Glastonbury is for middle-aged masochists

12 June 2010

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Europe’s biggest musical festival is now just a massive authoritarian pigpen, says Brendan O’Neill. No wonder the young are staying away

Most people, when they hear the word Glastonbury, think of mud, drugs, drunkenness, moshing, free love, the lighting up of spliffs, and generally harmless experimentation in a field. Well, they’re right about the mud. Yet far from being a site of hippyish self-exploration, the Glastonbury music festival has become a tightly regimented gathering of middle-class masochists who don’t mind being bossed around by nosey cops and kill-joy greens for three long days.

Glastonbury now resembles a countercultural concentration camp, complete with CCTV cameras and ‘watchtowers’ (their word, not mine), rather than a Woodstock-style attempt to escape ‘The Man’.

This month Glastonbury turns 40. Like all 40-year-olds, it’s having an identity crisis. Run by hippy-cum-businessman Michael Eavis, on his aptly named Worthy Farm, the first Glastonbury festival took place in 1970 and attracted 1,500 hippies. The headline act was Marc Bolan and there was free milk for all. Men with beards and women without bras swayed to and fro in the open air in a desperate bid to preserve the spirit of the Sixties into the 1970s.

This year, starting on 23 June, ‘Glasto’, as some people annoyingly call it, will attract 175,000 people and nothing will be free, not even the milk. The headline acts are Gorillaz, Muse and Stevie Wonder. This represents an ageing Mojo editor’s view of what Good Music is. The line-up is designed to satisfy the thirtysomething, fortysomething, and even geriatric attendees. (As of 2007, Saga Insurance, the insurance firm for older people, has been offering over-50s who have Saga Motorhome Insurance a refund on the money they pay for a motorhome pitch at ‘Glasto’.)

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A. MacAulay

June 13th, 2010 7:50am Report this comment

A real case of "All along the watchtower" then.

Michael Shaw

June 14th, 2010 4:39pm Report this comment

I've been to Glastonbury once, and will never again and this article brings up some good points. Too much health and safety and policing, it's meant to be a festival, seems someone forgot.
Good point about the safe sex advice too, like the author no doubt, I prefer to not use condoms.
As suggested from now on I only go to V festival which does not have the restrictive atmosphere of Glastonbury.

Simon Anica

June 14th, 2010 5:10pm Report this comment

Excellent article, glad there's some out there who realise what a granny state we live in. With Glastonbury crawling with police it's become very safe. Gone are the drug dealers and the crime that came with them, and certainly gave the festival quite an edge. As a result it's now safer than ever to take the whole family.
And all this nonsense about safe sex, everyone knows it feels better without a condom.

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