June – Pilton, Somerset
Glastonbury is like that speaking guest at a dinner event who needs no introduction.
Glastonbury Festival has pretty much always been the yardstick against which other festivals measure themselves, and it has been a long time since they had to do any marketing to sell tickets – quite the opposite in fact, because Glastonbury’s headache is always how to best ration out the tickets they do have, as demand always outstrips supply sixfold or more.
As other festivals race to announce their headliners in order to attract ticket-buyers, Glastonbury notoriously plays its top-trump cards close to its chest and keeps people guessing as long as possible before announcing bands. We recall Michael Eavis once saying to us that ‘no band should be bigger than the festival!’
He was proved right the first year Oasis headlined, and the festival was swamped with fans of the band – and who really had little time for the smaller and more interesting acts who make up 99.5% of the festival’s offering.
Over the last 25 years our team have been ticket-buyers, journalists, photographers, and even stage managers and artist bookers at this gargantuan festival, and we’ve seen it change and morph over those years from a chaotic and edgy hangout for the great unwashed into a mature and well-planned party that everyone is invited to…
The change hasn’t been to everyone’s liking, but one thing is for sure – we hope to still be walking through those gates in another 25 years’ time to see how it has evolved again!
Here’s just a small selection of photos from a recent Glastonbury Festival (credit Sara-Louise Bowrey)
