Key moments
The masses poured out of their trains, cars and coaches, tents were squeezed into every last space on the fields until recently trodden only by cows, and the Glastonbury 2024 action got properly under way.
Dua Lipa was Friday’s Pyramid stage headliner, with LCD Soundsystem and PJ Harvey beforehand. Elsewhere, Idles topped the bill on the Other Stage, Jungle were at West Holts, Jamie XX was at Woodsies and Fontaines DC headlined up at The Park. Plus of course the entire site was awash with wacky, wild and wonderful acts.
Our writers covered all the festival fun from Worthy Farm.
Dua Lipa review: fireworks from a disco diva
A militaristic dance routine of various leather-clad hunks and a snippet of the famous sample from Primal Scream’s Loaded from the biker movie The Wild Angels, of Peter Fonda saying “we want to get loaded, we want to have a good time” made a suitably bold/camp opening for the entrance of Dua Lipa, Britain’s latest hi-octane pop star, to reach Pyramid headliner status. And from there the Kosovan-English singer rose to the occasion: plenty of big singalong hits, a (little too) spot-on vocal delivery, lots of sultry and/or pneumatic dance routines and, if not the most characterful performance of all time, then certainly one that could fill the vast space before her.
Read Will Hodgkinson’s review here
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Lipa paints the town red
Review: Bootleg Beatles (Acoustic)
★★★★★
Millions has been spent recreating Abba in all their former glory through digital avatars. The Beatles came to life on the Acoustic Stage with a few wigs, suits and uncanny musicianship (Will Humphries writes).
For anyone who has never experienced The Bootleg Beatles, the world’s premier Fab Four tribute act, it is an uncanny experience.
For a start Paul and George look so true to life that you imagine the people playing them spent a couple of months getting plastic surgery in a Swiss mountain clinic, where they also perfected all their mannerisms and vocal tics.
No other act at Glastonbury will ever be able to assemble a set list of such riches, and the crowd, a curious mix of dedicated grey-haired men and fanatical thirty and fortysomethings, screamed every syllable of every song.
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It is the closest thing you will ever come to seeing The Beatles live and you have to pinch yourself that you’re not seeing some kind of AI magic at play.
Review: LCD Soundsystem (Pyramid)
★★★★★
“We’ve got a short time, but we’ve got a big heart,” LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy announced — well, mumbled, really — to a packed Pyramid field (Hadley Freeman writes). And oh boy, did they show that heart, and get it back and then some from the crowd. In the first truly great show of Glastonbury 2024, LCD Soundsystem provided the perfect wistful soundtrack for Friday’s golden hour.
Despite being frequently described with words like “ironic”, “ageing” and “hipster”, LCD Soundsystem have long been making some of the most beautiful and anthemic songs of their generation.
They opened with the gorgeous Oh Baby from 2017’s American Dream, before going back further into their catalogue with Tribulations and Losing My Edge. That latter ode to — fine, I’ll say it — hipsters got the laughs, but it was the heartfelt Someone Great that prompted swoons of recognition from the crowd.
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There was only one song they could end with: All My Friends, one of the best songs of the 2000s, that ode to partying with your friends one last time. And what seemed like the whole of Glastonbury joined them for that party.
UK’s biggest popstar set to take the stage
In a year of strange scheduling — Seventeen on the Pyramid? Sugababes at West Holts? — it’s telling how few people have questioned Dua Lipa’s place at the top of the bill: it just feels like the right place for the pouting Anglo-Albanian amazon to be (Ed Potton writes).
Now that Adele is a high-class lounge act (and since Ed Sheeran will never be a glamourpuss), Lipa is probably our biggest proper popstar, a rare Brit with the tunes, the look and the moves to rival Taylor, Rihanna and Ariana.
Kids love her and so do their parents, thanks in part to a synth-disco sound that nods to Madonna, Kylie and Donna Summer. Yes, the festival is poppier than ever but that reflects the musical landscape as a whole, and Lipa’s string of sleek bangers — New Rules, Hallucinate, Be the One — will sound fabulous chanted by the Pilton hordes. We can’t wait…
Caitlin Moran: What I’ve seen at Glastonbury
Tuesday, 6pm, on the hills at the top of Glastonbury Festival. It is a ravishing evening, full English midsummer. However, the sound of birdsong is occasionally interrupted by the sound of a JCB reversing or the clang of fencing being put up, because there are 14 hours until the gates open and 210,000 people converge on the biggest arts festival in the world.
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Despite the delivery of pianos and cows, everything is generally bucolic and peaceful. I’m checking out one of the new constructions, Scissors — Glastonbury’s first lesbian area. It’s a joyful pop art party with a glamorous hairdressing salon, a bar with pool tables and a secret nightclub at the back, entered under an ironic old strip club sign that says: “GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!”
And there, supervising a string of lanterns being hung across the bar area, are Emily Eavis and Nick Dewey, the wife and husband at the centre of Glastonbury. This is their farm we are standing in. Bumping into them applying finishing touches to the festival is like bumping into Father Christmas on Christmas Eve, just as he’s putting your presents in your stocking. “Hello!”
Read in full: Becks, Brad Pitt … and what I’ve seen at Glastonbury
Day 3 so far — in pictures
Revellers leave Hunter wellies high and dry
Fair weather and dry land has given way to a wider variety of footwear than you might expect at the festival most commonly associated with Hunter wellies (Hannah Rogers writes).
I’ve only spotted one pair of those so far (they were spotless and being worn in a chi chi hospitality bar, natch). Everyone else is in boots, trainers, Crocs, Birkenstock Arizona sandals and even, in the case of some free spirited souls dancing at Romy’s euphoric DJ set at Levels on Friday afternoon, bare feet.
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Sunglasses are a must have here — for camouflaging tired eyes more than shielding them from the sun. Two styles are showing up more than any: sporty wraparounds and oversized pilot frames with colour-tinted lenses. Both make for effective disguises and are worn well after the sun goes down.
Something else: so many white maxi skirts. Why? Boho might be making a comeback on the catwalks but surely these particular items are a pain to hit the long drops in. Then again, anyone wearing one probably thought the same thing when they saw me in dungarees.
A few other highlights: spotting Jodie Whittaker in my campsite, Gen Z It-girl Mia Regan by the pyramid stage and a mixed netball team in their bibs. Pure joy.
Review: Danny Brown (West Holts)
★★☆☆☆
By the time Danny Brown came on the West Holts field felt apocalyptic, early casualties and mounds of litter gently cooking in the evening sun. An apt setting for a show that often felt more like punishment than entertainment (Ed Potton writes).
Brown, a rapper from Detroit who has done time in prison for drug dealing, was introduced by the compère as “one of the most distinctive voices in America”. Well, he certainly has a memorable vocal style, a piercing whine that brought to mind Chandler’s girlfriend Janice in Friends — and with a teeth-grating laugh to match. Smokin’ and Drinkin’ made me want to do a lot more of both to deaden the racket.
Brown has a sense of humour — “You’re hiding something like a toupee” he rhyhmed on Monopoly — but too often it was obscured by his delivery and the stark backing of his DJ. There have been plenty of rappers whose voices were less than melodious but with the likes of Eminem and Ol’ Dirty Bastard the humour and imagination always shone through. Here they rarely did.
It left me in dire need of something gentle and wholesome. Which way is the Healing Field?
Pugh: It’s time to smell the roses
Florence Pugh, the star of period drama Little Women and Oppenheimer, has revealed she is “tiptoeing” towards directing and producing films (Ali Mitib writes).
During a question and answer session on Dune: Part Two, the actress, 28, said she is “in the process of learning” the craft.
“I do however think that being a director and producer requires a lot of education and I really want to do it when I know and I’ve learned enough,” she told the crowd. “I’m tiptoeing but, that’s the process — I really don’t want to cut corners.”
Wearing a black sundress and a crown of roses, the actress told the audience that she was a first-timer at Glastonbury and looked forward to dancing the weekend away.
When asked what was next for her career, Pugh said: “I think it’s a tiny bit of a break. I think I need to do some dancing and I need to do some hugging with friends. My dad always said make sure you make time to smell the roses and I’m very bad at that. It’s my time to smell the roses.”
Starmer learns from Labour history
The Glastonbury Festival has always been a highly political event, and there’s no clearer proof of that than the Labour Party having banned its candidates and its staff from attending it (Tom Peck writes).
It’s better this way. Better specifically, than what happened to Angela Rayner’s predecessor, Lord Watson of Wyre Forest, in 2016, when he had to make a dawn dash back to Westminster to try and get to grips with a wave of resignations from the shadow cabinet, two days after the Brexit vote.
Watson, as it happens, once told me the inside story of that saga. It involved him getting in a cab at Castle Cary station, having been told to “get off that train platform” where a press photographer had tracked him down, looking like a vision of gently microwaved death.
The cabbie demanded cash payment up front, and did not believe Watson’s claim to be “deputy leader of the Labour Party”. Watson could only prove his credentials by opening up the Daily Telegraph website on his phone, showing the driver the homepage and saying, “Look, that’s me, on that platform, ten minutes ago. We’ve got to get going. Now.”
So no, don’t expect Glastonbury 2024 to turn the tide of the election. Jeremy Corbyn’s fabled cameo in 2017 didn’t either, though no one really remembers that. It happened two weeks after polling day, and was part of his grand nationwide “victory lap” for having not lost as badly as predicted. It wouldn’t be impossible for Rishi Sunak to do the same, should the unthinkable happen. Latitude’s in a few weeks and that’s probably more up his street.
Review: PJ Harvey (Pyramid)
★★★☆☆
Marina Abramović, performance artist of utmost seriousness and certainly never known as queen of the lols, opened PJ Harvey’s set by telling us to have seven minutes of silence to think about the violence and suffering of the world (Will Hodgkinson writes).
Incredibly, whether through mind control or the power of peace, it worked, and it proved calming amid the cacophony of Glastonbury. After that Harvey appeared in a white cape adorned with trees and proceeded to continue the performance art with songs from I Inside the Old Year Dying, her latest album, themed on Dorset nature and folklore, accompanied by her interpretive dance.
Harvey is a thoughtful artist but not one that translated particularly to the main stage at Glastonbury. The Glorious Land, a superb song from her album Let England Shake, brought things up, although The Words That Maketh Murder, an Eddie Cochran-borrowing tale of war and death, brought it back down. 50ft Queenie was a glorious reminder of Harvey’s raucous early days, but this was rather too considered for Friday night at the Pyramid.
Review: Sugababes (West Holts)
★★★★☆
The best British girl band formed in the 1990s — come at me with your challenges, All Saints and Spice Girls fans, I have the answers — sparkled and swayed among the many flags of the West Holts stage in a set that should have been on the Pyramid (Jonathan Dean writes).
The West Holts is great, a popular fringe setting. But this was the wrong place for a band that attracts crowds from radios 1, 2 and 6. Security closed the route in due to overcrowding and fans were stuck by the toilets, banging beats on the bins.
Which is perfect for Tom, 30, from Huddersfield, who is here for the nostalgia and also, toilet proximity. As for the actual band — well, ever since they brought their effortless insouciance into a pop landscape not exactly inundated with cool back in 1998, Sugababes have always felt like the most welcome of outsiders and after many confusing line-up changes, the trio has simply ended up back where they began, with Keisha, Mutya and Siobhan on vocals and minimal dancing.
The set is singalong hit after hit. That line about Crowded House? That you know more of their songs than you think? Works for Sugababes too — Push the Button, Round Round, a nostalgic run through breakthrough single Overload, this is one of those sunset sets that Glastonbury does so well. Five stars for those close to the stage — three for the loo crew. Four overall — to no fault of the band whatsoever.
Glastonbury veteran
The Radio 2 DJ Jo Whiley has spent the past month anxiously checking the weather forecast for Glastonbury, tracking it change from sunny, to rainy, to — as we speak — sunny again.
At 58, Whiley is the unofficial high priestess of Glastonbury, having first attended the festival as a schoolgirl in 1982. When it was first televised by Channel 4 in 1994 she hosted. Since 1997, when the BBC took over coverage, she’s been its chief presenter, interviewing the likes of Sir Paul McCartney and Dolly Parton backstage. “One day I’ll count how many Glastonburys I’ve been to,” she says.
Over 42 years she’s witnessed huge changes. “The first time there was just the Pyramid stage and a cider bus. Van Morrison performed, it rained the whole weekend, we got no sleep and about 4am on Sunday the tent started to slide down the hill because it was so muddy.
“We packed up, got ourselves to the station and cooked a fried breakfast on the platform, waiting for the first train.”
Read in full: Jo Whiley: It’s fantastic being on stage
Review: Confidence Man (Other)
★★★★☆
Let’s hear it for the kookiest act to grace a major stage this weekend. Until you’ve seen them, it’s hard to adequately conjure up the daft, droll and intoxicating energy of this Aussie electro-pop band. But I’ll have a go (Susie Goldsbrough writes).
Striding onto the stage came dark-haired punkette Janet Planet and silvering Sugar Bones (are they siblings, lovers, both? They’ve told a few different versions). Decked out in a black babydoll dress and stockings, and a dark suit, they have a touch of gothic Victoriana, an orphan and an undertaker.
But no Victorians danced like this: a relentless display of limb flinging, disco-robot choreo that has built their reputation as a bizarrely brilliant live act. Bones doesn’t really do anything beyond dance behind his leading lady — like a sweatier, sexier Bez.
Against an Alice-of-Wonderland backdrop of psychedelic pastels, spinning clocks and silver spikes, they somersaulted (literally, she somersaults) through the set, their sound effervescent Eighties disco shot up with contemporary dance-pop. Boyfriend, a bone(s)-dry send-up of relationship fatigue, and the beachy, synth-shivering Holiday, were stand-out tracks.
The key to Confidence Man’s charm is their straight-facedness: they never break character, even as the set descends into sweaty uproar. Inscrutable, impervious and yes, confident as hell.
Through the years
A Glastonbury fixture to rival the Stone Circle and Carhenge, the photographer Ki Price has been covering the festival for 20 years, more than half of that period for The Times (Ed Potton writes).
Among the stars Ki has shot here are Kate Moss, Johnny Depp, Billie Eilish, Jarvis Cocker, Florence Welch, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Bruce Forsythe and the Dalai Lama.
A show of his work at Glastonbury is being exhibited at the Pop-Up Hotel, a short walk outside the festival gates, until Sunday.
To be on stage with the Stones at the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury was “electrifying — it gave you tingles.” Price said. “Lining them up together was important. They’re one of those bands where it’s not just about the frontman — people love Keith in particular too. I was just sad I couldn’t get Charlie Watts in.”
He took the Pretenders shot backstage before their set at the Park stage. “Everyone was very happy,” Ki says. “There was a lot of love between Chrissie and Johnny because he had been a Pretender.”
Review: Seventeen (Pyramid)
★★☆☆☆
Curiosity takes me to the Pyramid stage mid-afternoon, to see Seventeen, the first K-Pop band to play Glastonbury (Jonathan Dean writes).
The crowd is hardly vast. Indeed, proportionally, I cannot remember so many artists up on stage (13 of them, confusingly) for such a sparse gathering.
Even if the festival leans more to pop now, it has never done boy bands and Seventeen’s songs have a habit of drifting off into the overcast sky; not sung back by anyone, a few young screams aside.
Soon, though, the affable energy of this lithe band — all ripped jeans and t-shirts straight from the Gap — kicks in. They spend 20 per cent of the time singing or rapping, the other 80 per cent saying how pleased they are to be here — and the K-Pop feeling of community is hard to knock.
It is uncomplicated fun, more rock than you might expect, but essentially music made for bedroom wall posters — the sort of thing you grow out of when you are 15, but which feels like the most important music you will ever hear at the time.
Basically the 1990s band Five, then, only more of them and Korean. If it’s an odd booking, it’s one that will fly on iPlayer and can be marked as a cultural pointer — similar to when Jay-Z brought hip hop to Glastonbury, but on a more muted scale.
Football fans face penalty
Glastonbury’s decision to not broadcast England’s round-of-16 game against Slovakia on Sunday has divided revellers at Worthy Farm, but Emily Eavis, the festival’s co-organiser, has defended the decision, claiming that times have changed (Ali Mitib writes).
“We used to have a screen here as no-one had any means of finding out what even the result was because we were so cut off from the outside. Now obviously, everyone’s connected and I think you know it’s a music festival,” Eavis said.
While a sea of fans will be cheering as Avril Lavigne takes to Glastonbury’s Other stage on Sunday afternoon, Kirsty and Andy Payne, will be among the thousands crowding around their phones to cheer on the Three Lions. Despite the inconvenience, they respect the decision to honour the artists by not screening the match.
“Most of the people I speak to are here for the music so they’re not interested… I completely get it will be disrespectful to the acts so I’m fine with it. We’re here for Glastonbury right,” she said.
Festival’s best-kept secret is out
The Lost Horizon Nomadic Spa has been a little known nudist sauna and solar garden tucked away near the top of the Glastonbury site for the last 26 years, but this year one of the festival’s best-kept secrets is out, as its location has been added to map on the app (Will Humphries writes).
Nestled at the top of the tipi village, on a hill overlooking the festival site, the spa has a small stage for musicians (some clothed, some not), a garden for sunbathing, massage yurt, cold plunge pool, trampoline and a 16-person wood-fired sauna housed in an ash-framed canvas yurt.
The dress code is “clothing optional” and everything beyond the entrance is hidden behind a head-high perimeter canvas wall. It’s open from 8am until 2am and the main draw for some first timers is the fact the spa has showers and a sauna to keep clean while camping.
It costs £25 for a single entry or £65 for access throughout the festival, with the uninitiated offered a tour and explanation and the option to upgrade to full festival access if they can get past their trepidation at shedding their clothes.
Review: Jarvis Cocker and Alexis Taylor (Stonebridge)
★★★★★
“We are easing you into the feel of Glastonbury,” said Jarvis Cocker. Well, if his two-hour DJ set with Alexis Taylor was anything to go by, Glastonbury feels joyous, wide-ranging and hilarious. Sounds about right (Ed Potton writes).
They’re a rum duo, the godfather of thrift-shop chic and the elfin falsetto from Hot Chip. They have history, though, having DJ’d together before and collaborated on the Covid party anthem Straight to the Morning. You imagine them wryly discussing Françoise Hardy b-sides.
The bespectacled pair played obscure reggae and funk, a delightfully obvious Love Is in the Air and a brilliant remix of the Human League’s Don’t You Want Me? consisting entirely of the repeated line “I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar”.
Taylor did the heavy lifting on the decks while Cocker twiddled the odd knob and acted as arch compère for a mass game of musical statues set to Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game. The biggest of many roars greeted Taylor as he sang live over Hot Chip’s rousing Spell and a glorious blend of cool and silly ended on a sincere note as Cocker led a chant of “Get the f***ing Tories out”.
Review: Barry Can’t Swim (The Park)
★★★★★
Barry Can’t Swim has blown up in the last few years — and the crowds show it (Georgia Heneage writes). The masses thronged (a literal standstill) to see this DJ from Edinburgh (real name Joshua Mannie), who was once working for a music label in London and gigging on the side.
He had his first gig at the club Motion in Bristol and his success was so swift he had to come up with a name for himself overnight. He opted to honour his friend Barry, who can’t, incidentally, swim.
At The Park he gave us dance music at its best. A few soul-stirring piano breaks. A live singer. It’s utterly uplifting and warm, and a welcome antidote to the inevitable Friday hangover.
Plus it’s magical seeing a DJ in the light of day — you can watch people’s expressions, all of utter glee. Even a little toddler on his mum’s shoulders was bopping away (but mostly blowing bubbles from a bubble gun).
Review: Olivia Dean (Pyramid)
★★★★★
It’s hard to look away from her. Playing her first Pyramid stage set this morning, 25-year-old Olivia Dean, the syrupy singer-songwriter from north London, made an effortless case for herself as one of Britain’s most charismatic rising stars (Susannah Goldsbrough writes).
In stiletto-heeled boots, a cherry-red frou-frou miniskirt and a pair of Zendaya-in-Challengers fierce cat-eye sunglasses, the soul-pop crooner exuded free-wheelin’ festival ease.
“Bloody hell. This is the biggest crowd I’ve ever played for,” she told us, revealing she’d been dreaming of playing the Pyramid since she was eight-years-old.
And yet, there were precious few signs of nerves, as she flipped between modes: from her languidly euphoric soul track Danger, to the waterworks-triggering hymn to her Windrush grandma, Carmen (emblazoned on her chest in a black-and-white photo).
She’s jocular with the crowd and brassily buoyed along by her seven-piece band of mild young men, who all pretty much spent the set gazing at her, and fair enough.
Occasionally, her patter skews a little breathless for this cynic’s taste but whatever. Now and again we had a glimpse of the dreamy eight-year-old butterflying into stardom. She’s a future headliner, believe me.
The perfect place to propose
As the festival site temporarily becomes the fourth most populous city in the southwest, after Bristol (467,000), Plymouth (264,000) and Swindon (233,000), it plays home to all the births, marriages and milestones that come with it (Will Humphries writes).
Stacey Midgley, 28, didn’t realise she was about to join those ranks as she walked to the top of the hill overlooking the festival with her boyfriend of 12 years, Jordan Butts, 28, but when she turned around to look at the view she saw he was down on one knee.
“I had absolutely no bloody clue,” the social prescriber said. “I saw him out of the corner of my eye rummaging in his bag and thought ‘now is not the time for a drink, let’s have a look at the Glastonbury sign first’, and then I turned around and there he was, bless him.”
They celebrated their engagement with Midgley’s parents, who had flown over from Ireland to join them at the festival.
Dame speaks to the crowd in chimpanzee
When Dame Jane Goodall took to the Greenpeace stage she did something no one has ever done at the festival before: greeted the crowd in chimpanzee (Will Humphries writes).
“I am going to bring the voice of the animals to this stage,” she said, before launching into a series of hoots and howls.
“That was chimpanzee for ‘Hello, me Jane’.”
Goodall, 90, the celebrated primatologist and conservationist, gave a 30-minute speech about how reading Tarzan as a child inspired her to live with animals in Africa, and how it was only made possible thanks to the support of her mother, who lived with her in the jungle for her first four months.
She said her experiences with chimpanzees showed her that “the most amazing thing is just how much like us they are”.
“The males competed for dominance with aggression and shaking their fists,” she said. “That reminds you of some human male politicians? We won’t name names.”
Goodall told a crowd of hundreds that it “gets harder to have hope” about the future of the planet but she does “because of the young people, this human brain of ours — we are finally beginning to use that intellect to make the world better.”
Activists’ appearance is arrested
Unfortunately for the dozen or so people gathered at the “Temple Uprising” stage, the Just Stop Oil-linked protest group Palestine Action could not talk about their efforts to “dismantle” Israel’s “war machine” — because its activists were behind bars (Ali Mitib writes).
“The programme for Temple Uprising was all around the power of sound for personal and collective liberation … One of the most important people that I really wanted to bring in was Palestine Action,” Hannah, the venue organiser, said.
“Unfortunately they cannot come today as they have been arrested. A lot of their work is direct action but they need to stay in the police station,” she said.
Palestine Action uses civil disobedience tactics to target the defence electronics firm Elbit Systems UK, a subsidiary of the Israeli company Elbit Systems.
In January, six of its activists were arrested as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to disrupt the London Stock Exchange. In October, activists threw red paint on a BBC Building to “symbolise complicity in genocide”.
My Glasto debut: it’s mad and massive
Veterans of Glastonbury have a lot to say about how to do Glastonbury: the best ten things to do, what to wear, what to see, how to camp (Georgia Heneage writes).
As a first-timer I mostly steered clear of such advice — apart from heeding the Tik Toker called the “Stay to the ground guy” who has helpfully tested the dryness of the ground every day for two weeks to make sure it’s not getting waterlogged (“I can state absolutely that it is dusty,” he said yesterday with a grin. “The ground is starting to crack”). I can attest: the ground is unseasonably dusty.
• Caitlin Moran: Becks, Brad Pitt … and what I’ve seen at Glastonbury
So anyway I’m trying to do my own thing. I have brought salami (now gone off), a bell tent (I’m spectacularly impractical so enlisted the help of some happy campers), and an air bed that has already deflated like an overcooked soufflé. There goes my stab at comfort.
My first impressions: Glastonbury is mad and massive. The mind boggles. It’s a city of revellers and strange makeshift towns. So far my favourite area is Shangri-La, a miniature city plastered with anarchic posters proclaiming the revolution. Into the early hours it turns into absolute bedlam.
Review: Squeeze (Pyramid)
★★★★☆
The Pyramid stage opened with a set by Britain’s premier chroniclers of cheery yet melancholic kitchen sink drama (Will Hodgkinson writes).
Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook may have had their, to put it mildly, differences, but they know that they’re better together, to use an old slogan, and so it proved here.
“Hey! So we’re here first right?” said Tilbrook, before an overdriven rendition of Take Me I’m Yours. The good cheer of hits from four decades past like Pulling Mussels From a Shell came across immediately, with shades of the Kinks and the Beatles being more apparent than they might have been in Squeeze’s post-punk prime.
There was also an impressive amount of jumping around for a bunch of sixty-something men, and lifetime-in-a-song classic Up The Junction was glorious. A fun, appealingly nostalgic way to get it all going, then.
Review: Sofia Kourtesis (West Holts)
★★★★☆
What better way to kick off Glastonbury than with a Peruvian DJ singing about her mother’s cancer (Ed Potton writes)? It’s a long way from the Shaman chanting, “E’s are good”.
Yet the Berlin-based Sofia Kourtesis’s set, the first live music on the first day proper, was far more optimistic than it sounds. Senora Kourtesis survived, for a start, and her daughter dedicated her album, Madres, to the neurosurgeon Peter Vajkoczy, who saved her life.
“Vamos!” yelled Kourtesis, pogoing on to the stage in a white frock like an Andean rave bride. Hovering in the sweet spot between experimental and crowd-pleasing, her house music brought a dose of joy to a grey Somerset morning.
Flanked by a bassist and a drummer, Kourtesis flitted between laptop and microphone, layering her shimmering Spanish vocals over chiming chords and beats that didn’t muck about.
Madres was a deliciously sad banger, Si Te Portas Bonito the cheeriest song you’ve ever heard about being ghosted. An untitled new polyrhythmic track was Latin, Kourtesis said, “so you have to move your hips”. Fat chance of that from this Anglo-Saxon crowd but the sea of pumping fists said it all.
Music changes and rock’s not where it’s at, says Eavis
Emily Eavis, the co-organiser of Glastonbury, has defended this year’s line-up after criticism that there aren’t enough rock bands taking to the festival’s largest stages (Ali Mitib writes).
This year’s headliners on the Pyramid Stage are Dua Lipa, Coldplay and the R&B singer SZA, with Shania Twain, the American country singer occupying the Legends slot on Sunday.
“I think the line-up reflects what’s happening in the music world at the moment. There aren’t a lot of new rock acts to choose from if I’m honest,” Eavis said.
“Hopefully that will emerge again, my heyday was 1995 with Pulp and Oasis and Radiohead … and that was great but music changes all the time and right now this is where we’re at.
“Every year, we’ve been criticised for being too rock, too grime, too hip hop, too pop … it’s just part of our year. Generally it’s not from the public … everybody’s really happy and excited to be here.”
Guide for all the sofa surfers
For those who didn’t manage to get a ticket to this year’s festival or would rather watch the events unfold from the comfort of their sofa, the BBC is offering music fans the best seat in the field, with extensive coverage across television, streaming on iPlayer, radio and podcasts.
Read our guide to the daily highlights and to find out when your favourite artists are on.
Leave flooding to the folklore
This year’s Glastonbury is forecast to be pleasantly warm and dry (Will Hodgkinson writes). Up until a week ago, however, organisers, insiders and festival goers were bracing themselves for mud, flooding and general water-based misery on a scale not seen since the great tent-engulfing deluge of 2007.
• Glastonbury Festival 2024 in pictures: queues, booze and disco loos
“The ground at Glastonbury, which is among the most susceptible to flooding in the country, is like a bath that until recently was filled to the brim,” says Simon Benham, who runs the Free University of Glastonbury literature tent. “Everyone was bracing themselves for an explosion of water rushing down the hills, which, combined with the high water table of the ground, would create a perfect storm.”
It is a reminder of how lucky Glastonbury attendees have been in having a run of dry years, because being absolutely sodden should be the natural state on a dairy farm like this.
Before modern drainage Glastonbury Tor was an island, surrounded by the permanently flooded Somerset Levels. “I do wonder if that explains the area’s connection to Arthurian Legend, with the lake surrounding the island of Avalon,” says Benham.
Hmm, he looks a bit familiar...
With his bald head, distinctive Amish-style beard and iconic short shorts, it is not hard to spot Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis in a crowd (Will Humphries writes). Or so many people who grab a selfie with Simon Pitts think.
The healthcare worker from Birmingham, who volunteers as an Oxfam steward at the festival, has turned himself into an Eavis lookalike “in tribute” to the fact that the festival made him feel accepted.
• Inside the affordable luxury glamping site at Glastonbury
Pitts, 59, who grew his distinctive beard during the Covid-19 pandemic, said he poses for “hundreds of selfies every day” at the site.
“It’s also people coming up and wanting to say what a great time they are having and for many people how the festival changed their lives, like it did mine as a young man feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere,” he said.
Festival fashion is a beautiful game
You could probably hazard a guess at what most revellers are wearing on Worthy Farm this weekend: bucket hats, bum bags and bare butt cheeks are cornerstones of British festival “style” (Hannah Rogers writes). But there is no one Glastonbury uniform. Yesterday I saw a group costumed as flamingos, another in branded yellow, blue and white Lidl shell suits. At 4pm, 40 odd ravers were giving it some at a DJ set in The Park in children’s party hats. I quite wanted to ask if I could have one.
Most, sensibly, dress for comfort. At Fleet service station yesterday an excited mob in baseball caps, baggy shirts and cycling shorts was clearing out the Waitrose of its prosecco and cocktails. Others step off the coaches with curlers in their hair and manage to maintain a full “look” all weekend, false lashes and all.
It’s still early days but one clear trend to emerge is football shirts. Nevermind the Euros, it’s not just fans of the beautiful game sporting footie kit here. I’ve seen jerseys paired with denim shorts, linen maxi skirts and cargo trousers. Some are genuine supporters but most just think they look cool.
Yesterday afternoon the popular Instagram account @festivalfootballshirts, which documents … well, you can guess, hosted a meet-up at Stonebridge bar. Its two founders, Rhys, 29 and Carl, 32, told me that the hottest styles they see are vintage, made for obscure teams, have a 90s-inspired loose fit and niche designs.
A day for husky voices and men in wigs
I’m starting the day early with Lynks, at 11.30am at The Park (Will Hodgkinson writes). This masked underground pop sensation is like a Gen Z version of the Eighties clubland legend Leigh Bowery: camp, theatrical, very funny indeed. From there I’ll head over to husky voiced Indian funk legend Asha Puthli (12.30pm, West Holts) because her version of JJ Cale’s Right Down Here is a sultry rare groove classic and I never thought I’d get to witness her singing it in person.
Danny Brown (6.30pm, West Holts) is a totally original rapper/former jailbird with an appealing sense of the absurd so he can’t be missed, and can I squeeze in a bit of Bootleg Beatles (9.30pm, Avalon) before getting to the main event, a headline set by the hi-octane pop glamazon Dua Lipa (10pm, Pyramid)? Hope so, because hearing Here Comes the Sun performed by a bunch of men in wigs before rushing over to the Pyramid and jiggling about to New Rules will really make Friday go with a bang.
Ssshh — do you want to know a secret?
The lovely thing about Thursday night at Glastonbury is no one cares that much about the music (Susannah Goldsbrough writes). Wait, hold up, I know how that sounds but what I mean is you don’t have to chase it. No major acts, no fomo, just strolling through field after field in the late evening sunshine, thinking: I forgot there were this many people in the world.
Campers will continue to arrive today but for the most deeply committed revellers, who rocked up as dawn broke on Wednesday, yesterday was a gentle kick-off to the weekend. I hear Queer House Party at Rum Shack was the place to be during the day, both for the DJs and the (lightly clothed) dancers. As the dance tents swung into action later, Aussie techno tinkler Mall Grab had the crowd pounding the air.
Plus, a buffet of Glastonbury eccentricities: 24-hour ice cream vans, an eye-opening number of inflatable giraffes, and a surreal five-minute-sequence in which a man, then an unrelated woman, bought me a drink, both of whom were called … Lois?
Meanwhile, rumours are already simmering about “secret sets” (read: a big artist pops up at a smaller stage late at night to the delight of a lucky few). Nothing secret about them, of course. I should be keeping this under my (fetching green baseball) cap but if you’re a fan of the young soul crooner Olivia Dean, I have two words for you — Sunday night.
And we’re off ...
There were few real, human rock bands to entertain early arrivals but how about a mechanical one (Will Hodgkinson writes)?
Up on the Pier — a recreation of an old-fashioned seaside wooden pleasure arena complete with Punch and Judy show and vintage pinball arcade — Joe Rush of Glastonbury’s industrial salvage/crusty traveller favourites the Mutoid Waste Company has built a monstrous hydraulic four-piece out of car parts, giving new meaning to the term “heavy metal”. And they played actual drums and guitars with a lot more vigour, if less variation, than many of their fleshy counterparts.
From reiki sessions in the healing field to late-night raves at Shangri La, Glastonbury has always been all things to all people, apart from people who cannot abide odorous toilets, relentless positivity, and hippies. A drone display created a CND sign in the sky on Wednesday night, followed by a vast fireworks display at the top of the site. A frail but heartfelt My Way alongside other standards by Michael Eavis on the Park stage gave the festival its official opening, and we were off.
