I had meant to write a dispassionate account of this year’s Glastonbury, really I had. But I’m afraid my plans were ruined by a chance encounter on the final day with my old friend Michael Eavis — the distinctively bearded dairy farmer who founded it 45 years ago.
Rather sweetly he has got it into his head — long story — that I once helped him save the festival. Gosh, I hope this is true because it would annoy so many people: suck on that, all you Guardian readers, you lefty stand-ups, you Greenpeace activists. Every time you go to Glasto from now on you must offer a silent prayer of thanks to the Prince of Darkness himself.
‘You coming to see The Who tonight?’ said Eavis. Usually, I like to leave early to avoid the traffic. But then I realised that he was inviting us to join the Eavis inner sanctum in the wings of the Pyramid stage as the closing act played. Boy shot me a look that said, ‘Blow this one and you are dead, Dad.’ Hastily I began to backtrack.
To be honest, apart from a cracking headline set from Florence and the Machine, the previous two days had been disappointing. Kanye West on Saturday had been a complete waste of space — chest-thumping basslines, sweary-shouty verbiage, but none of the musical richness or subtlety or fine production you get on his records. And we’d been quite short on ‘Glasto moments’ — those random incidents of charming and delightful weirdness in which the festival abounds, usually on the outer fringes of the site.
But after that magical encounter with Eavis everything was transformed. On the main stage, a hoarse but heroically determined Patti Smith introduced her special guest the Dalai Lama.
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