Reflecting on Glastonbury Festival 1987

Tents at the Glastonbury Festival in June 1987. Some 60,000 (likely 100,000 unofficially) slept under canvas

Car henge - installation art in a field

No one said the Glastonbury Festival would be easy, but then no one had to. I was intent on experiencing the revered and much storied event, and if that meant hitch-hiking 100 miles with all I could carry crammed into a rucksack, so be it.

What lay ahead was an adventure I would not forget. It was 1987 and the Glastonbury Festival was about to undergo a watershed moment in its evolution. And by watershed I'm not referring to the "right on cue" deluge of rain that assisted in turning the fields into muddy quagmires, assisted by the trampling feet of the 60,000 official attendees and tens of thousands of gatecrashers and fence jumpers.

Actually, in the history of the Glastonbury Festival, 1987 was not one of the famed wash-out years, however, mud was a hazard thanks to at least one day of abundant "liquid sunshine".

In a few days' time Glastonbury Festival 2016 will get underway in Somerset, England, marking the 34th edition of the music and cultural gathering that has a history spanning 46 years. This made me reflect on my own Glastonbury experience, when I attended for the first (and so far only) time.

Accompanying these words are photographs I took at the festival, capturing elements of the travelling community, the music fans and alternative lifestyles that mingled, potpourri-style, like a lost in time, raggle-taggle nomadic tribe scattered across the fields of ancient Avalon.

In 1987 the festival was considered well-established, although looking back from the perspective of today it was still in its infancy, being held for only the 11th occasion.

One of the previous ten festivals had been an unplanned, spontaneous event in 1978 when a group of bedraggled New Age travellers, washed out on their annual summer solstice pilgrimage to Stonehenge, arrived at Glastonbury with the mistaken belief that a festival was going to take place. There had been two previous events, in 1970 and 1971, but then nothing. The travellers of '78 were given access to the old festival site. A makeshift stage was erected, and with power from a portable generator a headliner-free festival was held. The event lasted about two weeks, there was no admission fee, and it was attended by an estimated 500 people.

That unplanned festival resurrected interest in the Glastonbury Fayre - as it had been known in 1971 - and an official festival was organised in 1979. Since then the Glastonbury Festival has been held almost every year, except for a few sporadic 'fallow years' when it is given a miss to let organisers rest and allow the fields a chance to recover. The most recent fallow year was 2012.

Music could be found in every corner of the sprawling festival site in 1987

Back in 1987, unlike today, festival tickets did not sell out within an hour of going on sale. Most people would wait to see which artists were lined up before buying their tickets. For others, going to Glastonbury wasn't so much about the music but was a kind of right of passage, something that beckoned in their teenage years and early 20s - a milestone along the journey from youth to adult, and an opportunity to escape the humdrum of everyday life and experience a liberating, alternative freedom - albeit only for a matter of days. For me attending the festival was a bit of both.

Home comforts were forsaken. Although officially a three-day festival, most people arrived a day early and left a day after the music was over; sleeping in tents, come rain or shine. As noted, Glastonbury '87 had its day of deluge and muddy fields to squelch through. The toilets were little more than farmyard latrines, open to the sky and with the wind whistling around your feet.

Food supplies and provisions were carried onto the site (or in a vehicle if you were so lucky). On site there was freshly cooked food for sale, from burgers to vegetarian to exotic Asian dishes. Music played most of the day and night (and getting to sleep while an illegal sound system was pumping out a beat somewhere in the valleys was just one challenge of life in the festival's tent metropolis).

My clearest memories include Ben E King singing Stand by Me, and then saying that as John Lennon had once sung his song he would perform one of Lennon's. He then launched into a beautiful, soulful rendition of Imagine that floated across the sunny Somerset countryside.

Then there was Los Lobos with their infectious hit of the moment La Bamba - played twice for good measure. Another unexpected standout performance was the new-to-the-charts singing duo The Proclaimers, who delivered a sizzling set to delight the audience that sat on the grassy slopes in front of the Pyramid Stage to check out the day's opening act.

Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, and Michelle Shocked, were two of the second stage performers I sought out, while the main stage headliners of New Order, Elvis Costello and Van Morrison all delivered memorable moments. New Order's Friday night slot included the first live performance of their future smash hit True Faith and was accompanied by a much-anticipated laser show. The laser show was inspired, heightening the feeling that the festival was being played out in a parallel reality.

In the distance is the main pyramid stage at the Glastonbury Festival, June 1987

The 1987 festival was a watershed moment in as much as it was the last time the festival was truly a self-policing, communal gathering of people from every strata of the wider community. It was an event held essentially outside the constraints of regular authority, looking after itself with its own security team. That's not to say there were not minor crimes on a yearly basis, but by 1987 the winds of change were blowing and the regular police force was invited to enter the sprawling site on an observer-only basis. From 1989 onwards (1988 was a fallow year) the regular police force has been part of the festival's security arrangements.

The festival has continued to change and evolve over the past 29 years. Today it attracts upwards of 160,000 people. It has a more corporate identity, through sponsorship and the structure of its organisation. And it enjoys almost saturation media coverage, including comprehensive televised coverage of performances. As for ticket prices, they have gone from around £30 to about £230 today.

As time has marched on the rough edges of the Glastonbury Festival have been smoothed. However, I'm sure it remains a vital and uplifting experience for those who attend, and is still significantly removed from regular day-to-day life, if perhaps to a less dramatic degree than it was once. And no doubt today's festival-goers will feel a pang of sadness when it is all over and it is time to leave the empty fields on Monday morning, having been immersed for many days in that alternative world where there was an overwhelming acceptance of and openness towards others, and where anything seemed possible. That's the magic of the Glastonbury Festival.

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Click below to watch a silent, super 8 home movie filmed at the Glastonbury Festival in 1987 showing the day to day activities of one group of friends at the event. I don't know who these people are, but this film nicely captures the reality of attending Glastonbury in the mid-1980s, and one of the group, seen on the thumbnail picture, is wearing a Robyn Hitchcock t-shirt identical to one I owned at the time.



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And click here for New Order's first live performance of True Faith, as heard at Glastonbury 1987. The video will automatically begin at the start of the song.