Glastonbury Festival v. 0.1

Posting this on Sunday 30th June 2019 with the cult Glastonbury Festival seemingly filling up the media. Perhaps a chance to forget Brexit. 2017 Jeremy Corbyn used the festival to deceive the audience into thinking he would save the UK from Brexit.

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In a sense, it may actually be v. 0.2 as the year before on Saturday 28th June 1969 there was a one day & night festival in nearby Bath as part of the Bath Festival of Blues and featuring many of the same bands. Entry £0-18s-6d ie for those with a pre-decimal problem, less than £1. In 2019 value equivalent to around £13.

The popularity of that event led the organisers to change the name to The Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music and move to the Royal Bath & West Showground at Shepton Mallet in 1970. Entry for the full two days was 55 shillings or £2-15s-0d ie nearly £3 or equivalent today to £40. Back then it was the amount of a skilled tradesmen's day's pay.

All of this was followed by Glastonbury v. 0.3 , just a few months later on Saturday 19th September 1970 with 1,500 visitors paying £1 to see the likes of T-Rex & Al Stewart (who had given a concert at our school in 1969), at the nearby Pilton Pop Blues & Folk Festival & finally the following year led to the Glastonbury Free Festival v. 0.4 or perhaps what better v. 1.0 with acts like Bowie, Traffic, Fairport Convention & Melanie. This was the start of the idealism, the show free & paid for "by its supporters and advocates of its ideal, and embraced a mediaeval tradition of music, dance, poetry, theatre, lights, and spontaneous entertainment."

Since then it took place on the farm in Pilton on & off until 1981 when it became annual except for the "fallow years" which is part of the ecological farming thinking of the 5th year of rest for the land.

So why my Blip? I went to boarding school close by, from Sept 1962 to March 1968 at East Cranmore, 5 miles from Shepton Mallet & then from March 1968 to July 1972 at Stratton-on-the-Fosse at the Benedictine Monk run Downside Abbey & School. Pilton was the village my 62-68 Geography teacher lived in & I remember a class trip to Glastonbury & then to his house for refreshments where we met his I guess 20 yr old son who was one of those weirdo hippies, clay pot making, flower power people - his father was even back then a "Green Thinking" person & was keen we learnt about nature in his geography classes.

In June 1970, I was 15 and was still a very law-abiding pupil when the message came from the headmaster Dom Aelred that any boys who attended the festival would be expelled. That was no small threat given it was a fee-paying, private, Roman Catholic boarding school. One of my contemporaries noted that Dom Aelred was "heard to mutter something about fornicating on stage and the end of civilization!" He also happened to keep a diary at his entry for the following Monday was:

" Pop Festival in Shepton Mallet over the weekend. Headmaster (D Aelred) stopped everyone from going because of drugs etc. Numerous checks over the weekend. Two people stayed over until Monday and were expelled."


In the following years, the ban remained, but by 1972, it was accepted sport with several of my same age peers to get there somehow. One of them was Bliper "CB images" who was much bolder than I, had just passed his driving test and got a set of wheels hidden in a nearby farmer's barn & took off for the festival.



The 1970 festival was like many, a very muddy affair with even some of the band's vans getting stuck in the mud. Donovan who was not on the bill & far from being an act suitable for the rockers did get up on the stage on Sunday morning, after a night of rain, when the booked act still hadn't arrived & chanced his luck with an improvised session. Actually went down well despite being folk & not "progressive".



Those were days of hippies & hope despite all the problems of the Vietnam War, US assassinations & the UK economy. The legendary Woodstock in August 1969, Isle of Wight Festival in August 1970 & followed by the Windsor & Stonehenge Free Festivals - all of them hated by the establishment, the Windsor Festival being physically broken up by the police.