Bonus post about what I saw at Glastonbury (soz)
They invited me, I panicked, I got over it, I went
Until this year, I had never been to Glastonbury. In earlier days, when I was still pretending as much to myself as anyone else that I liked music festivals, it was too expensive (I mean, it’s still a bit too expensive, but in those days the too expensiveness was even more acute).
Having made peace with that aspect of myself, I’ve spent the past 20-odd years as a culture editor on newspapers cheerfully communicating with the lovely Glastonbury press office to send other people, and despite their kind offers to accommodate me occasionally, I have resisted the temptation to attend.
This isn’t going to be one of those ‘why would I’ pieces about how awful the people are. There are just under a quarter of a million attendees at Glastonbury, they’re all just trying to have a nice time, and not all of them are the kind of annoying middle class Londoners – me – that everyone seems to think they are. Crouch End would be empty otherwise.
On the evidence of my limited experience this year I’d say at least 30 percent of them were from Liverpool, and they were all very friendly and considerably better groomed, certainly than I was. But there are a number of, I think valid, reasons why I have avoided it and most of them are to do with, in order: camping, crowds and carrying a lot of shit for long distances.
Finally, this year I cracked. They very sweetly offered me one of their returns to write a little special edition of The London Culture Edit, and I thought for God’s sake Nancy, get over yourself.
So I invested an eye-watering amount of money in a blackout tent (which may never see the light of day again) and the kind of wellies Kate Middleton wears (because she strikes me as a woman who knows her wellies) and hopped in the car.
My plan, best laid and all that, was to see a range of things, not just music. I saw not quite enough of it, honestly, mainly because the idea of entering cabaret tents in 28 degree heat was just too much to bear, but here are some of the things I did see, and mostly enjoy, at Glastonbury.
Admittedly it didn’t start auspiciously. Because their licence doesn’t allow for amplified music on the Wednesday evening, the festival had laid on a circus extravaganza to open the Pyramid Stage. I don’t know whether it was simply that they had wildly underestimated how many people were going to arrive that day, but it was decidedly underwhelming – not least because, despite the massed drummers on the stage, you could barely hear anything if you weren’t right at the front of the huge mass of people soaking up the sound.
The effect was extremely disconcerting, and meant that the distant ladies waving around on poles and the exploding cyclist being swung about by a crane were doing so to nothing discernible but crowd noise, most of which was people asking “with what?” in response to the ‘join in’ instructions on the big screen (I learned later that they had secreted choirs around the arena, but nobody could hear them either).
The whole thing reminded one of our party of the scene in Knocked Up when they go and see Cirque du Soleil on acid. We left early and headed towards the Park area, which meant that at least we were halfway between both firework displays and got to see both of them. That was nice.
I quite enjoyed, if that’s the word, Greenpeace’s Apocalypse Museum, tucked behind the Greenpeace stage in a sort of dystopian forest arrangement, which had sections called things like Tech Bromaggedon and Some People’s Worlds are Already Ending.
The Protesting the Apocalypse section was proving popular for obvious topical reasons (which got more topical as the festival progressed, in fact), and included an alarmingly long yet incomplete list of legal reductions in protest rights in the UK, which included, as recently as 2022 and 2023: the increase of the maximum penalty for obstructing a highway from a fine to imprisonment, and making causing (or being equipped to cause) ‘serious disruption’ a criminal offence.
There was also a brief but fascinating history of ‘bust cards’ – mini-primers for protesters to carry so that they know their rights in the case of arrest. Which seems to be increasingly likely.
There was also some rather interesting stuff about the risks of major pandemics due to biodiversity collapse, and this deeply unpleasant nugget on Billionaire Exceptionalism, taken from Douglas Rushkoff’s book Survival of the Richest: escape fantasies of the tech billionaires:
“A billionaire interviewed about his bunker has hired mercenaries to protect it, but is hoping he can fit them with deadly shock collars first so they don't just take his bunker from him once money becomes meaningless.”
It goes on: “The best survival plan for the rich is, of course, to address the threat of climate change collectively in the present and avert it.” And yet, deadly shock collars is apparently the clear, logical solution for this so-called genius. Fucking hell.
I’d like to see a major museum host something like this display – maybe Wellcome Collection? Or the Science Museum perhaps (though I’m not sure what their current position is on fossil fuel sponsorship so that might be a fractious collaboration).
Because I was right by the stage, I sort of accidentally saw Cliffords, a young indie rock band from Cork who had been recommended to me the night before and they were GREAT. I think they could be huge. They’re playing at Oslo in Hackney on November 3.
Walking across the site (in what direction? At what point? No idea, the trudging is endless) I came across a procession from Notting Hill Carnival gathering at the base of the big tree at the top of the Pyramid field. They were dancing to a steel band playing Isn’t She Lovely, which was delightful. They did it twice, I think (the procession, not the song).
I managed to slither off my unsatisfactory inflatable mattresses (two! And it still wasn’t right. I am, in fact, the Princess and the Pea) in good time to go and see Letters Live – also on the Greenpeace stage, which meant that at least two of the letters were related to eco-matters, but fortunately not all because they were mostly the weaker in the programme.
Benedict Cumberbatch is now a producer of the hugely popular event; he introduced it, and did a couple of the letters, including a very entertaining exchange that was facilitated at its time by the newspapers, about whisky, by the American lawyer Robert G Ingersoll (here read by Andrew Scott) and the Reverend J M Buckley (Cumberbatch). Seeing two of our top actors trading American accents was really enjoyable.
Scott also read a heartbreakingly beautiful letter written by a GI to his lover about how they found each other while stationed in Iran, only for his beloved to be deployed elsewhere, and killed in action, while Bella Ramsey’s reading of a 12 year old child’s epistle to a favourite walnut tree was just gorgeous.
Kae Tempest did a bit of their own, which was at least in part I think an ode to the need for talking-slash-therapy but turned out remarkably moving (I saw a mother and daughter give each other a sympathetic nod when they said “What you do not bring forth will destroy you”); the singer-songwriter Aurora couldn’t really remember how to play the piano part to her song, but did so utterly charmingly, and Caitlin Moran read her own Letter from Mummy, which she wrote after a particularly benderish Glastonbury in 2012 when, she said, she thought she might die, and wanted to leave her daughters some wisdom.
Tangentially related to which, Simon Pegg did an excellent turn reading Robert Burns’ contrite letter about being disgracefully shitfaced at a lady’s party. “An intoxicated man is the vilest of beasts,” wrote the Bard of Ayrshire. His description of a hangover, “my head reclined on a pillow of ever-piercing thorns”, will have resonated with more than one of the audience over the course of the punishingly hot weekend.
Had it not been so impossibly sweaty I probably would have hung around longer watching Harvey Juggling, who was gamely and charmingly working his small crowd (he reappeared several times over the course of the weekend so hopefully they grew) on the Sensation Seekers Stage. And because I was roaming about in order to find a decent toilet (I will not ever use those undignified green ones), I missed the end of Emmanuel Sonubi’s set at the Cabaret Stage, which was annoying.
It did have a good lineup though - among others, Mawaan Rizwan and his band, Robin Ince in conversation with Josie Long and Jen Brister (he was also appearing at the Laboratory Stage), Richard Blackwood, and Sikisa, which strikes me as a moderately starry bunch.
I really enjoyed the sort of energetic post-punk goth-rock of Heartworms at Strummerville (that’s a long walk), though it was impossible to actually see her because it was so completely packed. She’s not playing London this year, or at least there aren’t any gigs listed yet, but she will be playing Reading Festival, God help us.
Both CMAT and Wet Leg, on the Pyramid and Other Stages respectively, were great. CMAT’s a real star isn’t she? Funny, smart, full of energy and with the crowd eating out of her hand. She’s playing All Points East with the Maccabees on August 24, and a couple of solo gigs at Rough Trade East on September 1 – the evening show is sold out but there are tickets for the 5pm one.
Wet Leg are a fascinating band; Rhian Teasdale has come into her own as a frontwoman in a way that must have surprised even her. Admittedly Hester Chambers looks like she’d rather be doing anything else, or at least performing from backstage – it must take a superhuman effort to go out and play on the Other Stage at Glastonbury when you have acute social anxiety. What a hero.
Their new album Moisturizer is out on July 11, and they’re playing the Royal Albert Hall, rather brilliantly, on November 13, which goes on general sale on July 4.
As my friend H (see arm and coffee pot above) described it, Saturday is a bit of a knife edge. It’s the day you either go fully native or just can’t be fucked anymore. I definitely had reached the point of the latter, mainly due to the temperature.
I like to think I’d have been more assiduous if it hadn’t been hell on earth in the shade, but I struggled to be enthusiastic about anything much other than lying completely still with my pals, though I did manage to get a look at Yinka Ilori’s fabulous art installation down at Shangri La.
A stepped, brightly multicoloured pyramid with a corridor illuminated by coloured bulbs through the centre, and a flower bed on the top, In Plants We Trust was designed as “a shrine for plants”, all of which were looking sparkier than any of the people visiting it in the boiling hot sun (did I mention it was hot).
Joyful in the extreme, like all the multi-disciplinary artist’s work, it was doing exactly what all public event art should do, which is a) cheer people up and b) provide them with something to engage with. People were sitting all over it, just enjoying it, which in my book is a success.
There were actually a number of outstanding installations dotted about the site. Obviously (at least if you know Glastonbury I imagine it’s obvious) the block9 IICON stage, which takes the form of a vast head on its head wearing a visor, is effectively a sculpture, and political activists Led by Donkeys had a fun if depressing installation nearby, consisting of a Tesla that they had previously had crushed by a World War Two veteran in a tank (at the time he apparently said: “we crushed fascism in 1945 and we crushed it again today”, which is nothing if not pithy).
It was on display squished under a block9- and Led by Donkeys-branded shipping container, with a sign showing Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and a saluting (yes that salute) Elon Musk heading to a space-bound rocket, bearing the words, “Send them to Mars while we party on earth”. If only.
Shangri-La has been completely overhauled, I’m told, under the theme of rewilding (and it did get pretty wild late at night), with the rusty corrugated iron stage facade now covered in mushroomish pods full of living cornflowers, grasses, reeds and ferns, watered daily with a cherry picker. Apparently they will be looked after somewhere off-site for the next two years, and brought back, presumably in slightly bigger mushroomishes, for Glastonbury 2027.
There were also these 40-foot tree sculptures – called, I later discovered, PoliNations trees, and originally designed by design studio Trigger for a project on how Britain’s huge number of non-native plants reflect our complex diversity – on which nature scenes are projected at night. It’s rather lovely.
Speaking of mushroomishes, the Sunflower Sound System stage in Silver Hayes had an ingenious acoustic system made of 25 attractive suspended pads formed from mycelium, which struck me as v clever.
Edgar Philips’s Dragon, in the new Dragon Tail field, didn’t really show its true nature until after dark – Philips is a stained glass artist, and lit from the inside (where you can also sit) it’s absolutely magical. I can’t imagine it won’t be back next year.
I enjoyed Alanis Morrissette slightly less than the boys I was with did. Her voice is now more mellifluous and polished (she has been looking after it, clearly) than it was, which somehow takes off the rawness I remember as a teenager (and yet, who am I to demand a woman ruin her voice to enhance the authenticity of my nostalgia) but mostly I found it curiously difficult to connect to her emotionally on the big screen.
I have a theory about why that is the case, but I’m not about to make pronouncements about other women’s aesthetic choices, especially when I suspect them of being things I have done myself in the past, so I’ll leave it. She did a great job and those songs are still bangers.
I missed Self Esteem, I don’t know what I was doing at the time, and I skipped Kneecap. When Pulp was on I was having a shower and washing my hair, which I probably enjoyed more at that point.
Neil Young was actually really wonderful (though because I’d gone to see it first, I couldn’t get near Scissor Sisters, which was considerably more packed than the old axeman – fortunately I saw them at the O2 a few weeks ago, and then I watched the whole thing when I got home on the TV. “Oh, Ian McKellen” was a delightful highlight).
What I loved about Neil Young was the experience of being in a crowd with several groups of young (and obviously a lot of less young) men, all of whom were bonding over it. There were two groups in front of me, one painfully, excessively hip, in a sort of Timothy-Chalamet-in-a-Wes-Anderson-film sort of way, and one that looked like it was made up of Oxbridge Classicists. And they were both swooning over it and each other. It was so, so lovely to see.
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