Yes, I’m sorry, the Stones at Glastonbury really were that good and if you weren’t there I’m afraid you seriously need to consider killing yourself. You missed a piece of rock’n’roll history, one of the gigs that will likely be ranked henceforward among the greatest EVER. So again, sorry if you weren’t there to enjoy it. Boy and I were. And we did. A lot.
Perhaps it helped that so few of us were expecting much. I was hanging around the afternoon beforehand in the EE tent waiting for my phone to recharge, having one of those random Glasto conversations with strangers — an A&E nurse, a geeky kid — and we all agreed that the Stones were a band we planned to see more out of duty than pleasure.
‘It could be our last chance,’ said the nurse. ‘Oh, I dunno, they’ll be doing this well into their eighties,’ I said. ‘But one of them might die soon,’ said the kid. We then moved on to the vexed issue of viewing tactics: should we turn up early — and if so how early: during the preceding set by Primal Scream, maybe? — or should we try to wing it and risk getting a really rubbish spot?
If I hadn’t had Boy with me, what I would probably have done is loaded up on chemicals, given up on the Stones and gone for the more reliably dancey basslines of Example and Chase & Status. But parental responsibility made me conscious that Boy’s first major rock experience had to be perfect, so we got there an hour early, found a pretty decent slot level with the front of the mixing desk and waited, praying to God we wouldn’t need a pee for the next four hours because once you’re in the middle of a crowd of 100,000 that isn’t an option.
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