This year, to commemorate the 40th Year of Glastonbury, we let our worker-bees take a break, well just a tad. With pretty much every angle bludgeoned to death, we wanted to celebrate the grease-proof festival that could fight off any tarnishing controversy and still receive countless praises from its punters. Between rape attempts on Grizzly Bear, taking band shots, stewarding the festival and hugging the sweat out of the Eavis, our contributors went down the voyeuristic route to rustle up the best moments spied, overheard and extracted out of their 2010 heat-wave experience.
THE GLASTONBURY VIRGIN
If the festival site was counted as a city, it would be the third biggest city in the South West. Reading and Leeds suddenly look like summer fetes. Advice? Plan like you’re storming a medieval castle. Thanks in part to the freakishly beautiful weather, an orchestra and pyrotechnics in the background; the first time was magical and full of love. Personal Favourites? Grizzly Bear, The National, Beach House, The Hold Steady, Frightened Rabbit. – Melissa York
“This isn't a relationship, it's a relationSHIT.” - Stevie Wonder (to his keyboardist)
?“Ten years ago, this is what we imagined our gigs would look like. Only a bit darker and with more girls in the front.” - Matt Berninger, The National
?“I used to be in a band, once.” - Kele Okereke
?“I've never been this envious before in my life.” - Mariachi El Bronx, at punters in better matador costumes.
?“This song is about a boy and a girl. There were also horses involved at some stage” - Beach House, introducing 'Zebra'.
"Three years ago I told my friends I would play Glastonbury. Who's laughing now, Here I am playing Glastonbury " - Detroit Social Club
Broken Social Scene - Beth Jeans Houghton
The Flaming Lips - Bunny Come
Detroit Social Club - Empire of the Sun
THE UNDERCOVER VOLUNTEER
Volunteering as a steward for Oxfam at Glastonbury provided a priceless insight into the workings of this incomprehensibly huge, pulsating, multi-tentacle festival. At some point you are clearly a punter; dashed on your body with marker pen, a can of beer in each hand and a look on your face that suggests you’re having a rather good night so far. However, on the other side of the divide - working alongside the operational, ultra-professional (but generally very nice) security, trying to pretend to have even a vague idea where about you are in the festival while holding the map the wrong way up. Much of the security seems to live for catching people trying to brake in, the constant game of cat and mouse between security and culprits are rife when working as a steward. Stories of Maglites to the face, security taking would-be breakers in to random fields that are miles away and leaving them with no wallet... – Gavin Williams
The honourary undercover volunteers: Reef, Jarvis and Florence
“Outside of the perimeters of the festival this year was of a young woman who had been kicked out of the festival for smoking a spliff but was made even worse by the fact that the woman had a brain cyst for which she needed to take her medication within an hour. Of course at first eyebrows were raised at the likelihood of this story, but her tears and her accurate, in depth knowledge of brain cyst medication suggested she wasn’t telling porkies. Thankfully, security was somehow able to get her back in and all ended well.”
“An Oxfam vet involved a would-be punter trying to gain entry to Glastonbury some years ago not by presenting a ticket to the festival, but a TESCO receipt instead. When told that it wasn’t a ticket and therefore they couldn’t let him in, he kept replying “Yes it is”
SNEAKY PHOTOGRAPHER
The duty to run around stages can be a disadvantage especially when Kelis has the whole tent dancing around and all you want to do is join in. The undeniable advantages are seeing more bands than anyone else, hanging out backstage and having drinks without having to queue and witnessing the artists themselves having fun off stage. On stage; Snoop made his Glastonbury debut, he must have enjoyed it so much that he came down later on to greet the crowd and mass hysteria erupted. Florence took advantage of Glastonbury more than any other act, popping up all over the place from Shangri La disguised in a black wig to guest at various other acts' sets such as The XX. This behaviour pleased many: Kylie Minogue take note, one song does not cut it. – Burak Cingi
BACKSTAGE
“The bus driver for Two Door Cinema Club boasted about how he once took Shakira and her entourage around Europe. Climax to his brag? They’re all actually rather boring and tend to sleep all the time.”
"I wonder if Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys) is looking at all these male photographers and going "Ooh I'll have a bit of that one""
“witnessed HAr MAr Superstar coming out of a toilet cubicle with 2 ladies” (We cheated, this was two years ago but it's THAT memorable)
PUNTERS
“Heaven's not any better than this. It's just not. I don't need to go there, I'm certain.”
'Who does Bellamy think he is anyway?'
'Man up, Bono!'
“Quack”
DRUGS
“A friend decided Glastonbury would be a great time to drop a shit ton of acid. After a while, he decided to wander off in search of a stage and noticed that the acid had magically endowed him with a supernatural ability to part crowds. So he skipped through the throngs of Glastonbury revelers, booming, 'I am Moses and you are my Red Sea!' only to sober up and realize that, in fact, he looked so off his face that everyone within a 5 metre radius just wanted to get out of his way.”
“Walking through the Shangri La fields at 2am and noticed one guy having the time of his life sitting on a rock, with a Playstation controller, furiously pounding the buttons while a plastic Asda bag blew around in front of him. We don't think that anyone had the heart to tell him the two were not connected.”
“A young woman approached us to ask us something pretty trivial, then, little more than two minutes later, she was back. This time in fits of violent tears. We can barely get through to her inconsolable, shuddering state. Eventually, after about an hour, she calms down slightly so that she can explain that she slept with a guy last night and, in doing so, left her kids alone in her tent. When she got back, her kids were upset at Mummy because she had left them. So she stormed off. Now she couldn’t find her tent and feared her children had left the tent. Eventually, with mascara running down her cheeks and her hair tussled with prolonged stress, she managed to cut through the haze and came to the realisation that instead of actually even having any children at all, she had simply ingested a lot acid, ketamin, pills and weed. Even more devastated, she got up and stumbled off mumbling- ‘I can’t believe I tricked my own mind…”
CROWD PLEASERS
Stevie Wonder | Dizzee Rascal | Muse | LCD Soundsystem | Rolf Harris
The XX - These New Puritans
The Dead Weather - Julian Casablancas
Florence and the Machine - Willie Nelson
“Our friend put his phone on his lap while he was searching through his bag for suncream and noticed less than a minute later that it had disappeared. He instinctively turned to the group behind us and one of the guys just casually produced it from his bag and said, 'Here ya go, sorry.' Seriously lame theft”
(Crime Rate was down this year; only 393 reported crimes at the event compared to 445 last year. 230 were thefts and 109 arrests were made by Sunday Night. Hurrah!)
UNEXPECTED APPEARANCES
Thom Yorke @ The Park Stage | ?Lou Reed @ Gorillaz | ?The Edge @ Muse | ?Biffy Clyro @ The Park Stage | ?Matt Smith a.k.a Dr Who @ Orbital | Prince Charles @ Glastonbury!
This year, Ms Iremonger, from Boston in Lincolnshire and twelve year Glastonbury attendee, gave birth to her first child, a baby boy, Reuben, at 7.30pm on Thursday and then returned to the festival the next day.
Words: Gemma Dempster, Gavin Williams, Melissa York, Burak Cingi
Photography: Burak Cingi, Elinor Jones