No music festival is more well-known than Glastonbury, which is in charge of bringing together tens of thousands of music lovers from around the globe with the aim of throwing a huge party that lasts for a whole weekend. On the other hand, historically, this wasn’t always the case. Here we will take a trip down memory lane and go to the location where it all began because 2022 marked the 52th anniversary of the historic event.
The festival goes for five days non-stop with the non-performing arts and music events and mind blowing performances. The outstanding legends perform in events based in England every year. Sally Howell, while speaking to Betway states that the event is an all year job and we keep on receiving the emails and CDs all year round for the music.
Beginning of Glastonbury Festival:
Compared to now, the Glastonbury Festival’s beginnings were relatively humble.
Organizer Michael Eavis decided to create his own festival at Worthy Farm in 1970 after obtaining inspiration from an open-air festival he had recently attended. At the time, the festival was known as the Pilton Pop, Folk, and Blues Festival.
The initial festival’s entrance fee was just one pound, and attendees also received a free bottle of milk and an ox roast..
The Kinks, who were originally set to perform but had to cancel last-minute, were replaced by T. Rex, who were rising stars at the time. Can you imagine what it was like to dance to Ride a White Swan while the UK hippy movement was coming to a close? True magic
The first and only Pilton Pop, Folk & Blues Festival took place in 1970, the year after Glastonbury Fair, when it was a free event. This year’s festival saw the introduction of the legendary Pyramid Stage, making it one to remember in the long and distinguished history of the event. It was a stage made of expanding metal and scaffolding that was covered with plastic sheeting. Every tale had to begin somewhere less noticeable than the renowned platform we see today. However, this stage was a far way from that.
Between 1970 and 1981, the festival was held sporadically, but from 1982, it has always been an annual event. Although it does have a “fallow year” once every five years to allow the land and the residents to recover before the next four years of illustrious partying, celebrating, and exploring begins.
Good Cause
Although Glastonbury is far bigger than the music or the artists who perform there, it nevertheless thrives as a global forum for creativity, ideas, and performance in all sectors. Both the Left Field with its Tony Benn tower and the Green Fields, offer a setting where green politics and environmental issues are brought to the fore, serve as platforms for political discourse and offer active programming of lectures and performances, respectively. In 2015, the Dalai Lama visited Glastonbury Festival. On June 24, 2016, festival goers awoke to learn that the United Kingdom had decided to leave the European Union. One of the numerous entertainers whose performances were impacted by this awful news was PJ Harvey. She answered by reciting the John Donne poem “No Man is an Island,” which was being presented on the opposite stage. In 2019, Sir David Attenborough promoted the Seven Worlds One Planet effort on the Pyramid Stage. This endeavor raises awareness of the harm that climate change is causing. Additionally, the Festival’s initiative to ban all single-use plastic bottles from the venue this year proved successful.
By continuing to donate its profits to Greenpeace, WaterAid and Oxfam, the Festival keeps committed to its humanitarian goal. In addition, the Festival still contributes to worthy regional causes like social housing programmes. Having the chance to perform at Glastonbury is a rite of passage for many international artists who resonate with the festival’s spirit.
In order to create a digital archive that will, for the first time, make it possible to track the festival’s extensive and varied performances across a range of stages, performers, and decades, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is compiling a record of the festival’s extraordinary past in collaboration with Glastonbury. As part of this project, festival attendees will be requested to write down their memories.
GLASTONBURY,ENGLAND – JUNE 30: Crowds on a hill above Park stage at the 2019 Glastonbury Festival site held at Worthy Farm, in Pilton, Somerset on June 30, 2019 near Glastonbury, England. The festival, founded in 1970, has grown into one of the largest outdoor green field festivals in the world. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
Glastonbury 2022 (22nd June-26thJune 2022)
Towards the end of the third and final day of the festival, American rapper Kendrick Lamar gave a performance that left everyone at Glastonbury speechless.
Over the course of five days, fans danced to performances by well-known performers like Paul McCartney, Pet Shop Boys, Little Simz, Billie Eilish and Sam Fender.
On the festival’s final day, jazz-fusion legend Herbie Hancock dazzled audience members relaxing at the Pyramid stage with a brilliant performance, and George Ezra’s presence at the John Peel stage was maybe the worst-kept festival secret in history.
