Saturday, June 08, 2024

My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 11, 1993

Chapter 11. 1993. All Tomorrow’s Party’s.


If anyone tells you that it is always rainy and muddy at Glastonbury don’t believe them because after 1990 it didn’t rain again until 1997. In 1993 we were all back again in the same area of the site and it was another scorching hot year. Near us in 93 there was a burger van, it was designed to look like a great big burger. A man served burgers from it for about six days. By Sunday night he looked completely frazzled. I think anybody would after spending nearly a week inside a burger!
Lou Reed was back again for the second year running but this time as part of a reformed Velvet Underground. We were really looking forward to seeing one of the most influential bands of all time. Sadly though, they didn’t live up to expectations. To me they sounded tinny and dated. Thousands of people had gone along to see them after reading about how important they were, but after a few songs people started leaving to go to other stages. It must have been very disappointing for the band seeing the audience start to leave. The other thing for me was that there was no Nico because she was a major part of what made them great but unfortunately Nico had died five years earlier. At Glasto John Cale did all of Nico’s vocals but it wasn’t the same. The setlist included Sweet Jane, All Tomorrow's Parties, Venus in Furs, Beginning to See the Light, Heroin, White Light/White Heat, Rock & Roll, I'm Waiting for the Man and several others that I can’t remember now. The Velvets broke up again shortly after that tour of 93 and Sterling Morrison died in 95.

I went to the Theatre Tent with Dominic to see Attilla The Stockbroker with John Otway. I had Otway’s autobiography on my bookstall and I thought if I got Otway to sign it I would get more money for it, but I didn’t get the opportunity. They were hilarious though. The highlight for me was Otway singing ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’ and Attilla translating it into German. At the end Attilla said that he had heard that Otway had voted Conservative in the election, so he gave him several headbutts by bashing his head into the microphone. Another act that I really enjoyed was Christy Moore who was on the Pyramid Stage before Lenny Kravitz and The Kinks. Christy’s first song was ‘Welcome To The Cabaret’ and Christy said in his self-deprecating manner. “Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen for coming along to hear The Kinks and Lenny Kravitz and Christy Moore, I’ve never heard of him before!”.
The stone circle had been put in place in Kings Meadow in 92 which became a very popular area for watching the sunrise from. We used to spend a lot of time up at that end of the site which was much more peaceful than down in the Babylon of the main arena. There was a nice wine place in the Field of Avalon. I think it was called Avalon Organic Wine which was cheaper than from the other wine outlets which charged £8 for a plastic half size bottle. The other place we really liked was the Acoustic Stage which was nice and shady from the hot sun. I enjoyed lots of bands in there but often I didn’t have a clue who they were. Sharon Shannon was playing in there though on her accordion. I was so impressed I bought one of her albums called Blackbird.
There was a band on in 93 who we knew from Wiltshire called Citizen Fish. The singer was Dick who was also in the Sub-Humans. I think they played on the Avalon Stage. I never saw them, but we met Dick wandering around in the crowd one evening and had a bit of a chat. There were lots of great acts that year such as Robert Plant, The Verve, The Orb, Midnight Oil, Stereo MC’S, Teenage Fanclub and many more but my memory of it all is very hazy. Van Morrison did his usual Sunday afternoon slot and one thing I particularly remember about that was Kate St John doing the G-L-O-R-I-A elocution lessons during Gloria. I think Van finished his usual brilliant set with All In The Game, In The Garden and Daring Night. I always used the feeling that musically the festival was over for me after seeing Van. Nothing could top Van The Man.

People had continued to pour over the fence in 93. If the official figure was 100,000 people, you can be sure the actual attendance was at least 150.000. It was hard for people to find room to put a tent up. It was so crowded, tents were being put up right near the smelly toilets. In order to get a licence for 94 Michael promised to build a double fence. This was to prove both dramatic and painful for me personally. We were back again in 94 and that year had another of my most memorable performances ever.



My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 10, 1992

Chapter 10. 1992, Satellite Of Love.


Plans for a festival in 91 were cancelled. Michael Eavis had a lot to put up with. The local Conservative MP Mr Heathcoat-Amory did his best to get the festival closed down. Also, there was this woman called Mrs Anne Goode who had moved to Pilton. She was a Christian and claimed there were satanic rituals going on and other nonsense. She even had a 30-foot-high cross erected on her land over-looking the festival. I have heard, although I don’t know if it is true that these days her daughter rents out their land for luxury camping. How times have changed.  By the time Glastonbury returned in 92 it was getting extremely difficult to get tickets. They had sold like hot cakes. I have already written about our visit to Worthy Farm to collect our tickets from Jean Eavis in my book Vanatic so I won’t recount the whole story again, except to say that the meeting with Jean was to be prove fateful for us six years later. By 1992 Kim and I were living together in our flat in Maristow Street so there was no way I could find an excuse to go on my own as I had selfishly done in previous years. Also, me going with Sara two years earlier had taken a lot of explaining away. The other advantage for me of going with Kim was that her little Fiat Panda had just enough room to squeeze my books in for my bookstall.

Car parking was now well established outside the perimeter. As soon as we arrived in the car park we were hassled by Hare Krishna’s who wanted contributions for their free food tent. The gates were much better organised by now with proper turnstiles and much friendlier people to greet you on arrival. There was still a lot of wheeling and dealing going on outside though with dodgy geezers selling tickets or getting people in, under, over or through the fence by various means. Once inside we soon spotted Margaret’s bunting surrounding our camping area. The happy Glebeland years were over for us now because that area was no longer a campsite. In 92 we were just the other side of the hedge from where The Glade dance area is now, although The Glade didn’t exist till 2000. We were in a nice spot just off the main drag which was handy for my books and the weather was great in 92. The Hare Krishna tent was just down from us and the queue for their free grub got longer every day as people’s money ran out. We never ate their food though. Me and Kim used to like going to the Wise Crone CafĂ© in the Field of Avalon which used to have music on in there as well as nice food. Kim really liked the Tiny Tea Tent as well which is still going to this very day.  Across the walkway from us were some Australian girls who were selling hats which they had made themselves. Some of the hats were really tall and others were like jester’s hats. They did a roaring trade and those types of hat became very popular for the next few years. You needed a hat that year because it was so hot. I bought one to keep the sun off my head, not from the Aussies but from another stall. It was a nice hippy type hat. The sort of thing a Mongolian goatherd or someone like that might wear. I only had it about two days though. Passing a water tap I thought I’d stick my head under the water to cool off and I put my hat down for just a minute. When I turned around my hat had disappeared. The scallies (thieves) were starting to be everywhere.
I had my books all displayed nicely and priced up. Kim was amazed at how well they sold. Then my friend Dave decided to get in on the act. He had brought along two bin-bags of books of much inferior quality to mine. Things like Haynes Car Manuals which he proceeded to tip out all over my stall and started shouting, “Any book, 50 pence!”. I had to nip that in the bud pronto and made him flog his wares a few yards away. We had a lot of fun on the bookstall though and on the Sunday evening gave the last few away to passers-by to save the hassle of lugging them home again.
There was no traveller's field in 92. After the battle of 1990 Michael Eavis stood his ground and refused to let them in. It was a shame in a way because a lot of them were just peaceful hippies but unfortunately an unruly element had attached themselves to the New Age Travellers. Another much more sinister lot had started arriving at Glastonbury and that was the scally who had come to rob from tents. Some of the bands who were on such as Carter USM and The Levellers said it was a shame that the travellers were no longer welcome. Anyway, to the music I saw in 92. One act that really stands out in my memory was the late, great Lou Reed. Me, Dave, Nelly, Fred & Kim went for a huge walk all over the site and when we reached the Pyramid Stage Lou was on. He performed a great set including Sweet Jane, Walk On The Wild Side, Rock & Roll and finally Vicious. We knew he would be back for an encore and me and Dave had a little wager on what song he would sing. I won with Satellite Of Love and Dave actually paid up!

By Sunday afternoon there is always a chilled-out atmosphere at Glasto which is just perfect for Van Morrison. Kim and I got right to the front for Van. It was so hot that the security on the other side of the barrier were spraying the crowd with water to cool them down and handing out cups of water. A lot of these got thrown up in the air which was quite amusing. Tom Jones was on after Van, but we didn’t bother watching Tom. Glastonbury didn’t used to be all that popular with youngsters who thought it was a boring old hippy fest. In 1992 though they introduced the NME Stage which had acts like Primal Scream, The Orb, Spiritualised, Blur and The Shamen. Gradually Glastonbury became cool to go to, especially later when the Dance Tent was introduced. The only act I can remember seeing on the NME stage in 92 was Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of The Heart featuring Sinead O’Connor who were great. The day after we got home me and Kim went down to the coast to chill out for a couple of days and camped at Durdle Door. When we walked over the hill we discovered Lulworth Cove was packed with Glastonbury people who all had the same idea. We even met someone who we knew from Glasto. He was making little pottery Buddhas, so we bought one off him that I still have to this very day.


My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 9, 1990


In 1990 I went with a friend called Sara from Westbury. It was pouring rain when we got to the station in Westbury. “Oh no, it’s going to be a muddy year”, I said to Sara. As it turned out it wasn’t too bad at all, certainly not one of the famous muddy years anyway. I had a ticket for the festival, but Sara didn’t. I don’t think she even had a train ticket either, but the train was so packed it was impossible for them to check the tickets. I don’t know where Michael hired the security on the gate from that year, but they were quite an unsavoury aggressive bunch. They were searching everyone’s bags looking for stuff that they could confiscate for themselves. It worked to our advantage though because while they were going through my rucksack Sara sneaked past on their blind side and just strolled through the gate with no problems.
Sara.
I don’t think 1990 was musically very memorable, not for me anyway. Because of the problems the festival had encountered Michael Eavis had decided to promote the theatre side of the attractions and had called it ‘The Glastonbury Festival Of Contempory Performing Arts’. If he hoped that this would attract a different type of audience, then it failed. The New Age Travellers turned up in even greater numbers and had their own ‘Free’ festival in their field and people continued to climb over the fence to get in. 
The act that everyone was talking about that year was a circus act called Archaos. They were French and did all sorts of dangerous stunts such as juggling with live chainsaws, motorbike walls of death and high-wire acts. Apparently, they were performing acrobatics all over the roof of the Pyramid Stage and above the crowd, but I didn’t bother watching any of that.
Of the bands that appeared, I have heard that The Happy Mondays caused a lot of problems backstage by smuggling people in their bus, forging backstage passes, laminating them and giving them to any Tom, Dick or Harry who wanted one. That band were blamed by some for attracting an unsavoury element to Glasto which got worse in subsequent years, but I think it might be a bit harsh to blame them. The Cure were the top headlining band, but I didn’t like them much. Ry Cooder was someone who I admired, and I had a couple of his albums, but I think I might have been asleep when he was on. 1990 for me was the year of discovering the joys of the Acoustic Stage. It was the first of many times I saw John Otway at Glastonbury although I had witnessed his madness many times previously. Davy Spillane was there as well. He is a uilleann pipe player from Ireland. It was a good year for pipe players because I also enjoyed Katherine Tickell from Northumberland. Roy Harper of ‘punch-up with Ginger Baker’ fame played the Acoustic Stage that year and it was absolutely packed for him. We listened from outside. On the World Music stage, I saw Ladysmith Black Mambazo who sang really well and did enormous leaps into the air.
1990 was the year I made enough money on my bookstall to go straight to Ireland afterwards. On Monday afternoon I got back to Westbury, had a shower and a change of clothes and headed straight back to the station and caught the train to Fishguard and the ferry to Rosslare. I was pleased to find that the train and boat were wedged with Irish music fans on their way home from Glastonbury. The craic was mighty as they say. As the boat sailed towards Ireland all seemed well in the world but unknown to me back on Worthy Farm a riot had broken out between the unpleasant security guards and the New Age Travellers. This became known as the Battle Of Yeoman’s Bridge. The police had to deal with it and there were dozens of arrests and lots of damage. Was this the end of the road for Glastonbury? There was to be no festival in 1991.


My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 8, 1989

Chapter 8. 1989, The day the music fried.     

I had moved to Westbury by the time Glastonbury 89 happened. I went on the train that year to Castle Cary and then shared a taxi to Pilton with some other people I met at the station. I don’t think the shuttle bus service was as well organised in those days as it is now. I soon found our gang down in Glebeland. There were friends from Bradford On Avon, Trowbridge, Westbury, London, Nottingham and Peterborough. That year it was scorching hot for the whole weekend.
There had been growing problems at Glastonbury for a few years now. I think this had been caused by Thatcherism which had turned Britain into a nation of the rich and the poor. There were 4,000,000 people unemployed and a major bi-product of poverty is crime. The problems of the deprived inner-cities were transported for a few days every summer to the beautiful Somerset countryside. This was made worse by the fact that word had spread about how easy it was to gate-crash the biggest party in the country. Michael had done his best to control matters by putting up signs saying THE SALE OF DRUGS IS PROHIBITED but those signs probably ended up on campfires. It was decided that in 1989 the police would be allowed to patrol the site. A lot of people were a bit apprehensive about this, thinking the police would turn up mob-handed with riot shields and there would be a confrontation but as it turned out they were good and after a while people realised that they were a great benefit to the festival. For one thing, the drug gangs gradually disappeared. They were still there but not in people’s faces any more. The trouble was though that there weren’t enough police to deal with another growing problem which was thieving from tents. This would get worse and worse for the next ten years or more until it was finally dealt with but more of that later.


Margaret and Wayne always went to Glasto early and they transported all my books down there. I had lots of hippy type books which I thought would appeal to the festival goers. A friend called Duncan said he would bring along a couple of boxes of books to add to my stall. When I saw what he had brought along I was very dubious at first but amazingly they all sold. I realised that Glasto people were basically like everyone else and I could sell books on virtually any subject. I remember selling a book on breeding pigs and even Ronnie Barker’s Book Of Sauce. A friend called Mary asked me if I would sell some of her home-made candles and herbal remedies on my stall. That turned out to be a bit of a disaster. I didn’t manage to sell any of her herbs and in the heat her candles wilted into a bit of a mess. I had to explain that to poor Mary when I got home.
Camping in Glebeland we were quite handy for the theatre/cabaret tent and walking past there one afternoon I saw there was a comedian on who I had never heard of before. He was Scottish and called Jerry Sadowitz. He was the most offensive but also the funniest comic I had ever seen. He said things like, “Terry Waite, he’s a bastard, I leant him a fiver and I haven’t seen him since. (Terry Waite was a hostage in Lebanon at the time) The hole in the ozone layer was a big environmental issue at the time and Jerry said, “F...k the ozone layer, I’m enjoying the nice weather”. At the end of his act he said, “I have been paid £2,000 to appear here, that’s your money. I’m going to put it on a dog in the first race on Monday and guess what, it’s going to lose”.
Musically the highlight for me again was Van Morrison. It was hot, but Van kept his jacket on throughout his performance, he must have been sweating buckets. In a review in the music papers it was described as 'The day that music fried'. During Van’s act an air-ambulance helicopter landed to the left of the stage to take someone to hospital. It kicked up a huge cloud of dust, but Van didn’t appear to notice. He just played on regardless. I remember an Irish band called Hot House Flowers playing. They were quite popular at the time and Adam Clayton of U2 turned up and played bass with them. Suzanne Vega wore a bullet proof jacket during her performance because she had received a death threat. There were quite a few African acts on at Glastonbury in those days because world music was getting quite a following. This was due to Pete Gabriel to a large extent and Pete was there with Youssou N’Dour from Senegal. Another African musician who went down a storm was Fela Kuti. I think 89 was the year I saw the Bhundu Boys as well. They were a guitar band from Zimbabwe who played infectious danceable music that the crowd loved.

There was lots of room for camping back in 1989, so much so that we even had a game of cricket on the Sunday evening. I think that would be impossible these days. I remember it vividly because I was batting, and I spun around to hit the ball and collapsed in agony on the grass. Something had gone in my back. It took ages to recover from that. Next afternoon Wayne and Margaret gave me a lift home. It used to take hours to get off the site. There was no organisation and if one car broke down in the narrow lanes it caused chaos. That brought Glastonbury in the 1980’s to a close. A new decade dawned which was to prove to be a very challenging ten years for Glastonbury and I was there to witness all of it.

My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 7, 1987

Chapter 7. 1987, My Little Book Stall.

1987 was the first year I did my little bookstall at Glasto. My hobby at the time was dealing in second-hand books so I decided to see if I could pay for the festival by selling my books. I spent all year scouring charity shops, jumble sales, car boot sales, auctions and house clearance shops looking for suitable books that festival goers might be interested in. The sort of subjects were music books & magazines, fanzines, counter-culture, Beat Generation, anything left-wing, science fiction, ecology, eastern religion, and anything else that straight people might consider dangerous and subversive. By June I had quite a collection.
That year I went with my friends Ian & Julia who I had worked with in the Night Shelter. They managed to squeeze about ten boxes of my books into their little Citroen. It took hours to get on site because of the traffic jams but finally we got in and found my family and friends in Glebeland. Our encampment was quite big by now. There must have been about twenty in our gang including kids. My sister Margaret had acquired some bunting from somewhere so every year with some sticks from the firewood and the bunting, an area would be cordoned off for all our tents. Margaret’s partner Wayne would get busy making furniture out of the biggest bits of wood, so we could all sit around the fire in comfort. The rule was that every time someone went for a walk they had to bring some firewood back. By Sunday night though the furniture had usually ended up on the fire as supplies ran out. Wayne and Margaret always had a big tent which I found quite handy for storing my books in the entrance.

It was important to start selling my books early while people still had money in their pockets so on Thursday afternoon I set out my stall by the nearest walkway which had lots of people walking by. I just laid a blanket on the ground and displayed my books neatly on it, all individually priced. It was very unofficial, but the security wasn’t going to bother with little old me when there were drug dealers all the way up Muddy Lane and people openly selling bootleg booze and baccy all over the place. I was pleased with how well I did selling my books. One year I made enough money to go straight to Ireland for a holiday afterwards, and it was a great way of meeting people and having a chat. One thing I learned was that women seemed to read more than men. They would browse for a long time looking for a good read regardless of who wrote it whereas men seemed more interested in finding books with a cult following or to complete a collection.  I could tell when someone was out of their brain on acid or something. They would stare for ages at the design on the cover of a science fiction book and go, “wow”. Sometimes a person would say, “I’ll buy this book, but I don’t want to carry it around, can you look after it for me and I’ll pick it up on my way back?” Then they would wander off and completely forget that they had bought a book. If they hadn’t returned by Sunday, I’d sell the book all over again. Another great thing about selling my books was that it kept me on the straight and narrow, for a few hours a day anyway. In previous years I would just wander around getting more and more off my face as the day wore on. With the coming of my bookstall I now had a purpose and I enjoyed it. My Bookstall became a regular thing at Glasto right up to 2003.
I had a few famous people look at my books over the years. Once in the 80’s this nice American lady was having a browse through my books and I noticed she was wearing a stage pass so I asked her what she was doing at Glastonbury and she said that she was a singer. Then she took off her shades. I recognised her immediately. It was Julie Felix. You might not have heard of her but she was very famous in Britain in the 60’s & 70’s. Julie had a big hit record with her version of Simon & Garfunkel’s El Condor Pasa. She also had her own television series. We had a nice chat and she was very friendly. Another time this bearded bloke came along and had a rummage. I thought I recognised him but when he looked at me he didn’t seem very friendly, so I didn’t say anything. He didn’t buy anything and eventually stomped off. After he had gone my brother Paul who was sat there said, “Do you know who that was?”. “No”, I replied. “It was John Martyn”, said Paul. A person who did buy a book was Margie Clarke. She was famous after appearing in the film Letter To Brezhnev and she was in Coronation Street for a long while. Margie bought a Daphne Du Maurier paperback. I heard later that Margie was the most famous person to climb over the fence to get into Glastonbury.

There is a theatre group called The Natural Theatre Group who come from Bath. I think they are the only performers who have appeared at every single Glastonbury festival. They specialise in street theatre where they get dressed up and wander through the crowds. One year they were Cone-heads and another year they were dressed like CIA agents with walkie talkie radios. I’m not sure if it was 87 but they were all dressed up as Conservatives and had placards saying BAN THE FESTIVAL, DOWN WITH GLASTONBURY. They came up to my bookstall and one of them said, “What’s all this then, a bloody jumble sale?”. We passed an amusing few minutes trading insults until they wandered off. It was all good fun. I’ll tell you more about my bookstall later if I think of anything.
One of the most memorable things about 1987 was the Mutoid Waste Company. They were a semi-anarchistic gang who might have evolved out of the Peace Convoy. They made things out of scrap metal. I have a vague memory of going to a party once at a warehouse in London which had lots of strange machines which might have been made by them. What they did at Glasto 87 was to build a Stonehenge. It wasn’t made from stone, it was made from cars. It was spectacular and was a focal point for a lot of late night raging. In the book Glastonbury Tales by Crispin Aubrey & John Shearlaw Arabella Churchill related how she was walking past there one night only to notice her VW car was on the top of Carhenge.

Musically the highlight for me of 1987 was Van Morrison on the Sunday evening. It was only the third time I had seen him perform and the first time since 1982. To say his performance was a bit special is a huge understatement. I would put it in the top five performances in all the 38 years I have been going to Glasto. I have written about this show in my previous book, so I won’t dwell on it now. Luckily for all the Van Morrison fans around the world it was recorded by the BBC and broadcast on the Johnnie Walker Show. This has become a must- have bootleg for the hardcore Van fans and most agree that it is one of his finest shows ever. Van was certainly on the top of his game back in 1987. The next time I was at Glasto I managed to get my first ever bootleg recording which was this show and I must have listened to it hundreds of times. The sun was setting over Avalon as Taj Mahal brought the festival to a close that year. I wonder if Van stayed to watch his show because they have become good friends over the years and performed and recorded together.
The Communards were on before Van and although I can’t remember much about their show I do remember their bus passing me as they left with Jimmy Somerville and the one who later became a vicar looking at all the crowds through the window. Michael Eavis said later that Jimmy Somerville waived their fee for the show and told Michael to give the money to CND which was damned decent of them. I know I saw the Gaye Bykers On Acid on the second stage because I went to see them out of curiosity due to their unusual name, but I don’t think I was very impressed because I can’t remember anything now about their performance. One thing I do recall vividly though was the late great Ben E King playing in glorious sunshine on the Friday afternoon. He had recently had a UK number 1 with Stand By Me and I had liked him ever since I bought The Drifters Greatest Hits back in the 60’s. I was watching him right down at the front with Dominic who had then reached the ripe old age of 9. Dominic wanted to see what was going on so I lifted him up onto my shoulders. During one song Ben E King looked right at us and Dominic gave him a thumbs up sign and Ben E King gave Dom a thumbs up sign in return. It was great. You can’t buy those magical Glastonbury moments.

It was to be two long years before the next festival because Michael decided they needed a year off to assess the situation and work out what to do about the drug dealers and other problems that needed to be addressed. After a good clear up, the cows reclaimed the land and were soon contentedly munching away at the lush pasture of the Vale Of Avalon and peace returned to Worthy farm for another two years.



Friday, June 07, 2024

My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 6, 1986

Chapter 6. 1986, Dried Scorpions & The Hand Of God.

 Glastonbury 86 was another eventful year. I went with my sister Margaret and her two kids Katherine and Dominic. We had just one problem, we had no transport. We decided to hitch there as it was only 30 miles from Bradford On Avon to Glasto.  I hitched with Dominic aged eight and Margaret set off with Katherine aged ten. I think these days if a 34-year-old man was seen hitch-hiking with an 8-year-old kid questions would be asked. We didn’t think anything of it at the time. As soon as I put my thumb out a lorry stopped and me and Dom climbed in. I think Dominic thought this was a great adventure. Not many eight-year olds get the chance of a road trip in the cab of a big truck to a music festival. The driver was great and took us all the way to Pilton and dropped us off at the top of the lane to the festival. That year we moved our camp site to Glebeland which is the field down from the Acoustic Stage. This was a lot quieter than the area in front of the Pyramid Stage which was getting too hectic and not suitable for kids. Also, it was handy for the Kidz Field which had moved to where it is today. I think that 85 might have been the year when Dominic won a prize for being the muddiest boy in the Kidz Field, but the weather was a lot kinder in 86 compared to the deluge of 85. Apart from one brief thunderstorm one afternoon which helped keep the dust down.
We had a lot of fun that year. One of our friends called Paul (aka Nelly) was selling Dried Scorpions. This was a trick in which a device with a wound up elastic band was secreted inside a folded-up piece of cardboard that had a picture of a scorpion on it. As people opened it and the pressure was released the elastic band would vibrate and people would scream in horror thinking there was a live scorpion inside. When passers-by heard the screams, a crowd would gather to see what was going on and then people would want to buy one to try out on their friends. We had hours of fun watching people’s reactions to the scorpions. It worked best on women. The scorpions became a fixture of our Glastonbury’s for a few years after that. If you look on eBay, you can still get them, but they are a lot more expensive these days.

Glastonbury has often coincided with the World Cup and this happened in 86. They didn’t show England’s matches on the big screens in those days because there were no big screens. Nobody had mobile phones to follow the games either. On the Sunday everyone wanted to know how England were getting on against Argentina. Nelly had managed to watch the game in a tent somewhere and came back to tell us the result and the story about Maradona and ‘The hand of god’.
The New Age Travellers started appearing at Glastonbury this year. They managed to get their own field known as ‘The Travellers Field’. I think some of them might have walked there. A convoy had tried to get to Stonehenge again but they had no chance this year, so they ended up in Stoney Cross in the New Forest. In a dawn raid 400 police turned up and impounded all the vehicles that had no tax or insurance. The travellers had no alternative but to try and walk the 60 miles to Glastonbury. I can’t ever remember going to the traveller’s field myself but lots of people did for the all-night raves. Some of them became known as ‘Crusties’. You could always spot a Crusty. They were often seen lying unconscious on the ground surrounded by empty beer cans and guarded by a faithful Lurcher dog. The travellers field became a fixture for a while at Glasto till matters came to a head and Michael Eavis had to put a stop to it.
On a happier note, the Greenfields areas had started in 84 and by 86 they were well established. This was the most peaceful area of the site and where all the old hippy types found their way to get far from the madding crowd. The Tipi people moved up there as well and there were all sorts of interesting arts and crafts to look at. A friend of ours used to do stone cutting up there for a long time but I haven’t seen him there in recent years. A lot of people think Glastonbury is all about music and that is important obviously, but we used to go on massive walks all over the site and still do. I reckon I must walk about 100 miles over a few days at Glastonbury. I don’t stay out all night long though these days. Back in the 80’s the most fun was sitting around the campfire talking nonsense to whoever was there, and you might fancy going for a walk about 2.00 in the morning, roam across the fields and get back about dawn and once it was daylight you knew you had no chance of crashing out and so another day at Glasto would begin.

Another major change at Glastonbury in 86 was that for the first time the running of the bars had been handed to the Workers Beer Company. They had started in Wandsworth in London to raise money for good causes and fight against the evils of Thatcherism. All the profits from the bars went to left-wing causes. This was a great move by Michael Eavis and another example of how Glasto has had a positive effect on British society. The bars all had great names. These days The Bread And Roses Saloon is in the market area but in 86 it was at one end of the Acoustic tent if I remember correctly. This was the feminist bar and took its name from a poem associated with the women in a strike in a textile factory in the USA in 1912, Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses!’. The Spear Of The Nation was inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and evolved eventually into the Mandela Bar. The Tolpuddle Martyr was the trade unions bar. The Miner’s Arms was very popular with Welsh people and the Starry Plough was the Irish bar. I think the impact of the Workers Beer Company on Glastonbury would eventually evolve into the Leftfield Stage which we have today. One thing I remember about 86 is that in Nicaragua the socialist government of the Sandinistas were involved in a struggle against the CIA backed Contras. In the bars at Glastonbury you could get nice Nicaraguan rum so you could get drunk and support the Sandinistas at the same time! One major problem for the bars in those days was that there were bootleg booze outlets all over the place. You could get a bottle of wine or a few cans of beer anywhere. Tequila slammers were being sold everywhere and one year I remember a man pushing along a wheelie bin full of cans of beer and cider which he was selling. Gradually though as the security got more organised most of the illicit booze got closed down.
The market area had also moved by 86 from a long line of stalls leading up towards the farmhouse to more or less where it is today and organised in a circular fashion like a wagon train. This was better from a security point of view because it stopped dodgy geezers from getting to the back of the stalls and robbing them. It was around this time that I discovered falafels which became my staple diet at Glasto for a while before I got bored with them. Even buying a cup of tea could be quite an interesting experience. One night I asked for a tea at a market stall and the man serving asked if I wanted a ‘straight’ one or a ‘special’ one. I opted for the special one and it turned out to have magic mushrooms in it. There was no sleep for me that night either.

Musically for me I don’t remember 86 as an outstanding year. Simply Red and The Cure were two of the headliners but I don’t recall watching either of them. Christy Moore was great. I had discovered his music two years before and this was the first of many occasions I was to see Christy. Petra Kelly of the German Green Party gave a speech on the Pyramid Stage. She was famous worldwide at the time because the German Greens were the first Green party anywhere in the world to have a major impact on politics. Christy must have listened to her speech because at a later Glastonbury he dedicated a song to her after she had died at the early age of 44. Another band I enjoyed in 86 was The Robert Cray Band. I hadn’t heard of Robert Cray before, but he was a fabulous blues guitarist and singer. I also remember a group called Latin Quarter who are nearly forgotten now but they sang a great song called Radio Africa. 86 was also the first of many occasions when I saw The Waterboys. Apart from that I can’t remember much else. I know Lloyd Cole was on and The Housemartins featuring Norman Cook who would later become a Glasto favourite as Fat Boy Slim and The Psychedelic Furs and Madness and lots of other bands, but it is just a blur to me now. I think it was one of those years when you get home and people in the pub ask you what you saw, and you can’t remember. One little thing I do remember though on the Sunday night just before Gil Scott Heron closed the festival Emily Eavis aged 6 sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
I can’t remember how we got home that year but one of our friends must have given us a lift because I would remember if we had hitched. It is always like a tent peg through the heart when Glastonbury is over, but we were back in 87 and that contained one of my all-time favourite great performances.


Thursday, June 06, 2024

My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 5, 1985

Chapter 5. 1985, Battle of The Beanfield.


In 1984 I was working in a Night Shelter and I couldn’t get the time off work to go to Glastonbury. That was a shame because I didn’t miss another Glasto for twenty-two years. Michael had to go to court and face five different charges of breaching the terms of the licence. He won the case and the festival went ahead. National events were unfolding that would have a direct impact on Glastonbury in the years to come. The miner’s strike had begun which was to last a year. Michael Eavis had a lot of sympathy for the miners because when he took over the farm following the death of his father he had to subsidise the farm income by working in the coal mines of North Somerset and was a member of the mineworker’s union. I remember that winter reading in the paper that Michael had organised a truck load of Christmas presents to be sent up north for the miner’s children. It was a very bitter dispute in which Thatcher used the police as her storm troopers to smash the miners. This culminated in the Battle Of Orgreave which is still talked about to this day. “You will be next”, the police told the hippies at Stonehenge.

The police had been given the green light by Thatcher’s government to use as much force as possible to quell any opposition. They decided that 1984 would be the last free festival at Stonehenge. In 1985 several hundred New Age Travellers in what they called the Peace Convey decided to defy this ruling and try and get to Stonehenge to celebrate the solstice as people had done throughout history. They were met by 1300 police in riot gear who had set up roadblock seven miles from the stones. The travellers attempted to evade the roadblock by driving into a field where the notorious Battle Of The Beanfield ensued. The police went on the rampage destroying the vehicles which were people’s homes, putting many in hospital and arresting 547 people in the biggest mass arrest since the second world war. This put an end to the Stonehenge Festival but as the travellers could no longer get to Stonehenge they turned to Glastonbury as their major festival of the summer which was to be quite a headache for Michael Eavis in the years to come.

Shortly after the Battle Of The Beanfield it was Glastonbury 1985 and I was there. It had changed quite a bit since 1983. It was a lot bigger because Michael had bought the neighbouring Cockmill Farm which added an extra 100 acres to the site. There were a lot more people there as well. I think the official figure was 40.000 but it was a lot more than that. What I remember more than anything was the mud. We got in there early that year on the Wednesday and the weather was nice but on Thursday it began to rain, and it rained for the rest of the weekend. In front of the Pyramid Stage it was liquid, like standing in a muddy lake. Another thing that has changed was the drug scene. In my previous four visits to Glasto there had always been pot smoking and people taking acid, but it was very friendly with people sharing what they had but by 85 a very unsavoury element had arrived of gangs of drug dealers. The main walkway down towards the Pyramid became ‘Drug Alley’ with dealers carrying sticks, wearing balaclava helmets and shouting, “Hash for cash”, “Sensimelia” and other slogans. They got away with it because there were no police on the site, so they could sell quite openly. There were undercover cops dressed in hippy gear on site though observing what was going on and I heard later that lots of these low-life characters got busted outside when they left the site which I was pleased about because they created a bad atmosphere for the other 99 % of peace loving people.

We were camped along the walkway that runs across the site in front of the Pyramid quite near that tree which is still there today that a lot of people use as a meeting point. Pete and Luciana came with us again that year. Pete was a potter and he set up a little stall selling his pots and his painted tobacco tins. I still have one of Pete’s painted tins to this very day. Luciana made hippy type clothes which she sold when it wasn’t raining, and they were quite a hit with the festival goers. You could set up a little stall in those days anywhere you liked without getting hassled by the security. That has all changed these days. Pete and Luciana’s little enterprise gave me an idea which I was to put into action two years later. I’ll tell you about that in a bit. The only downside to us being camped in that spot is that we set up camp not realising that when the festival got underway it would become drug alley. One day when I got back to my tent after seeing a band I found three people in my tent doing a drug deal. I wasn’t sure what to do because they looked quite heavy, but Luciana came over and soon cleared them out with a few well-chosen words.
We were all poor in those dark days of Thatcher. I was on the dole in 85 so on the Saturday morning I had to hitch into Taunton to pick up my giro-cheque for my unemployment benefit. I took an empty rucksack with me. I got a lift straight away from two nice Rasta guys who were still buzzing after seeing Third World the night before. They drove me straight to Taunton. My landlady Mrs Gregory was a bit shocked to see me all covered in mud but no matter. I got my giro and as soon as I cashed it at the post office I headed for the supermarket and bought as many cans of Carlsberg Special Brew that I could cram into my rucksack. This was a lot stronger and cheaper than the stuff they were selling on site. Then I hitched back to Glastonbury. The police were waiting outside of course and when they searched me and opened my rucksack one of them said, “Bloody hell, you like a drink don’t you”.

Despite the appalling weather we had a good time at Glasto 85. There was some great music. I remember going right down to front to see a band called Green On Red. They had a great guitar sound and were led by Chuck Prophet. Echo And The Bunnymen also had a great guitarist called Will Sargent and the music was really good although the singer Ian McCullough was quite obnoxious in some of the things he said. The Boomtown Rats were a bit lack-lustre but Bob Geldof had other things on his mind as Glastonbury was just a couple of weeks before the huge Live Aid concert which he organised. There was a fabulous performance by the legendary Joe Cocker. It was the only time in my life I got to see him so it was worth going just to see Joe.
It was also the only time I got to see The Pogues with the one and only Shane McGowan. They didn’t have a barrier in front of the stage in those days, so you could get right to the very front just a few feet away from the bands. Some cidered up idiots decided it would be funny to throw mud at the acts which Shane didn’t find very amusing. “Come on, this is supposed to be a peace festival”, said Shane. Another person to suffer from the mud-slinging was Ian Dury. Ian & The Blockheads were one of my all-time favourite bands. New Boots and Panties is still rated by me as one of the greatest albums ever. It was appalling behaviour to throw mud at Ian especially with him being a polio victim. Ian was so upset by it all that he walked off-stage in disgust. It took half an hour before he was persuaded to return and finish the show. Another band I enjoyed seeing were Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers on the second stage.

I can’t remember how we got off the site on the Monday morning, but I do remember they had to use tractors to pull a lot of vehicles out of the mud and on to the road. Pete and Luciana gave me a lift to Bradford On Avon where their car broke down but luckily, we knew somebody who got it going again.

My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 4. 1983


The main thing I remember about 1983 is that it was hot, a scorcher. We were all camped down by the pylons again. Our friend Pete from Yorkshire came down with his girlfriend Luciana and I told them not to worry about a tent because I knew where I could borrow a spare one. I didn’t look at it before the festival and when we set it up we found it was tiny. It was only about eighteen inches high. It looked like a caterpillar, the sort of thing that mountaineers used. Luckily the weather was so nice that year they seemed to manage ok.
The pub landlord Pee Wee from Trowbridge who I worked for the previous year was running the main beer tent in 83 which was a huge marquee to the right of the Pyramid Stage. I think that was the last year that they had a beer tent in the actual arena in front of the stage. Also, due to new legislation brought in by Thatcher’s government this was the first year that Michael Eavis had to apply for a licence to run the event. Mendip District Council set the crowd limit at 30,000 but everyone who was there knew that there were far more people than that there due to gate crashers. This caused a few problems when he applied for a licence the following year. The festival also had its own radio station for the first time that year called Radio Avalon and it has been present every year since, but in all the years I have been going to Glastonbury I don’t think I have ever listened to it.

Musically for me personally I don’t think that 1983 was a very memorable year. The highlight for me was seeing The Chieftains for the first time in my life. I’m not sure if seven creamy pints came out on a tray but they deserved one because they certainly got the audience dancing with the jigs and reels. The act that I really wanted to see was Melanie. I had been a big fan of hers from the early 70’s and had lots of her albums such as Candles In The Rain, Leftover Wine, The Good Book and others but I had never seen her live in concert. I was looking forward to seeing her but unfortunately, I had been drinking cider all day and fell asleep before she came on. Apparently, my sister Margaret tried to wake me up, but I can’t remember anything about it. It wasn’t until about 2008 that I finally got to see Melanie at the Cheese & Grain in Frome which was a nice evening. A band I do remember seeing was an Irish folk-rock band called Moving Hearts. They were good. Christy Moore was a member of this group for a while, but I don’t think he was with them in 83 at Glasto. I was to see some memorable performances by Christy in later years at Glastonbury.

There was always a lot of reggae at those early festivals. It was the dance music of the time. There were tents pumping out dub reggae all night long. On the Pyramid Stage Dennis Brown played, backed by Aswad who always seemed to be on at Glasto. I also remember Marillion playing who were big at the time. Curtis Mayfield was also there but I only have a vague recollection of his performance. I also have a very dim memory of the veteran American folk singer Tom Paxton being there. He was one of the protest singers from the 60’s so had a lot of empathy with the CND ethos of Glastonbury. I wonder if he thought it was strange if he thought he was coming to some sort of political rally type event and found out that it was a hedonistic sex, drugs and rock n roll fest with a couple of political speeches thrown into the mix. The act that closed the festival in 83 was King Sunny Ade who was an exponent of JuJu music from Nigeria. Some people talked highly of him afterwards but I’m afraid I can’t recall any of it. I am usually the great rememberer but I think 1983 was a bit of a wipe-out for me probably due to the cider intake.
The Chieftains.



Wednesday, June 05, 2024

My Glastonbury Festival Memories: Chapter 3. 1982

Chapter 3. 1982, Summertime In England.


We were back at Glasto in 1982 which was memorable for me. One reason was that it was the first time that I worked at Glastonbury and another reason was that my favourite musician of all time Van Morrison made the first of his seven Glastonbury appearances. The job I had in 82 was working backstage for a pub landlord from Trowbridge who was running the backstage bar. I have written about this episode in my  book called Vanatic so I won’t repeat the whole sorry saga here. Sufficient to say that we arrived on the Wednesday and my services were dispensed with on the Saturday morning. We were camped up near one of the electricity pylons right in front of the Pyramid Stage, so we got a great view of the proceedings. There was quite a gang of us. Sadly, I can think of four people from that year who are no longer with us, Paul, Gordon, Richard and Tim.
Back in those far-flung days of yesteryear the cows used to be grazing on the land right up to the festival starting. You had to watch out for cow pats which were everywhere. It wouldn’t be advisable to wear a black beret to those early Glastonbury’s because if it blew off at night you could try on five of them before you found the right one. There were lots of animals in those days as well. Horses pulling gypsy type caravans and lots of dogs. The dogs had a great time at Glasto. A dog’s nose can sniff out a discarded half eaten burger from hundreds of yards away. I’m not sure if it was 82 but my friend Dave brought his dog called Hagan one year and as soon as he arrived and took Hagan’s lead off he ran away. He didn’t return until Monday morning when Hagan realised it was time to go home.
There were no police on the site in those days. They didn’t arrive till quite a few years later. They weren’t needed anyway as it was so peaceful. They were outside though and searched anybody going in at random and ran up cricket scores of arrests for possession of marijuana and LSD. Many a bright young person had their future blighted by getting a criminal conviction for having a bit of pot in their pockets. The police in those days regarded hippy types as the enemy. This was encouraged by the Thatcher government who hated Glastonbury and its association with CND.  Matters would come to a head a couple of years later with the notorious Battle of The Beanfield. I’m glad to say though that these days with the festival ten times bigger the police attitude has changed completely. The amount of arrests is tiny in comparison and their presence is mainly concerned with the welfare of the festival goers.

1982 was the first year as well when I got a taste of the mud that Glastonbury is famous for. The Friday was the wettest day in Somerset for 45 years and the site was turned into a mud bath. This is because the site is on clay, also it is in a valley so the water all goes downhill into the basin at the foot of the hill. When you have been to a few Glastonbury’s though you get used to it and its not muddy every year which some people who have never been seem to think.
Musically 1982 was the first Glastonbury for me when there were some truly great performances. On the Friday punk poet John Cooper Clarke was brilliant and I was on the side of the stage for his performance and shook hands with him at the end. I was also on stage to see Black Uhuru because I knew their roadie Mick from Bradford On Avon. Backstage I also met the late great Randy California. I can’t remember his performance. All I know is that he must have been quite drunk by the time he got on stage because I had been drinking with him. Roy Harper returned to Glastonbury on Saturday afternoon but this year there was no punch-up as in 81.

The highlight for me on Saturday was Van Morrison’s performance. It was only the second time I had seen him in concert. Van was still based in the States in those days and I think this was his first tour in Britain since 79. Van arrived in his car backstage, walked straight on and gave a magnificent performance then got straight back in the car and was driven away immediately. It was to be five long years until I saw Van return to Glastonbury. His band did hang out for a while though. I found a photo of his sax player Pee-Wee Ellis chatting to Jackson Browne and about twenty years later I presented a copy of the photo to Pee-Wee and he was really pleased because he had never seen it before and he signed a copy of it for me as well.
The head of CND Bruce Kent gave a talk on Sunday before the music began. I remember this person who didn’t like Glastonbury supporting CND flew around and around above the site in a light airplane trailing a banner with the slogan HELP THE RUSSIANS, SUPPORT CND on it. I think he ended up in court for that stunt and got fined. Good!

Sunday was another great day of music. There was a fabulous set by Jackson Browne who had been on the site all weekend enjoying the festival. There was also a great performance by Judy Tzuke who played just as it got dark. I think she must remember that as the gig of her life because she has faded into obscurity since those days but she was brilliant that night. I particularly remember her last song called Stay With Me Till Dawn.If I remember correctly the last person on was the late great Richie Havens. It was a thrill to see him for the first time because I had always liked his performance in the film Woodstock. It was raining quite heavily during his set so I watched from the entrance to my tent. He was great and I was to see him again at Glastonbury many years later. The festival of 82 was brought to an end with an amazing laser beam display accompanied by the music of Tubeway Army.
Next morning as we left there were hundreds of people hitching out of the site. I don’t think people hitch to festivals any more. Most of them were heading for Stonehenge and all along the lanes were people with signs saying STONEHENGE PLEASE. I expect they all got lifts because that’s what it was like in those days.


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