The Town
Earlier this year, on a trip back to see my family in the UK, I took my cool little rental Fat 500 electric car on a short trip from my family home to Glastonbury, in Somerset. I hadn’t been to the town for probably 15 years and was interested to see if it had changed at all. My memories of it were of a classic British country small market town, with a high street with the usual local shops. A butcher, bakery, a couple of banks, newsagent and the like. How it has changed over the last couple of decades. In my memory, it always had a hippie vibe, but now it really is the home of all things “new age” in the UK. I ended up spending the whole day in Glastonbury, just strolling around and soaking up the vibe. A wonderfully eclectic mix of people are drawn here, some as permanent residents and some as visitors. And if you’re in need of crystals, Goddess statues, incense, dream catchers or spiritual books, you’ve come to the right place.
There is also plenty of sightseeing to do in this town which is steeped in myth and legend. Glastonbury Tor is the town’s famous iconic landmark which is known around the world and has been a spiritual magnet for centuries, for both Pagans and Christians. It is believed to have been a place of religious and spiritual importance since ancient times. According to one popular Christian legend, it is believed to be the burial site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. At the top of Glastonbury Tor, there is a medieval stone tower known as St. Michael’s Tower. It is quite a climb to the top of the Tor but once there it offers incredible panoramic views of the surrounding countryside. Glastonbury Tor has also become a centre for spiritual and New Age beliefs. It is considered a sacred site by many modern pagans, druids, and followers of alternative spiritual practices.
After climbing the Tor, I went to the Challice Well, a natural spring surrounded by beautiful gardens and orchards. The well has a history dating back thousands of years and is associated with both Christian and pre-Christian traditions. It is believed to have been a place of pilgrimage and ritual use since ancient times. The Chalice Well is often associated with the Holy Grail, the legendary cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. The reddish iron-rich waters of the well are said to symbolize the blood of Christ. The water from the Chalice Well is renowned for its supposed healing properties and locals fill up large bottles to use the water at home or for spiritual rituals and ceremonies. I spent more than an hour at the well, just watching people and enjoying the tranquility of the place.
After a short walk back into the town centre, I visited the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. Built in the 7th century, it was systematically dismantled following an order from King Henry VIII. According to legend, it was founded by Joseph of Arimathea, who is believed to have brought Christianity to Britain. It is closely associated with King Arthur legends. According to medieval tales, the abbey was the burial site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. In 1191, the alleged remains of Arthur and Guinevere were discovered at the abbey. It cost about £12 to enter and there was excellent information about the history and legends. Japanese language information is available here:
At the end of my day out in Glastonbury, I experienced something I had not experienced since a day trip to a small mountain town in Myanmar 10 years ago, a tired jaw. Sore from smiling all day. That’s just the kind of town Glastonbury is, it makes you smile! You can see some of my photos at the end of this story.
A word of warning however if you plan to visit Glastonbury; avoid the time when the Glastonbury festival is happening, usually around this time of year in June, when the town is gridlocked with people and cars.
The Festival
This past Wednesday, 21 June, the Summer Solstice, the gates to the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts were opened and the first of the 200,000 festival-goers started to stream into the festival site. This is the most tickets ever sold and they were snapped up at record speed. The full performance lineup has been announced and there are more than 3,000 performances on offer. Glasto, as it has become known to it’s loyal fans, runs for 5 days from 21 to 25 June and is held on Worthy Farm, a 900 acre dairy farm just outside the town of Glastonbury. 2023 is the 38th edition of the festival. This year’s headliners on the main stage, the iconic Pyramid Stage, are indie rockers Arctic Monkeys on Friday, hard rock legends Guns N’ Roses on Saturday and the legend Elton John on Sunday. Elton John has announced he will stop performing live and his Glasto show will be his last in the UK. It should be an incredibly emotional closing to this year’s festival. In addition to contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret, and other arts. Leading pop and rock artists play the main stages, alongside thousands of others appearing on smaller stages and performance areas
The first edition of the festival was in September 1970. Called the Pop, Blues & Folk Festival, Worthy Farm owner Michael Eavis decided to host the first festival after seeing an open-air concert headlined by Led Zeppelin at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. Costing £1 to enter (with free milk from Worthy Farm included) Glastonbury 1970 was held the day after Jimi Hendrix died. Around 1500 people attended, and it was headlined by Tyrannosaurus Rex (later T-Rex) – stepping in for The Kinks who failed to show up.
The following year, the festival changed its name to Glastonbury Fair (or Fayre) and moved to the Summer Solstice in June. 1971 saw the first construction of the Pyramid Stage. Designed by Bill Harkin, the structure was planned at one tenth the scale of the Pyramids of Giza and built from scaffolding and metal sheets on what was considered an auspicious ley line at Worthy Farm. More than 7,000 people camped out around the pyramid to see acts that included David Bowie and Fairport Convention. Glastonbury Fayre was not advertised, but news spread by word of mouth. The weekend was free of charge, intended as a celebration of a magical time and place.
Among those first pilgrims to Glasto was the fashion photographer Paul Misso, who had driven down the A303 to Somerset in a motor caravan with Oscar-winning actor Julie Christie. Christie was there at the invitation of her friend, the film director Nicolas Roeg, who planned to make a documentary about the event and wanted her famous face in the crowd. Misso was commissioned to take stills for the project. Masso’s photos encapsulate the counter culture of the early 1970s, the hippies, freaks and wannabe druids. Here are a few, including the iconic shot of the Pyramid Stage lit at night:
Here’s the audio from David Bowie’s “Changes” performed at 5am, with images of the festival:
Glastonbury 1978 became known as the “impromptu” Festival, as many “new age travellers” arrived washed out from the Summer Solstice gatherings at Stonehenge believing that a festival was taking place. After persuasive discussion, a free mini Festival did take place. There was little organisation and few facilities available, with the stage powered by an electric meter in a caravan.
1981 was the first year that Michael Eavis took control. He changed the name to Glastonbury Festival, made money for the first time and donated £20,000 for CND (Campaign Against Nuclear Disarmament). Eavis built a new Pyramid Stage this year, a permanent structure which doubled as a hay barn and cow shed during the winter.
Glasto has become synominous with terrible weather over the years. 1982 was the first of those. Tickets for the 25,000 people who went to Glastonbury Festival cost just £8. But those lucky enough to secure a ticket had to brave a lot of bad weather – and even more mud. The Friday of the 1982 festival saw the highest rainfall recorded in a single day for 45 years – but as is still tradition, this did not stop the Glasto faithful having fun. 1998 was also an incredibly wet festival with downpours of rain turning the green fields into a mud bath. This was the year that “mud surfing” first became popular! No comment!
The festival continued to grow though the 80’s and into the 90’s, with headline acts such as The Cure, Madness, New Order, Simply Red, Happy Mondays and pretty much every major act that was popular in the UK at the time. But it was in 1994 that one performance changed the festival forever, and in my opinion in a good way. This was the year the festival was first televised live by Channel 4; concentrating on the main two music stages and providing a glimpse of the festival for those who knew little of it. The TV broadcast in 1994 was a crucial factor in ensuring that torch-wearing brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll Orbital’s performance at the festival achieved legendary status. As a result, living rooms across the country were able to experience what a rave might look like, and suddenly dance music – which had been ignored by the establishment and mainstream press for years – did not seem so dangerous and which would be a turning point for the music at Glastonbury. For Michael Eavis, it marked dance music’s appearance on the mainstream agenda. “What was previously underground made it on to one of the big stages, and there was no going back from there. ……. the buzz had been around the secret raves and the market sound systems and in the travellers’ fields for years. But it needed a showcase to make it legal.” The gig opened the way for others such as the Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack and Underworld, who all played high-profile stages in the following years – developments that led to the launch of the festival’s Dance Village in 1997. In 1995, Orbital played again, this time on the main Pyramid Stage, second on the bill to Britpop heavyweights Pulp.
By 1999 the Festival had reached a capacity of 100,500, the ticket price was £83 and Coldplay made their first appearance. However, this year’s Festival was also overshadowed by the death of its co-founder Jean Eavis.
The new millennium was marked by a new Pyramid Stage in 2000, baptised by former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant. This year David Bowie performed, dressed in the same style of flowing coat he had worn for his last performance in 1971. The Festival was becoming increasingly popular and as a result faced serious security problems when the five-mile long perimeter fence failed to keep audiences out. In 2000, the official attendance was 100,000 but unofficially estimates were around 200,000, which prompted the building of a new fence in 2002 costing £1 million. In 2003, with the new fence and limited capacity, 100,000 festival tickets sold out for the first time in just 24 hours.
Glastonbury continues to be bigger than the music or the artists, thriving as a global platform for creativity, ideas and performance, across all disciplines. The Left Field is a stage for political debate and provides an active programme of talks and performances, and the Green Fields provide a space in which green politics and environmental issues are brought to the fore. In 2015, Glastonbury welcomed the Dalai Lama, and on Friday 24 June in 2016, festival-goers awoke to the news that the UK had voted to leave the European Union. Many artists responded to this shocking news in their sets, including PJ Harvey, who read out John Donne’s poem No Man is an Island on the Other Stage. In 2019, Sir David Attenborough took to the Pyramid Stage to draw attention to Seven Worlds One Planet, a project that draws attention to the impact of Climate Change. This year also saw the Festival successfully remove all single use plastic bottles from the site.
While fence jumpers added to the number of festival-goers and no doubt the atmosphere and energy of the festival, it went against a key ethos of the Eavis family, to use the festival as way to contribute to society in a positive way. The Festival continues its philanthropic mission of donating its profits to three main charities: Greenpeace, Oxfam, and Water Aid, as well as supporting other worthwhile local causes, including social housing projects. Performing at Glastonbury is a rite of passage for many of the world’s performers who identify with the Festival’s ethos. Since 2000, Glastonbury has contributed over £20 million to charities.
To wrap this story up, here are some performances from my favourite time slot of the festival, the Sunday Legends. This time slot has become a regular feature of Glasto and has made for some amazing and surprising performances:
And the best of them all! Kylie Minogue, 2019:
Some photos from my day in Glastonbury:
