Glastonbury is commonly seen as among the best of Britains festivals. It is the festival that has played a key part in the legislation of mass gatherings, and continual attempts were spearheaded by the Conservative Party to shut it down. (The Miscellaneous Provisions Act passed by the UK Parliament in 1981 had this direct intention.) Glastonbury survived, but will 2002 prove the beginning of the end of the festival in its original form?
For safety reasons, the number of people attending this years event was reduced, and a perimeter fence was built around the site. The Glastonbury Times reported that a group of travellers had made it over the fence but had been stopped by security. It is all a long way from the 1970s.
Complaints were voiced that the reduced number of people detracted from the ambience of the event, and that the characteristic happy-go-lucky festival eccentric/freak was no longer to be found. Drug dealing, Glastonburys less condemned form of criminality, seemed also to have withered. There were perhaps fewer shady-looking characters around but the festivals theft problems continued, now often outside the fence where a kind of crime zone developed amongst frustrated fence-hoppers.
Whether 2002 will be remembered as a turning point in the festivals history or not, it did remain true to the original intention of its founder, Michael Eavis, in combining a pop festival with a more traditional country fair and harvest festival. Glastonbury still has a kind of diversity that no other festival can boast.
The development of the Green Fields area, where many of the non-music aspects are hosted, presents a noticeably more tranquil alternative to the more commercialised musical segment. Various stalls supporting ecological, peace and leftist causes are a home for the kind of earth-lover who once ruled the roost. It was in their spirit that Eavis set up the festival, and he famously raised over one million pounds for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) during the 1980s.
Water for the Third World and Fair Trade not Free Trade were Glastonburys most prominent causes this year. Between acts on the main music stages, images of famine were presented to the crowd on a giant screen, accompanied by anti-capitalist messages.
While surely not as strong as it once was, a certain political consciousness does remain at Glastonbury and I camped near one woman who was planning on trashing a juice bar for their profit-making ventures on a sacred field. This seemed something that she seemed quite capable of doing as she was one of a large group of all ages who every day would parade around Glastonbury painted from head to toe in gold, dressed in armour, and walking on stilts!
Green Fields forever There really is a world all of its own to be found in Green Fields for the duration. Artists, actors, poets, and circus performers are all at work. Numerous organic, vegan and vegetarian stalls offer a better and cheaper option for the hungry (if you can forgive the occasional maggot ). The Green Fields also hosts its own casino, Lost Vagueness, which naturally one can only get into if wearing a suit. And, if you happen to fancy getting married, Glastonbury has its very own wedding reception where numerous couples are moved to take their vows.
The other side of the festival is, of course, the overwhelming abundance of music of all styles (classical excepted) from all over the world. The connoisseur can only march around the festival from stage to stage (there are around twenty in all) with a guide tied around the neck, which carefully maps the days best performances.
There is more and more dance music at the festival. Groove Armada and Orbital featured as two of the main highlights in 2002. This seems to be the general direction which mass gatherings are taking (see Matt Brown's article about BOOM Festival 2002), although Roger Waters, who headlined on the final night of the festival, was perhaps the festivals most unexpected success, not only among an older generation of Pink Floyd fans.
Enthusiasm for mass gatherings has certainly not dwindled since the 1960s, and in some ways it seems to be increasing (vastly more people crammed themselves on to Brightons beach recently for a free-for-all Fatboy Slim concert than entered the giant grounds of Glastonbury). Now, Michael Eaviss daughter is involved in the organisation of Glastonbury, so its future seems assured. Yet this years forced admission price may mean that 2002 is indeed remembered as a turning point.
A brief history of the Glastonbury Festival site
- Archaeologists who have worked on the Glastonbury site have suggested that there were regular midsummer festivals in the Lake Villages near Glastonbury as early as 500BC
- As the traditional site of the Isle of Avalon (Celtic for the place of Blessed Souls) Glastonbury became the home of one of the earliest Christian churches. Legend tells us that King Arthur and his Queen are buried there
- From 1914 to 1926, a radical arts festival was held at the site, which included artists such as George Bernard Shaw and Routland Boughton
- In 1966, farmer Michael Eavis, inspired by the Bath Blues Festival, decided to hold a festival on one of the fields of his dairy farm. He invited various folk and pop stars, the most famous being T-Rex. He erected a stage from scaffolding and charged £1 admission. This bought one entry to the festival as well as free milk throughout your stay
- From 1971 until 1977, the festival became free and was funded by rich hippies. In 1978, the first serious attempt was made to attract a large crowd and £7 was charged for a ticket. It was not until 1981 that the festival attracted large enough numbers to make a profit
- Ticket prices have gradually increased since then, although a tradition of jumping the fence or bribing a member of security has grown up. Numbers are hard to estimate but were said to be in excess of 100,000 throughout the 1990s
- An incident of crowd crushing, during a performance by Pearl Jam at a festival in Germany, forced the organisers of Glastonbury to control the numbers going into the site. A new metal fence was erected around the site, and also a new high-profile security team was hired
