PHOTOS
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O
ver pastries and
tea in a farmhouse
overlooking
the broad green
sweep of Worthy
Farm, near Pilton,
Somerset, Emily
Eavis is holding up a
picture book that
belongs to her one-
year-old son. “I like the way they’ve done the farmer,”
she says, pointing to a cartoon figure with green shorts,
bald head and a beard with no moustache. He looks
familiar. In fact, there’s no mistaking the striking
resemblance to a man sitting a couple of feet away from
us: Emily’s father, Michael. But then again, he’s probably
the most famous farmer in British history.
Since 1970, he has hosted an event that is regarded as
Britain’s greatest, most magical cultural phenomenon.
Every June solstice weekend, bar the occasional
fallow year, Worthy Farm turns into the biggest city in
Somerset. As many as 175,000 revellers pitch entire
suburbs of tents across the 1,000 acres (405ha), an hour’s
walk end to end. Thousands of weekend hippies flood the
vast green fields to indulge in holistic healings, naked
saunas, ancient carving techniques and the drunken
purchase of magic twigs. Hordes of boggle-eyed ravers,
some on stilts, descend upon a village of dance tents,
all-night silent discos and post-apocalyptic party zones
constructed like futuristic Japanese cities. Wizards,
angels and storytellers roam a marketplace the size of
Bury St Edmunds, as fire processions wind past cocktail
cinemas, Walls of Death and underground piano bars.
Swathes of stoners gather at the specially constructed
stone circle to applaud each new Glasto dawn.
And then, there’s the music. Where else would bands
of the calibre of Pulp and Radiohead play unannounced
sets at the fairground-themed Park Stage, while 60 stages
explode with folk, world music, comedy, cabaret, theatre,
circus acts and Patagonian nose-flute jazz? And, at the
heart and soul of it all, the legendary Pyramid Stage plays
host to career-defining shows by everyone from Paul
McCartney, U2 and Oasis to Jay-Z, Coldplay andThe
Killers. In sunny years, it’s a head-spinning wonderland;
in muddy vintages, a surrealist Somme, but it’s always a
blast. This time promises to be more spectacular than ever
(
and not only because the Rolling Stones are headlining).
“
We’ve got this huge installation coming in called the
Tree of Life,” Emily says, “which is going to be a stage and
it’s also a sort of enormous, beautiful-looking kind of
tree. It’s a sort of tower, but it’s a tree, and it’s got little
hatches in it. It’s beautifully lit and looks amazing. And
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F E S T I V A L S P E C I A L
G L A S T O N B U R Y
