on sunny afternoons, I like to drink wine, smoke grass – and fuck!
on sunny afternoons, I like to drink wine, smoke grass – and fuck!
It’s that time of the year when Letter from London decamps to the English countryside for an extended wicked weekend.
Right up there with smog, rainy picnics and hayfever, Glastonbury is now a quintessential English summer-time pursuit. Anyone who can’t go and has to stay behind in London is thoroughly miserable (unless they got tickets to see Patti Smith perform "Horses" which softens the blow somewhat.)
It is eminently difficult to summarise the Glastonbury experience – everything is a little bit swirly at festival time and the whole place seems to have a parallel time-zone all of its own, which defies easy description. This year wasn’t helped by the whole site being rudely awoken by a ‘fuck off, God hates hippies’ monsoon at 6am on Friday morning. After the most torrential rain ever recorded on planet Earth (and which only lasted for a mere five non-stop hours), Glastonbury became the theatre of mud.
Everyone attending will have different things to cherish and tell their grandchildren about. One festival goer could hang around the Pyramid stage and only check out the big-ticket bands. Another could stay in the Greenfields, see no bands and still have best weekend ever. You could even have a fantastic afternoon just people watching and eaves dropping. I overheard one man say "on Sundays I used to be a gorilla (may have been guerrilla)" and a friend overheard a frazzled well-spoken hippy exclaim, "on sunny afternoons, I like to drink wine, smoke grass – and fuck!"
Hag, Incendiary’s resident IT guru met George Galloway backstage – he was wearing a suit and tie – George not Hag. Hag also witnessed a fight in the Miniscule of Sound – the world’s smallest night-club which only lets 6 people in at time – evidently one of them was Roy Keane. By contrast I saw two teenagers dressed in matching Scooby Doo costumes. They were the worse for wear and covered in mud and who knows what else. Suddenly a big Scouser in a top hat bounded over to them, looked them up and down and in a move designed to crush anyone’s spirits put his arms around them before asking "was it worth it lads?"
Still, back to the music – everyone there will no doubt have missed several of the bands they swore they would catch before arriving. Misjudging how long it takes to get around in fields resembling No Man’s Land in 1915, sheer ineptitude, schedule conflicts, getting waylaid or simply just being too smashed to get it together – all conspire to make you miss musicians you wanted to check out. Personally I missed Kasabian, Razorlight, the Go Team and the Kaiser Chiefs amongst others who were supposed to have played brilliant sets.
But as the Butthole Surfers told us, it’s better to regret something you did do, rather than something you didn’t, so let me give a flavour of some of the bands I did manage to see, with varying degrees of success.
Unexpected highlights came from the polar extremes of Art Brut and Taj Mahal. Taj played a straight ahead, sexually charged blues set which rocked, revealed his obsession with big hipped women, did the worst Cockney accent ever and told us he used to be a farmer until music got him. Apparently he still likes to talk about all things agricultural with Michael Eavis.
I would guess Art Brut’s singer, Eddie Argos, is a David Devant and Jarvis Cocker fan. Art Brut’s set on the John Peel Stage was knowing, ironic, cynical but above all fun. In between catchy guitar tunes, Eddie exhorted us to form a band he wants to hear and write a magazine he wants to read, and told us to stay away from Pete Doherty. One of the songs involved him considering a move to LA so he could sit on drink Hennessey – on a beach with Morrissey. He asked Art Brut to play us the sound of freshly mown grass and that of their first time at Glastonbury (and then telling them that it sounded more like Leeds or Reading to him.) Writing songs with a chorus of "Look at us, we formed a band" won’t guarantee longevity but if Art Brut’s mark on the world of music is going to be short, it will also be memorable.
Briefly, other highlights included the Dresden Dolls dedicating War Pigs to George Bush; Maximo Park (who must get a really hard time looking like that in their native Geordie land) and the Killers. The Beat made me dance and feel old when Ranking Roger introduced co-singer, his son Ranking Junior (he’s on the new Ordinary Boys single apparently). The Zutons got the inhabitants of a whole big field to sing-a-long, although not on the same scale as Brian Wilson.
Accompanied by sunshine and love vibes imported from California, Brian should have been having a great time but truth be told, he looked uncomfortable in that "where am I?" kind of a way. Wags in the crowd suggested it was like watching the best Beach Boys covers band ever, fronted by some old bloke (not helped by the fact that a flock of birds circled the Pyramid Stage during the set – perhaps sensing Brian was on his way out.)
Totally unfair in my book – he wrote every single one of those classic songs that still united a big crowd in song after all of these years and respect is due. Every Beach Boy song you could want to hear was played – Heroes and Villains, Good Vibrations, Barbara Ann, California Girls, Surfing USA, Wouldn’t Be Good – even an unseasonal Little Saint Nick.
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I caught Terry Reid on a faraway stage out of curiosity and respect. He was first on-stage at the first Glastonbury Fayre in 1971 and told us tales of hanging out at that festival with David Bowie and Donovan. I’m definitely going to go through on my long-term plan to look up his albums from the early 1970s. He still had an amazing voice and seemingly no regrets from turning down Jimmy Page’s offer to join his new band in the late 60s (and recommending an unknown Robert Plant!)
Now, to make a confession. I don’t have much time for Coldplay but still stuck around for their headlining set. It’s not that I really dislike Chris Martin. He is tea and biscuits nice, church-fete nice, egg and spoon race nice, finger of sherry before dinner nice. He even pulled up his trousers and had "Michael" and "Eavis" written on each knee – this was after thanking the Eavis family about 50 times.
They didn’t do much to dispel their nice but dull image for me. But I’m not made of stone – towards the end of the set, I looked around at a whole field of people gathered to see one band. If you’d have been there, you would have felt it too. I warmed to them slightly but only with a couple of songs towards the end, namely Clocks and Can’t Get You out of my Head, which they dedicated to Kylie.
Another big name didn’t quite cut it for me either. New Order may well have fought in the Clone Wars so that we could enjoy Interpol at our leisure, but their Glastonbury performance was patchy at best. There was some great older stuff – Temptation, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Transmission and Bizarre Love Triangle tempered with some passable new stuff. Barney doesn’t have a great voice for a big stage which meant they lost impact for me. It all tailed off for their nadir, when Keith Allen dressed as a matador and a pantomime horse, last seen with Harold Meeker in Rent-a-ghost, joined them on-stage for set closer World in Motion. They formed Joy Division and then allowed an oversized costume horse to accompany them for the whole of their last song on the Pyramid Stage…
Mind you even that was preferable for me than having to listen to Keane’s brand of vanilla Starsailor-lite blandness. I left as they arrived and went back to my tent. Unfortunately it wasn’t far enough away and I could still hear the fuckers with my head rammed in my sleeping bag. My favourite ever quote about them is from Polaroids singer, Mark Headley – "of this genre, I prefer Barry Manilow."
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As Glastonbury regulars and reportedly Michael Eavis’ favourite band, expectations were high. Any band featuring Kevin Shields as a guest star can’t be all wrong. The word is that Primal Scream will never let you down at a festival. Bobbie rolled on stage promising us "bad vibrations". Obviously he had decided that late on a Sunday afternoon, we’d be a bunch of zoned out festival debris needing an uncompromising Primal Scream set to kick us into shape. Fair enough and to be honest the rest of the Scream did their best to really give the crowd some rock n roll. Mani might have put some timber on, but his bass playing is still second to none. Shame that Mr Gillespie was so out of it that he shouted tunelessly along. Not to mention an "ironic" Nazi salute and calling the crowd fucking hippies so many times that it soon lost its gloss (and by the way Bobbie – you recorded an album called Sonic Flower Groove, not us.) Wouldn’t have minded that if he hadn’t screwed up lyrics, disappeared off stage whilst the rest of the band covered and subjected us to in-between song banter scripted by one of those guys who hangs around in parks drinking super-strength white cider all day. I had read that the band had flown in from the studio where they are recording their new album and would be flying straight back right after the set. I’ve actually been trying to block this thought from my mind ever since.
The crowd must have stayed for two reasons – Basement Jaxx were up next and simply to rubber-neck at a butt-clenchingly embarrassing episode from one of rock’s foremost front men. Not that you would know that from the very generous review NME.com gave of the performance.I’m a fan – the gig I saw at the Forum in 2000 still ranks as one of my favourite ever. However, I’ll regale the car crash ending and then move along. Bobbie asked the crowd if they wanted his band or Basement Jaxx? By this stage the crowd was praying for New Order’s pantomime horse to come on and save the set – so a big shout for Basement Jaxx rang out. He then said in a mean drunk kind of a way "we’ll play one more just to fuck yous off". The he turned round and noticed that actually only Mani was left on stage with him – their time slot was up and the rest were already backstage.Cue lots of "bring the fucking band back on" style bluster, before eventually the mic was turned off. A security guard escorted a bewildered Bobbie back to his camper van for a black coffee and a lie down…if only a big Scouser in a top hat had been there to put his arm round Bobbie before asking "was it worth it lad?"
Anyway, enough of this seemingly random appraisal of bands of all shapes and sizes playing in muddy fields in South-West England. Viva Glastonbury and its veritable smorgasbord of humanity all brought together in a peaceful Somerset valley. Acid fried nutters in Minor Threat T-shirts, the naked man walking through a primeval swamp in just white socks and trainers, Earth children, cool kids in bandanas, ironic T-shirts and expensive sunglasses and everything in between – we salute you all. When a man is tired of Glastonbury, he is truly tired of life… my trenchfoot has now cleared up and I can’t wait for the next one.
Words: John Cottrill.