newcritics

What’s a thirty-five-year-old countercultural love-fest doing ruling the pop cultural roost seven years into the twenty-first century? How did a crowd of feckless hippies wind up practically owning the British media for a week every Summer (rain or shine)? These and other questions are, interestingly, absent from the papers and the broadcast media these days. That’s because Glastonbury has essentially won.

Glastonbury is officially the largest and most diverse ‘greenfield’ festival on the planet and - for the artists - without question the most sought-after gig in the world. Artists and labels recognise there’s no better way for artists to commune with their fans. Glastonbury oozes love, good vibes, warmth, empathy, connection, optimism - all those precious, profoundly non-corporate values so hard to come by in the hard-edged digital era.

This year about 700 (nobody seems to know exactly how many) musical acts performed on 35 stages, alongside about 1500 circus, cabaret, dance and comedy acts in various tents and fields and huts and trucks and yurts. Well over a quarter of a million people paid nearly a hundred quid ($200) each for the weekend. It rained the whole time. No one complained.

The weather, at Glastonbury, is a kind of giant, global metaphor. It often rains at Glastonbury and, although it’s not exactly fun, it provides an opportunity, every time, for festival-goers to restate their quite awe-inspiring disregard for physical adversity. In the eternal contest of Glastonbury vs. the weather, Glastonbury wins every time.

Various media organisations and, in particular, the BBC, decamped to Glastonbury en masse. Over the weekend the Beeb ran between 50 and 60 hours (my estimate) of live coverage from the event across three national TV and four radio stations. Extra live material was to be had from the corporation’s various interactive sources, including loads of really good stuff on interactive TV. This is important because the state broadcaster’s participation makes Glastonbury effectively Britain’s official festival (can it be long before the event is renamed ‘Royal Glastonbury’).

Glastonbury’s commercial and cultural takeover is not such a puzzle, though. It’s the best celebration of Britain’s unstoppable musical inventiveness you could ask for. And it makes all the actual official stuff - the endowment-funded cultural festivals and jamborees, art export programmes and bursaries - look stupid. Could another medium-sized nation have mustered so many acts of real international stature in a muddy field in the pouring rain? Not on your nelly.

The festival’s unparalleled quality also gives the lie to the record labels’ persistent doomsday bullshit. Music in Britain is alive and well. It’s just not buying Bentleys for record company execs like it used to. British music is in better shape than it’s been since punk. Britain not only creates more good, internationally successful music than ever - Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs, The Kooks, Babyshambles, Razorlight, Klaxons, Dizzee Rascal, Amy Winehouse, Fratellis, Kasabian, Magic Numbers (make your own list) - but also takes foreign talent to its heart.

Britain’s always been a kind of creative hub (like a musical Heathrow). It’s a place where artists, audience and capital come together in a (usually) benign and productive way… and Britain’s music scene is self-confident, open, always cheerfully accepting of foreign acts, many of whom have struggled at home because they were a bit odd (or a bit gay). Lately The Killers, The Gossip, Scissor Sisters, Gogol Bordello, Arcade Fire and a dozen other non-UK acts have all done great business in the UK - often much better than at home.

Michael Eavis, the event’s benign dictator (a dairy farmer the rest of the year and a man who looks more like an Amish patriarch every year), and his various partners have built an extraordinary reputation, patiently and with real passion, over many years. He’s drawn in the artists and the audiences while keeping the local, year-round community happy with plenty of useful income for local traders and some concrete funding for many otherwise unsustainable local projects taken from festival income.

Eavis’ personal involvement is vital. Reluctant megastars are brought round, obscure acts advanced and petulant has-beens let down gently - and all because of the organisers’ love and enthusiasm for the music and the people. There are no jobbing bookers at Glastonbury: only fans. Glastonbury is one of those precious, unreproducible brands dependent for their authenticity entirely on a single person’s belief in the product. Replacing Eavis would be impossible (luckily the succession has been taken care of).

Glastonbury, though, is not the creature of purest West Country benevolence you think it is, though. The event’s ownership is more than an interesting side story. The festival manages to sustain its spotless rep with fans and musicians while being part-owned by hugely powerful US media low-lifes Clear Channel.

In 2002 Eavis sold 20% (now 39%) of the festival business to a UK venue operator called The Mean Fiddler Group (named after a pub, since you ask). He did this during a difficult period for the festival and it’s likely that he regrets it now, especially since Mean Fiddler is now 50% owned by Clear Channel.

The relationship, we understand, remains ‘arms-length’ and I’m pretty sure that even fork-tailed Clear Channel execs would recognise the danger of interfering in a cultural institution as precious as this one. The globalised media and entertainment business produces some odd alliances: perhaps none odder than that of idealistic, Methodist farmer-impresario Eavis and Republican slash-and-burn media-monopolists Clear Channel. Can a Burning Man/Exxon alliance be far behind?

Thanks to Julia for the CC photo of Glastonbury 2005.