Confessions Of A Glastonbury Festival Virgin

As I write this blog my bags are packed and in a matter of hours I will begin the arduous journey from Leamington Spa, back home to Bournemouth and onwards to Worthy Farm. This will be the first time I’ve seen the Pyramid Stage outside the confines of BBC television coverage, though certainly not the first time I’ve pitched a tent with the intention of substituting baby wipes for a shower for the next five days.

Before this year I’d always intended to avoid Michael Eavis’ annual mud-bath like the plague. Although the Glastonbury line-up usually looks a treat at first glance, every attendee I’ve spoken to has typically warned of a painful number of clashes all between acts they regard as ‘unmissable’. My attitude in this regard was “why bother then?” The bands which headline Glastonbury are rarely exclusives and for the price you pay for the ticket you could quite easily catch your ‘must-sees’ on tour in the winter or at the equally feted Reading, Leeds, Isle Of Wight and T In The Park.

Add to this the typically bubonic on-site weather conditions and suddenly the prospect of watching Gorillaz from the back of gigantic field knee deep in mud doesn’t really sound that appealing.

So what turned me? Well my merry annual ritual of spending half the weekend flicking across the red button in what is essentially a three day rolling advertisement paid for by the license payer had a large part to play. Just as I’ve spent the last few days attempting to accurately replicate Ronaldinho’s step over skills from the Nike World Cup promo, the 90 minutes I spent watching Blur’s headline set last year were enough to convince me that there are many worse ways to spend a weekend.

More importantly, I wanted something different from the constant summer touring cycle from which Kings Of Leon, Muse and The Killers have made their fortune. Would I ever dish out my own cash to see Stevie Wonder, Ray Davies and Shakira? Probably not, but when most of the acts I’ll miss due to such flights of fancy could be scooped up in a V festival day ticket, it feels refreshing to go against festival land’s genetically indie grain.

Finally, and I’m sure most of you can identify with this one, the number of “remember the time” stories I’ve heard that have gone down in Pilton are far too numerous to count. Typically these stories don’t go along the line of “we were drunk around a campfire and had a singalong to The Kooks” yet they seemingly almost always end with “so that’s how I passed out in the middle of a hobo themed rave-up somewhere between Trash City and the Stone Circle.”

After 40 years, Glastonbury festival still remains a place where memories are made and that above all else seems worth cherishing in this exceptionally crowded festival market. So here’s hoping I’ll finish the weekend with a yarn too graphic to tell the grandkids but entertaining enough fill to this column the same time next year.

Glastonbury - The History