Tyrannosaurus Rex were due to pass near Pilton on the
way to a lucrative Butlin’s booking that weekend and
stepped in, Bolan himself trepidatiously navigating the
thorn-strewn road onto the site in a velvet-covered car.
“
I paused and said, ‘Nice car,’ and I just stroked it, ’cause
it was real glam rock,” Michael chuckles. “He had make-
up on and I’d never seen anything like him before in my
life. And he said, ‘Take your hands off my car, man,’
’
cause he was already wired up.”
The following year’s headliner, David Bowie, shared
joints at the farmhouse with the troupe of “rich hippies”
who helped Michael organise the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre
and instigate the festival’s ecological slant. “They had
a crusade going on about cleaning the earth and sea
waters rising, and they were spot on. They were the
training ground of that whole green and CND thing. It
was a lovey-dovey, very druggy affair. I had a woman
headteacher, who said, ‘Michael, I’ve got a chap who’s
knocking on my door wearing a top hat.’ So I said,
‘
What’s wrong with that?’ She said, ‘He hasn’t got any
clothes on!’ I thought, ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’”
Bowie’s was the first of many legendary Glastonbury
performances. The next event, in 1979, saw Peter Gabriel
draw Glastonbury’s now-customary “nice balance
between the old hippy thing and students”, while a
1984
appearance by The Smiths sparked a massive stage
invasion and gave the festival its alternative edge.
“
That was our turning point,” Michael says of a
booking that was just as controversial as Jay-Z in its
day. “We were doing slightly hippy music until then,
but The Smiths were the height of fashion. A lot of my
hippy stagehands walked away, because they didn’t
understand what it was about – it was nothing to do with
the old hippy scene. We became fashionable,
NME
were
talking about us all the time and we never looked back.”
THE SMITHS
WERE THE HEIGHT
OF FASHION.
WE BECAME
FASHIONABLE,
NME
WERE TALKING
ABOUT US ALL
THE TIME AND
WE NEVER
LOOKEDBACK
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