ended in the wee small hours of Monday
morning with a performance by New Orleans legend Dr John.
Before that, fans were thrilled by an acoustic set from The Byrds as
well as Santana, Country Joe McDonald, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of
Invention and Hot Tuna.
But the lingering impression for most was a powerhouse performance by
Led Zeppelin.
The set was widely regarded as one of the most important in the
band's career. Zep played for three hours and even came back for five encores.
Talk about value for money.
A stream of classics were rolled out including Heartbreaker, Dazed
and Confused and Whole Lotta Love.
Typical of their early shows, they also played a rock 'n' roll covers
medley which dipped into Long Tall Sally and Johnny B Goode.
For those of you whose memory might be a little hazy about the finer
details of the show, a website dedicated to the festival has produced
a commemorative set featuring a reproduction programme, photos, a
T-shirt and Freddy's memoirs There Must Be a Better Way.
The book includes fascinating snapshots of major stars as they played
in Bristol and Bath.
Among those worth singling out are The Who, The Beatles, The Animals
and Bo Diddley
Limited to 500 copies and priced at £49.99, the set also reproduces
flyers of gigs promoted by Bannister at Bath Pavilion.
These include shows by Vanilla Fudge, The Move, The Small Faces and
The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
The latter only appeared after Chuck Berry cancelled his appearance
at the venue.
Bannister went on to promote Led Zeppelin's Knebworth shows in 1979
which attracted 400,000 fans over two nights.
At that time, the stage was the largest ever constructed and
complaints about the noise came in from as far as seven miles away.
The 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music Commemorative
Set is available at www.rockmusic-offer.co.uk. For more details, call
01954 268088.
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