The Telegraph sent me to do a piece on Glastonbury the other week. The crush of the crowd, the stink of the burgers, the even worse stench from the lavatories, the fact that most people seemed to be half-drunk or stoned, and the loneliness of wandering around the site, utterly miserable, when everyone else appeared to be having a high old time with friends or loved ones, reminded me of Mephistopheles’s great line in Dr Faustus: ‘Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.’ When the thunder and lightning started, followed by rain so heavy it drenched you in seconds, I felt more miserable than I have in years.
As I fled the site I made a firm vow never to return to Glasto. Once was more than enough. But having filed my knocking copy I shamefacedly found myself creeping back the following day. After all, I had a sparkly gold press wristband that gave me access to the civilised ‘hospitality’ enclosure — where there are flushing toilets and excellent flapjacks — and Bruce Springsteen was playing.
Over the years I’ve seen the Stones, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Van Morrison and Pink Floyd. Springsteen was the last big name on my wish list and it seemed ridiculous to turn down the opportunity out of sheer wimpishness. And by now the sun was shining, I found a stall that sold excellent Yorkshire Blend tea, and I was on my second flapjack. Suddenly God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.
I’ve never forgotten hearing ‘Born to Run’ for the first time in 1975, and feeling the hairs rise on the back of my neck. It has never lost its power to excite and stir the heart, and there are subsequent classics just as fine, most notably that superbly haunting epic of broken dreams, ‘The River’.
I’ll try to avoid hyperbole because I’ve always found the overheated enthusiasm of reviewers of Springsteen off-putting, but there is something genuinely noble about the man who looks so much younger than his 59 years. His performance, backed by the tremendous E Street Band with Clarence Clemons blowing beautifully on sax, and Stevie Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren joining the Boss in the often thrilling three-pronged guitar attack, felt like the work of a dedicated artisan really warming to his task.
There is a suggestion of the blue-collar missionary about Springsteen as he whips up the crowd into a state of adoring frenzy, and he actually appeared to be on fire as the sweat from his body vaporised into the night air. ‘The E Street Band has come thousands of miles to fulfil its solemn mission: to rock the hell!’ he declared with the passion of an evangelist preacher. ‘Right here on this field we want to build a house of love…Take the doubt and build a house of faith. Take the despair and build a house of hope. And we want to build a house of sexual healing in all those little tents.’
In cold print it sounds absurd, but as Springsteen sung and played his heart out for almost three hours, ending with a knock-’em-dead succession of his biggest hits, it seemed no less than the truth. Here surely was the keeper of the soul of rock and roll. And I realised with joy, and a sense of wonder, that at its best there is nothing to beat standing in a field with tens of thousands of strangers, and listening to great music. Full of hatred for the festival when I arrived, Springsteen had somehow converted me into a true believer.
Charles Spencer is theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph.
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