It is oft hazarded that your own tale is but one of at least 150,000 at Glastonbury. And by Glastonbury we mean the phenomenon that amasses itself as one of the biggest and certainly most far-fetched towns in the West Country for a week in June, rather than the more permanent (albeit slightly mystical) municipality and pointy hill a few miles down the road. But you knew that. Who doesn’t? You see? Which begs the question – what is the point? Why bother? There is no definitive last word on Glasto, there are some accepted truths, but it doesn’t exist in any one recognisable shape. Any attempt to create one is surely doomed. But Julian Temple’s film – originally commissioned at the turn of the century by Michael Eavis as a lasting document of his, and the UK’s most important, festival when its future looked in jeopardy – is remarkable in that despite its certain omissions and inevitable dashing of expectations, it feels like the tardis of music documentaries and not once like a failure, misjudgement or vanity project.
It does two things. It tells the tale of Glastonbury Festival, from a historical, sociological and political standpoint. And it tells – to a point – the tales of Glastonbury Festival, the uncharted experiences, the places you find yourself clutching onto a flare wide-eyed at 5am, as it had to if it were to be anything other than academic, and academic the festival isn’t. Because the reason that it always trips off tongues with such elixir-soaked importance, excitement and quasi-religious candour is immaterial, as in that it doesn’t actually exist. There’s no equation, no TP ÷ BPM + E – the cows and the rule of law = G2. We can say where it is, we can say when some things happen and at what time, we can plot known logistics, but to most who go that just isn’t Glastonbury.
There is so much packed into this film, clip after clip after interview after performance after archive report that there can’t fail to be something you recognise, the detail is dense. There is a slight recent bias to footage and singled-out performances – an inevitable consequence of the BBC’s adoption of Glasto as a national institution over the last decade – but there is visual representation from its very earliest days. And from here we are guided, warts ‘n’ all (the police harassment and traveller revolts of the 80s, Mother Nature’s infamous revolts of the 90s, the new millennium’s fence, etc.) through to the modern day. There is no ill-placed voiceover, there is no need, the story tells itself through the well arranged clips. If there is any narration it’s from farmer-in-chief himself, Michael Eavis, and his sanguine reflections from over the years (including our favourite: “I don’t know (whether people do take drugs) , I suppose some must still do, do you think so?”). For this reason it doesn’t feel overtly arranged, it has a natural momentum to it.
“Would you do it again?” Eavis is asked at some point when he still had colour in his beard, after revealing what a great financial loss the festival has been for him. “I don’t know,” he replies remorsefully, “I haven’t got courage enough at the moment”. History of course had other ideas. There are so many snapshots of the characters, the eccentricity, the music, the peaceful moments, the random madness, the hedonism, indulgence, middle class escapism, identity-seeking from so many groups and society’s reaction to such a unique tapestry, that we can be thankful it did. To take just 2 minutes from its 131 we see what could possibly be described as a rave storm-trooper wandering through the tepee field at night, the Tor rising from the dawn mist over a zonked-out festival, a man wandering through tents with a flare, a mobile call ascertaining that its recipients are still in the same place they were earlier (as if), on-site Radio Avalon’s flashing mast, a moustachioed man puppeteering to dirty blues, Keith Allen by a campfire (that much was probably inevitable) and Mr E philosophising over the success of anarchy at the festival. It’s a pace he sustains, and possibly the only way to do the festival justice.
In response to original gripes from ‘the man’ in the late 80s over the unrestrained swelling of the Festival, Michael Eavis responds sagely: “well, you can’t really criticise us for doing something well”. Even if you’ve never been, watch this and you’ll know exactly what he means.