Qualla: Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury Festival: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 3.0. Michael Eavis was a Somerset dairy farmer who went to a Led Zeppelin concert. The year was 1970, the venue was an open-air festival at the Bath and West Showground, and Eavis came home determined to put on something similar at Worthy Farm. He scheduled the first Pilton Pop, Blues and Folk Festival for Saturday 19 September 1970. The Kinks pulled out at the last minute. Tyrannosaurus Rex stepped in. Fifteen hundred people paid one pound each, drank the free milk Eavis provided from his cows, and slept in a field. Fifty-five years later, his daughter Emily runs the same festival on the same farm. It now holds two hundred thousand people, has its own postcode for the duration, and is broadcast live across the world.

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Image: Geof Sheppard | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glastonbury Festival: From Pyramid to Tor

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, CC BY-SA 3.0. The festival's symbol arrived in 1971, when Andrew Kerr persuaded Eavis to host a second event under the new name 'Glastonbury Fair'. Bill Harkin designed a stage that was a one-tenth replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza, built from scaffolding and metal sheeting, and positioned ...

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Image: Rodw | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glastonbury Festival: Mud, Rain and Sound Systems

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wizardprank at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Glastonbury's myths grew with its scale. The mud of 1985 was a mixture of clay and liquefied cow dung, since Worthy Farm is a dairy operation and the festival site sits in a valley at the head of the Whitelake River. The 1989 festival saw the first unofficial sound systems, raves...

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Image: Wizardprank at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Glastonbury Festival: Gatecrashers and the Superfence

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pontificalibus, Public domain. By 1999 the festival's popularity had outrun its security. An estimated 250,000 people attended that year, even though only 100,000 tickets had been sold. After the deaths at Roskilde Festival in 2000, the local council refused any further licence until the gatecrashing problem w...

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Image: Pontificalibus | Public domain

Glastonbury Festival: Headliners and History

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jaswooduk from UK, CC BY 2.0. Glastonbury's headline slots have become a snapshot of the era. Coldplay first headlined in 2002 and have now done so a record five times, overtaking The Cure's four. Beyoncé in 2011 became the first solo female artist to headline since Sinéad O'Connor in 1990. Billie Eilish in 2...

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Image: jaswooduk from UK | CC BY 2.0

Glastonbury Festival: The Fallow Tradition

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Worthy Farm has built fallow years into the cycle from the beginning, normally one in every five, to let the dairy pasture recover from the trampling of a city's worth of people. 1988, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2018 were all planned breaks. 2020 and 2021 were forced ones, with t...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Glastonbury Festival: What the Festival Is For

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit wonker from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. The festival has always raised serious money for charity. Oxfam, Greenpeace and WaterAid have been its main beneficiaries since the end of the Cold War. The Workers Beer Company runs the bars on a model that pays volunteers' wages directly to their chosen charities. Glastonbury F...

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Image: wonker from London, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0