The festival civilization that mostly in summer acts all over the planet, has its roots in those folk and jazz sessions back in the late 50s and early 60s. From that time, and up to this day, there were legal fights, the TV revolution, pop recognition and even a Somerset farmer who dared to dream. We take a look at the evolution of one of the phenomena of the 21st century.
1959 - The first open-air folk festival emerged in the U.S.
The Newport folk festival emerged five years after its big brother, the Newport jazz festival, an open-air event held in the summer and a pioneer on the stage, since it began in 1954, developed by George Wein. It was inspired by the traditional music festivals that were held in the previous century to allow the middle class to get closer to the arts. Wein inaugurated the folk festival with a luxurious sign, with names like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez or Earl Scruggs etc. Later, the festival became famous when Bob Dylan came on stage with a Fender stratocaster and went electric.
Wein was also a pioneer in corporate sponsorship and advocated for racial inclusion in his festivals - it was said that his wife, Joyce, was rarely allowed to be at his side at events because she was African-American. Today, at 91, he is still involved in various projects such as the internationally popular New Orleans Jazz Festival.
In 2015 he won the Grammy Trustees Award, and said how happy he was to be on the same "wave" as late comrades like Atlantic Records' main creator Ahmet Ertegün. On the other hand, he added, "I'm not ready to join them yet."
1961 - United Kingdom makes its first appearance on a humble athletics track
A small advertisement on page 12 of the August 19, 1961 issue of Melody Maker proclaimed the arrival of one of the most popular festivals in the United Kingdom. In those years it was the national jazz festival, which was held for the first five years at the Richmond athletics track. In 1971 it was held in Reading and jazz eventually gave way to the murky worlds of blues and rock.
Reading became the country's biggest rock festival, until a Conservative council's urban plan made the decision to reclaim the site for "redevelopment" in the 1980s. When power changed hands to Labour, rock came back. Reading was relaunched as a more choice offering in 1989, with bands such as New Order, My Bloody Valentine and Swans on the bill on signage. In 1999 it eventually moved to Leeds and now hosts well over 160,000 people every August.
1970 - As the final chaos of the Isle of Wight heads to triumph, on a Somerset farm...
The exotic spirit of the Monterey pop festival, Woodstock and the psychedelic recitals of the late 1960s brought a crowd of 600,000 revellers to camp on the Isle of Wight in August 1970. NME announced about the sensationalist frenzy that ensued: "As the national press compete with each other to offer readers more and more stories involving drugs, nudism, newborn children on site, promoters' losses, lack of security, lots of security, French-Algerian rebels joining the Hells Angels... NME's editors were listening to the music to bring you this report. It is not finished as the schedule was not respected and some artists were unveiled at 4 am. Sly and the Family Stone arrived in the early hours of Sunday morning....".
The Act was introduced on the Isle of Wight a year later, to alleviate "the negative impact on the inhabitants and the environment of these large-scale gatherings". Jimi Hendrix played his last concert in Britain at that event in 1970, because he died three weeks later a day before another festival was due to start at a farm in Somerset. There, tickets cost a pound, milk was free and it was simple to find a delicious roast beef. The editor of fRoots magazine and then regular folk artist, Ian Anderson, remembers the Pilton festival fondly: "[It] was nice, not many people, baggy pants, minimal security... very simple, beginner, in the most interesting and hospitable sense. Some bemused cyclists watching the scene, the odd hamburger van, thousands of weed - the green kind of weed, not the other kind!...". In a 2013 interview with Michael Eavis, he thanked Anderson for succoring the first Glastonbury festival when he got up and played for a crowd when T Rex was running late. Regardless of the applause he received and those memories, Anderson never returned to Glastonbury. "I imagine it could be a bit overwhelming."
1980 - Donington Motorcycle Circuit takes center stage
The 1980s was a mixed bag for music festivals, but Monsters of Rock was one of the huge success stories of the decade. Predestined at the Donington Park race circuit in Leicestershire - conveniently close to the M1 - Monsters of Rock truly started in the mud, with two years of rain and mud. However, heavyweights such as AC/DC, Whitesnake and Judas Priest managed to attract millions of people.
The UK hard rock festival is full of stories. Among the most notable are inside toilets perched on scaffolding poles with tarpaulins strung between them, countless flying bottles full of urine and Lemmy "threatening to give a decent thrashing to the idiot who threw a lit flare at him during the Motörhead concert" in 1986. Monsters of Rock declined in the 1990s, when heavy metal went out of fashion; but another festival, Download, started at Donington in 2003, and is still alive.
1984 - Mozz and company drive the indie invasion
The arrival of an indie group to the Pyramid arena in 1984 was seen as a defining moment for Glastonbury's programming, according to Michael Eavis. He told the BBC in 2009 that most bookers expected Santana's return before the Smiths. "When I saw how Morrissey was inviting them [fans] into the arena, I knew then that everything had changed to another level," he recalled. "There was no place for Santana fans anymore, we would have become pop."
Music journalist Steve Jelbert, was one of the Smiths fans who climbed into the arena that day. "The old arena had no division between fans and security, but it was very prominent and made of rough, sloping metal. No one knows how we got to jump into the arena, but some of us made it." In addition, he thought the Smiths were an acceptable alternative for the festival, supporting some left-wing causes . "The unique exceptional thing was that they were teenagers and up-and-comers, which meant that several wouldn't have heard of them."
1990 - Yeoman bridge war thinks a division
On the Monday after the 1990 Glastonbury weekend, a brawl broke out between the security detail and campers who had set up outside the venue's boundaries and had been enjoying the festival that way for years. NME journalist Andy Fyfe remembers it as a terrifying experience. "The whole region where the campsite and caravans were situated was a living hell. Just across the entrance under the old train tracks was a toothless woman screaming 'LSD, get your worst nightmare here' as her newborn child crawled through the mud...we were trying to find a van outside, but all the roads and gates were closed and the riot was growing all around us. Everyone on the planet who wasn't participating simply rested and waited for the moment when the fight would come to blows. Fortunately, it never happened. Several of the campers who currently go and settle in the Lost Vagueness option region are just a dispassionate edition of the old campers," Fyfe concludes.
Glastonbury was cancelled in 1991 as a result of the Yeoman Bridge war, and the hitherto simply jumping fences have started to grow bigger and stronger.
1992 - Castlemorton festival dispute ends in the hands of the courts
Free outdoor parties multiplied in 1988 with the advent of the acid house music genre; but most of them were illegal, nocturnal and secret. Castlemorton arrived when numerous convoys were traveling to the free Avon festival in Gloucestershire, and were stopped by the police. On their return, they gathered on Castlemorton Plain at the foot of the Malvern Hills. Over the course of a week, ravers and new-age campers partied all day long accompanied by huge speakers. Songwriter Simon Reynolds was astonished by the small police presence: "Few police dared to enter the festival crowd. When I arrived, a few spectacular officers were walking around near the venue, directing drivers between parking spaces."
There were no violent incidents, only 70 arrests (mostly for possession of drugs and related substances) and the site did not suffer any environmental problems. However, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill began to be drafted a few months later, and became law in 1994. Official music and dance festivals, such as Tribal Gathering, multiplied and even Glastonbury set up its own dance floor in 1995.
1994 - Michael Eavis televises Glastonbury and takes it to another level
In 1993, Tyne Tees Television and Channel 4 approached Michael Eavis about televising Glastonbury. He liked their ideas, and hired the lawyer they recommended, Ben Challis, who had worked on the Prince's Trust Rock Galas; he also liked the fact that he knew people who had already worked at Glastonbury. "I met Michael at Worthy Farm," Challis recalls, "and he showed me around the grounds, stopping halfway through the walk to show me some of the properties of the water wells, which was very surreal. He also seemed to like me because I raised chickens and had a rhubarb and plum orchard. Eavis knew that straight TV was a commitment, Challis adds, but he was keen to find that his weekend was going to reach other audiences, so Glastonbury Television, the company, was born.
The festival was first televised on Channel 4 in 1994; and by 1995 Challis had realized that TV "had taken Glastonbury to another level - in fact, demand for tickets soared to a sell-out. Suddenly I had my neighbors talking about how spectacular it all looked, and asking me for tickets and VIP passes". He realized that Glastonbury's dominance also extended to record sales, one of the facts that caused them to continue to broadcast Glastonbury today, knowing the effects it has the potential to have on the many households it reaches.
Challis recalls, "In 1994 me and our producer Caroline spent most of our time running between the Pyramid and the Other realm getting the groups' permission and signatures to show up on the recordings - now it's all different!"
At the moment Glastonbury television broadcasts via BBC 2, 3 and 4 and BBC radio being one of the network's most popular programs - not that Challis has the chance to watch much of it. "I quite miss the site and watching it directly, I now watch the biggest part via iPlayer!".
1999 - Cool' people, mud and tents
"I was never interested in festivals, I was a bit befuddled by them. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to spend three days in the countryside up to their ears in mud." So declared former leisure campsite worker Stuart Murdoch, who in 1999, along with his Belle and Sebastian bandmates, opened a festival in East Sussex. Detached houses replaced tents, and both bands and fans stayed in them, bringing civilized intimacy to the festival experience.
Promoter Barry Hogan helped the band organize it, later with the creation of the All Tomorrow's Parties brand, and founding similar festivals ever since. Murdoch wrote of the Bowlie Weekender in The Guardian newspaper in 2013, "I didn't stop all weekend. I felt like a mother superior controlling everything, and when it was our turn to go on stage we found it difficult, we were already exhausted from trying to get everything else right." But we did, and even did a Bowlie 2 in 2010, selling out quickly.
2001 - Cheap flights and bad weather help European market boom
A perfect storm of factors at the turn of the 21st century saw music-loving Britons heading abroad in search of new experiences. Firstly, the liberalization of the airline industry in the late 1990s in the EU saw the birth and growth of low-cost airline routes, while competition grew on the internet with the possibility of buying tickets online. New festivals such as Exit in Serbia (from 2000), or Primavera Sound in Barcelona (2001), also started to be in the spotlight and to have big stars on their line-ups, at much cheaper prices than their British equivalents. Add to that the high likelihood of rain and cold at home, and it's no wonder people headed for the sunnier countries of the south.
2004 - Thematic festivals are popular
With huge festivals selling tickets in record time, and corporate festivals like V saturating the market with sponsorship, smaller businessmen began to recapture the old essence of the festival. Niche minority audiences were beginning to be catered to again. Psychedelic folk's Green Man and the eclectic Bestival began in 2004, followed in 2006 by heavy music's American End of the Road and the more literary Latitude. Themed festivals have become wildly different, featuring literary operating tents, research campsites, costumes parading throughout the festival, secrecy and smaller, quirkier crowds.
2011 - Beyoncé follows in her husband's footsteps at Glastonbury
Three years before Beyoncé headlined Glastonbury, she saw her husband, Jay-Z, in the field, which caused a huge uproar in some quarters. Noel Gallagher was the most popular critic in 2008, saying, "Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music... I'm not going to allow hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong." It's true that hip-hop had never ruled Glastonbury before, but black artists certainly did: Curtis Mayfield's soul did well in 1983, and all other music from around the globe was as well represented as ever, in this way as was mainstream rock. Kanye West, as a 2015 headliner, or Adele in 2016, were but a continuation of that same spirit.
Some proclaimed Beyoncé as the first woman to be a headliner, but they had short memories. Suzanne Vega was the first in 1989, performing in a bulletproof vest after receiving a death threat the morning of the festival from a woman obsessed with one of her band members. Sinéad O'Connor, Skunk Anansie and Shakespears Sister also headlined in 1990, and Kylie Minogue was scheduled to close out the 2005 festival weekend before falling ill with breast cancer. But Beyoncé's Pyramid performance did manage to pull off something new. She began by singing a hippie anthem before emerging from a glowing pyramid and her performance was able to connect pop's past and present - and take Glastonbury into a nice new future.
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