Glasto etiquette
James Delingpole
A fter I got back from Glastonbury this rlyear, I did as I always do and watched it on TV (BBC3 — which did an excellent job, apart from playing way too many Manic Street Preachers songs), trying to pretend I was still there, worrying about the bands I'd missed but which looked as if they'd been rather good (e.g. The Flaming Lips), and seeking confirmation that someone somewhere had thought the same thoughts about the things they'd seen that I had, Mogwai, for example. Mogwai are a fairly obscure, miserable-sounding instrumental rock band from Scotland and I doubt honestly they'd be up many Spectator readers' street, but during their magisterially epic set they brought me about as close to
perfect happiness as I imagine it's possible to get. Twice, in fact. The sun had just come out after a grim morning (Glastonbury is a 900-acre clay bowl and you really don't want to be there when it rains) and I stood there with my shirt off, arms stretching upwards, massive grin on my face, so delirious with joy that sometimes I found myself laughing out loud and sometimes almost crying. And I wasn't even on major hallucinogens.
At moments like these what you want, obviously, is someone to tell you that you're having as good a time as you think you're having. I tried the Fawn first but it wasn't enough. What I needed was a complete stranger, probably someone from a bit nearer the front of the stage, where the fans tend to be a bit more dedicated. So I abandoned the Fawn and went in search.
Talking to complete strangers is probably the thing I love most about Glastonbury. You catch someone's eye or maybe home in on an overheard snippet of your neighbour's conversation in the Tiny Tea Tent and bang — you're in there, chatting like old friends about anything and everything. It's the etiquette. Everyone's there for a good time and everyone's your friend (apart from the occasional gang of drunken hard men, who've missed the point and go round trying to pick fights with people they think are staring at them but who in fact have just had too many mushrooms). My favourite exchange this year was with a delightful policeman wearing fake dreadlocks under his helmet. I asked him whether it was allowed and he said, 1 expect you've spent the weekend taking drugs and that's not allowed either.'
Anyway, this is roughly what I was after during the Mogwai set. But I had reckoned without the problem of the Pyramid Stage, which is that, being the main one, it tends to attract the straightest and most mainstream of the crowds. This has, of course, been exacerbated by Glastonbury's stricter entry policy. Though I think the festival has been improved immeasurably now that no one gets in over the fence — it's safer and less crowded and there are no gangs of Scatlies stealing your tent — it does mean that there are a lot more Glasto virgins who don't quite know the score. They think Glastonbury's like real life, when the point is that it isn't.
So I weave my way nearer the front, trying to find a likely candidate, and I see this bloke jiggling about a bit and say to him. .Do these guys rule totally or what 'Actually,' he says, 'they're not really my cup of tea. But each to his own.' Ignorant tosser, I think. Or would do were my Glasto spirit not radiating love to one and all. Then I turn to a strange couple of studenty types with coloured hair. 'What?' says the girl, backing off like I'm trying to pull her or something. `Yeah, mate,' says her boyfriend, as you do to nutters you want to get rid of quickly. At which point I give up, wander back to find the Fawn, can't, and spend the next half hour in spiralling panic, quite exhausting any happiness that may have been left over from the brilliant Mogwai set. It was, you might say, a Bummer In The Summer.
Which brings me to another of my high points — and this should make the hippies among you seriously jealous: Arthur Lee was there and he did the whole of `Forever Changes', straight off the record, with all the mariachi brass and everything. Seriously, as a charming young Cambridge undergraduate (Tim; Girton; natural sciences) next to me observed, it was as if Lee and Love had been locked in a garage since 1967 and suddenly let out again, unaware that anything had changed.
This was the best Glastonbury ever. It just has to have been. REM were brilliant; Goldfrapp were brilliant: Radiohead (the dad of their guitarist Ed reads this column, or used to, which is cool) were possibly even better than they were in 1997; it was fantastically well organised; the weather was perfect; and I finally met the bloke who holds the Wolves flag you always see being waved above the crowd and he was nice too.
Gawd bless Michael Eavis and his daughter Emily, say I. And if you happen to be a crusty Spectator-reading type from their local council, please don't ever not give them a licence, because truly Glastonbury Festival is one of the most wonderful things on earth and it deserves to last for ever.
Oh, and if you want to agree with me about Mogwai or anything, I'm on jamesdelgdircon.co.uk.
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