It’s 15 years since I went to the Glastonbury Festival. Typing that sentence makes me feel rather old. The sands of time may be running out on my 30s, but give me a ticket, and I’d be there again like a shot.Going to Glastonbury these days involves jumping through lots of hoops and a certain amount of luck. When I went with three friends from the radio station where I worked, Operation Get Glastonbury Tickets was planned with similar military precision. The presenter targeted the record companies, and I, as the journalist, was set upon Greenpeace, which was that year’s Glastonbury chosen charity. Blagging is not my strong suit; I am not very good at asking people to give me valuable things for nothing. Luckily, I was able to do my blag via letter (I am much more persuasive in writing) and eventually four wristbands arrived in the post. But they weren’t just any wristbands: they were blue backstage wristbands.
My Glastonbury is a kaleidoscope of memories. Poppies in County Durham cornfields as we headed south to London; the coach from the capital with cockney lads in the back seat smoking strong spliffs (nowadays they wouldn’t even get away with a cigarette); dragging bags; pitching tents; the beautiful longhaired man with a faraway look in his eye that I bought love beads from; people with no tickets being cheered as they scaled the wire fence and melted into the crowds; eating tempura and drinking warm mulled wine as the long hot, hot, hot June days drifted into the cool of evening. In those pre-mobile phone days, we were inhabitants of another, bedazzling country that was cut off from the rest of the world. After dark, campfires glowed around the tented city and the beat of drums was an unconscious backdrop; Henry V’s troops encamped on a hill on the eve of Agincourt.
Backstage, too, was another world. There were showers, proper loos – not stinking pits dug in the ground – and there were rock stars. In a Glastonbury that was still more crusty than corporate, we repeatedly bumped into The Levellers, their partners and their dreadlocked children. Rather than the flashy tour buses parked around them, they inhabited a beaten up old van. They sat on the roof and banged their army-booted feet in time with the music.
It was the year of Shakespears Sister's massive hit with Stay. Marcella Detroit had the voice of an angel, while the former Bananarama babe Siobhan Fahey looked brittle, demanded champagne and hid in the corner of the field with a friend because she didn’t want her stage make-up done. Boys threw boxer shorts at Tom Jones. Peter Gabriel wore shorts and disappointed my friend who had a long-running crush on him. “Oh,” she said sadly, “he’s got old man’s knees.” Van Morrison looked sour and refused to let anyone take his photograph.
My moment of awe came when I spotted Lou Reed. I knew if I didn’t speak to him, I would regret it for the rest of my life. Dressed in a khaki jacket, jeans and carrying a bottle of water under his arm, he didn’t look particularly dangerous. But his drawl was just how I imagined. He fleetingly touched my arm when he took the pen to sign his autograph. I didn’t wash it for the rest of the weekend. “Can I have an autograph for my boyfriend, too?” I asked, “Then he’ll love me for ever.” Lou obliged; my boyfriend, alas, did not.
