Glastonbury After Hours

This programme contains very strong language

Thank you!

# It's here, it's here Every teardrop is a... #

# Oh oh-oh oh

# Oh oh-oh oh

# Oh oh-oh oh... #

-Thank you.

-# Oh oh-oh oh

# Oh oh oh. #

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Good night. Thank you very much! Thank you.

CHEERING

When the shows come to an end on the Pyramid stage,

a pilgrimage of 100,000 people winds its way uphill through the rain

and mud to a far corner of the festival.

And another Glastonbury begins.

From the glass coffin of genre, a startling new sound breaks forth.

Like a defiant Methuselah mouse gnawing through the cables

of mythology and coming up in Rockefeller Plaza

to see the statue of Prometheus look down.

To Gipsy children dared upon the shore

and the cable snaps in a riotous carnival

erupting on the Utopia bypass.

The cavalcade of doom and dirty deals

grinds to a halt while the revellers

storm across the frontier shouting,

"Viva la musica!"

DANCE MUSIC

# Hey hey!

# Hey hey!

# Hey hey!

# Hey hey hey hey!

# Hey hey!

# Hey hey!

# Hey hey!

# Hey hey!

# Hey hey!

# Hey hey! #

CHEERING

Anyone can put on U2 or Beyonce or Coldplay.

I mean, that's not clever, is it?

All the inventive stuff that we do like the Travellers Field

down in the southeast corner, that's the new stuff we do.

It's so mind-blowing and it's so inventive,

it's just pushing the boundaries of performance, isn't it?

INDISTINCT VOICE AND SOUND EFFECTS

Good evening.

WHOOPING

I think I've died and gone to heaven.

-You sexy thing.

-Oh, no, it's Shangri-La.

It's visions of the future.

Sometimes visions of an ideal future.

Sometimes visions of a sort of nightmare future.

Without Utopia we would be nowhere. Without that idea of us moving on.

# Manchild, will you ever learn?

# Manchild look at the state you're in!

# Manchild, you gonna make me cry

# Manchild, manchild

# Manchild

# Apple of your eye

# Manchild, he will make you cry

# Manchild, he will take you there

# Manchild... #

MIX OF MUFFLED VOICES

REVERBERATING MUSIC

BING-BONG OF PA ANNOUNCEMENT

PA: "Please be aware, as this area is contaminated."

SIRENS WAIL

"If you have been contaminated,

"please make your way to the decontamination chamber."

Everyone's given up on the state of the planet.

The slums are being left to rot.

They're going to colonise a new world. This one's ending.

It's viral ridden.

This is the last break ever being everything

gets transported off to the new world.

WHOOSHING

OPERATIC SOPRANO VIBRATO

My nickname for the farm is actually Shangri-La.

In a valley full of romance and of beauty and of fun -

away from the harsh realities of the real world.

When they come back from anywhere,

they say, "We're back in Shangri-La again."

It's a romantic sort of concept

of living in pure pleasure and fantasy.

-PJ HARVEY:

-# The West's asleep Let England shake

# Weighted down the silent dead

# I fear our blood... #

All the early paradises are islands

that appear from the mists

once every seven years.

If you can actually get there, then your life will be blissful for ever.

For a weekend or a week, that's Glastonbury for people.

This could be heaven or hell

depending on your perspective.

I believe that it is our chance to be free and to look after each other.

# ..For you to come home and tell me... #

# Indifference... #

It's just got all the extremes here, you know.

It's got humanity all coming together and seeing what happens.

When people come here, they forget their daily worries,

the mundane sort of reality and they can become,

for a few days, just completely free -

where they can do what they like and act how they like.

They haven't got to worry about the sor of constraints of every day.

You can just be who you want to be at Glastonbury.

People feel free. People feel relaxed. It's in our genes almost.

Midsummer. Get together with your friends

outside and enjoy yourselves.

Welcome.

HE SPEAKS IN SPANISH

This man is typical Glastonbury man. Fantastic.

And Glastonbury is fantastic place to go.

This is my first time in my life I come to Glastonbury.

Fantastic! I have a little sleep and a lot of amusement.

-Yes.

-Yeah. Little sleep.

For you, what is Glastonbury about? In a nutshell.

It's just getting away from the hustle and society,

and getting away from all of these...

-Getting away from the pressures.

-Getting away from this is like not actually being on the Earth..

-It's like a little city here.

-Yeah.

-A broken city.

It looks like a reflection of how the world's going to go if we're not careful.

Like a lost paradise.

OLD-TIME PIANO PLAYING

'This is tapping into a very English surrealism, carnival,

'fairground, festival of fools.

'Going back to a sort of rural idyll

'to somehow find a native British art.

'Utopia has that thread running through it.'

-Amazing.

-Oh, my god.

-Look at that. What the hell is here?

-Yeah.

-THEY LAUGH

-This is crazy.

-It's amazing.

-It is amazing.

Who wants to play Crack It?

This is like Disneyland but crazy.

All the people are really fascinated.

Like, "What is this all about?" "What the hell are you doing?!"

Stopping and asking you like, "Why?"

"Why have you turned the Beetle car into a frog?"

And it's great, that bewilderment. You get some people who are scared. Some think it's scary.

You know it's muddy, it's full of old punks and, you know,

we all look a bit rough, and we've been here for weeks,

and we're muddy and smelly, and there's giant monsters everywhere.

There are people that think it's a bit scary.

We're just this little vision of possibilities, you know.

And it's a happy world. It's not a sad world.

It's not a world where people are in terror.

This is a world where people are in enthusiasm and creation.

And once you've seen it, you can't unlearn it.

You can't go no, this doesn't exist again.

Children come and they go, "This is what I want to do when I grow up."

-What the hell is going on here? This place is crazy.

-It's mad, isn't it?

It looks like a broken place or something but it's funky.

I think this place comes alive at night-time.

-Yeah, yeah.

-It's a night-time place.

-Are you coming tonight?

-We're doing the fire show.

-I can't imagine it at night.

I sleep in the helicopter. That's my bedroom.

Me and my girl are living there. Visually, it's great,

but it's the worst sound clash in the world cos we've got the Acid House stage

playing into us that way

and Chalky's Church of the Holy Roller playing into it that way.

It's just a massive sound clash.

You know, I like vibes, and the more noise that's going on,

and people and happiness, the better I sleep.

# When the music hits the groove it makes you want to move

# Do your thing

# Yeah #

'Most people are not aware that the festival really started in 1914,'

just before the First World War,

with this guy who was a classical composer.

He was an early socialist, a member of the Communist Party,

but looked like a hippy.

And he wrote what is still the longest-running opera in the West End of London,

based on the Arthurian romance, The Immortal Hour.

It's a sort of concept album before its time.

It's become another one of the legends of Glastonbury almost.

The sort of assembly halls have sort of been recolonised by the new generation.

Oh, hello, hello, hello.

-Trying to get me in the mood.

-Getting you in the mood for what?

-Glastonbury, I watched you...

'The first time I actually worked here for Michael Eavis,

'I had to cover'

this place where the articulated lorries turn.

It was raining like this, basically, at the time,

it had just started, and he drove up and I said, "What about this shelter, Michael?" He said, "Why?"

I said, "Well, you know, to shelter people from the rain."

And he said,

"It won't rain."

Er...it was raining, but he'd said it with so much authority that I believed him, it was true.

It stopped raining five minutes later and didn't rain again. I thought,

"This is rather a strange person -

"a man of some potency."

The way he kept a straight face, you know, without a touch of irony.

"It's not going to rain."

-Hello, how are you doing?

-Thank you for the festival.

'People sort of love'

to see me and stop me and talk to me and can I have your photograph.

Lovely, excellent.

Lovely!

'People seem to like to be able to sort of'

attach it to a person, don't they?

Who's actually doing all this?

One for the girls.

Oh, my God! Yeah!

I can't say I don't like it because I do like it.

'It's something I'm really proud of.'

But it is a bit overpowering though.

-Michael, thanks for the festival.

-Thank you very much.

I've likened it to a Tudor monarchy.

He has a Star Chamber of main men under him.

The power just went down, but always the ultimate power was with the king,

King Michael.

It's an extremely authoritarian regime,

really, and becoming more so all the time,

as we, you know, secede to more and more as they call it,

health and safety, but let's call it insurance industry motivated regulation.

TANNOY: 'Welcome to Shangri-La.'

'Have you heard this?

INDISTINCT TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENT

'..They will reduce the risk of contamination.'

Shangri-La is this idea of a valley in the mountains.

It's this hidden paradise on Earth that somehow

has survived for centuries.

People are wandering from the fields

to these strange environments that they've found.

You don't know what's round the next corner.

TANNOY: 'Come with us to the new world.'

They're expressing the fear of the society we're living in and how it's going to go.

How we can be if we don't sort it out.

People's fears built large.

Visions of the future.

The people who joined communes in the '60s and early '70s

could not afford to buy the place in the country and went travelling,

became the travellers, they were the same people, the same section of society.

When Punk broke in the late 1970s,

you got this sort of almost rejection of the hippy dream

and this sort of hard anger against what was happening.

The cuts that were coming in at that time.

A very urban phenomenon.

# I'm on the road again... #

Out of that, you get this harder culture.

# ..My special friend

# You know the first time I travelled

# Out in the rain and snow

# In the rain and snow... #

A lot of the punks were shifting out into the last bits of the convoy.

It was the late '70s and the early '80s.

And that's where everyone was going.

Chaos anarchy was moving into the convoy and the travelling community.

And that was where the two elements met.

The sort of combination of punk and hippy.

The so-called Peace Convoy,

which becomes this sort of almost travelling village,

which everybody is worried about descending on them.

We came here the year that Margaret Thatcher smashed the Peace Convoy.

1985.

LOUDHAILER: 'You have no escape.'

There was nowhere to go, so we decided to come here.

From that day on, Stonehenge didn't exist any more

as a travellers' event.

So it was agreed that they would come in at 2am

up the A37, a huge convoy.

200 vehicles turned up.

I gave them a space and we gave them food and stuff and blankets.

There was a kind of refugee status for those people, really.

We arrived in this big old skull bus, a broken bus we made into a giant skull with a ribcage.

ROARS

They made it into something that expressed the traveller thing,

the freedom, anarchy, the wish to be free.

These people are incredibly creative and that very much comes from

the DIY culture. You know, you live on the road,

you meet other people and you learned really hardcore skills.

-It's amazing.

-Yeah.

What's the origin of the face?

-Easter Island, innit?

-Easter Island?

-Yeah.

-All right!

They make the most amazing things with a welding rod

and gas burners.

They did moving vehicles too on site. They did it really graphic.

But they're metalheads, really.

There used to be these amazing kind of metal-bashing jams on cars

and they used to build dinosaurs out of tractors

and Carhenge and things like that.

I saw that Stonehenge out of cars you built.

It changed my life.

There was quite a scary atmosphere in places,

which was a lot of fun.

It was quite dark and a real wildness.

This area definitely still has that.

I think it's because a lot of the people who were there in those days are still here doing this.

You can see this sort of communes movement starting to come out

at the end of the war, with a real thread of peace activism built into it,

which runs into the very early CND.

And the Aldermaston March itself.

And you've also got that link to music.

You've got this whole jazz culture in the beginning,

which then turns into a sort of radical folk music.

# Men and women, stand together

# Do not heed the men of war... #

You could see those very early Aldermaston Marches as sort of festivals on the move.

They were parties.

Everyone likes a party.

No matter where you are, just go and have a party with people

and everyone understands it.

It's our greatest export, really.

# Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery

# None but ourselves can free our minds... #

I'm a free spirit, built to do what I want to do with my life,

and nobody's going to tell me, "You can't do that because we don't like it."

One of my ancestors was sent to Australia, a Tolpuddle Martyr.

He was fighting for agricultural wages for farm workers.

He was campaigning and burning things. He was a trouble-maker, yeah.

-He'd be proud of me, wouldn't he?

-I think he would.

-I hope so.

I think so.

# So won't you help to sing

# These songs of freedom

# Cos all I ever had

# Redemption songs. #

I just want to talk about the criminal justice set-up.

In a way, they did us the biggest favour cos they tried to repress us.

But it drove the underground together.

The bikers, the anarchists, the travellers, the techno tribes,

the computer kids, the old school, the hard school,

driving it together.

You get key crossover people in sort of utopian thought.

People who take the ideas from one generation to another.

Clearly, Joe Strummer was one of those. I mean,

he's got a little bit of Glastonbury all to himself now.

First show of the night here is Strummerville.

Can you give a big, warm welcome

to Nara Sirato.

CHEERING

Are you ready?

He linked the whole hippy ideology,

that whole sort of ethos

of sitting round campfires, talking through your ideas,

thinking through the future,

looking forward and building on all those different cultural reference points.

UPBEAT PIPE MUSIC

INDISTINCT LYRICS

So we have a bonfire here all through the night,

-and I'll be here at about three in the morning.

-See you there.

BUGLE BLARES

You know, certain years, people took the fence down and people drove in up there.

They created this whole post the railway line, late night thing.

The typical reality of licensing didn't quite exist,

so people could do what they naturally are meant to do,

which is party all night in the middle of a field around midsummer.

Christ, we used to call everyone who went to Glastonbury, you know...

"Christ, these mud larks."

All you'd see was pictures of people covered in mud.

I think really it was Roy who really pushed this idea

that actually we're all going to wear suits.

-Roy, you made it in the end!

-How are you?

-You look very, very smart.

A typical traveller, it's like he's been dressed up posh like this.

LAUGHTER

Roy, would you show us what's in there?

LIVELY BIG BAND MUSIC

I remember Roy from the old days.

You still go, "You run the best bar." He had a little bar,

and then suddenly he had this huge thing called Lost Vegas.

Lost Vegas was a bit of a joke, really.

We just came up with an idea for a James Bond movie in the casino.

People would dress up in ball gowns. You could kind of hire costumes

and go in and go into a casino, and you had to be smart.

A few people put on something pretty fantastic.

You've built something, and then it exploded, and every creative person that was involved with that

ended up getting their own little bit of this land.

All of those then grew.

So like then Arcadia has now got its own vast area.

Block 9, which has got its own vast area,

which is the New York Down Low. So it's like Siege, really.

Each one goes off and develops in its own way.

In the old days of Glastonbury,

one did not need to get all these crazy bands.

-You just jump over the fence.

-MAN LAUGHS

-This is true, no?

-It's very true.

-Now it's not possible.

It's difficult, it's very difficult. Unless you have a grappling hook.

Yeah. Tengo grappling hook.

-Yeah, you've got one?!

-In my rucksack.

It started off essentially as a free festival.

We have something very special here.

We're going to protect ourselves, which is sort of double-edged.

I think Thomas More would recognise this place no problem.

It's not just the medieval mud and the sort of medieval carnival,

but I think he would recognise the walled city.

People streaming in through gates being checked by guards.

That is the double edge of Utopia, Dystopia.

Glastonbury is a little walled city inside England,

and this is a little walled city inside Glastonbury.

It's like Berlin within the Berlin Wall.

It's like a little pocket of freedom.

CHATTERING

I've always based myself over this sign.

There's still the sense that some of the people here are in the same pair of underpants they arrived in.

The rest of it has a very polished and washed feel to it.

I walked the entire length of the site last night,

as I came in, and you get a very different feel

for the first sort of two thirds of the site.

Almost feeling that people are going to try and stop me and sell things.

You pay to get in and you must have a wristband

to go to that bar or hear that sound system,

and everything's got corporate sponsorship all over it, plastered.

This isn't like that. It is up there,

if you want to go up to Babylon.

I have friends in various different areas, all over the site.

But mainly we've all graduated up to the Green Fields,

because it's just getting worse and worse down there.

SHE LAUGHS

Shangri-La, Arcadia, The Common.

You don't see any corporate sponsorship.

I could go to Babylon every day of my life, you know what I mean?

Money and crowds, I don't want that.

You know, I want to be down here.

The Babylon! Basically it's a lot of consumerism, I'm not into that.

But the main stage is an incredible experience when you go down there.

I think that's really important.

I don't go over there, unless it's fucking Stevie Wonder or Prince.

-Hey!

-CHEERING

-Hey!

-CHEERING

Who wants to play with me?

CHEERING

I'm Stevie!

Celebration!

-CHEERING

-Come on now, get up and think.

CHEERING

# We got department stores and toilet paper

# Got Styrofoam garbage for the ozone layer

# Got a man of the people says, "Yes we can!"

# Yes we can, yeah, yes, we can

# Keep on rockin' in the free world

# Keep on rockin' in the free world

# Keep on rockin' in a free world

# Keep on rockin' in a free world... #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

The spider's coming now. It's coming now.

The fire rising out of the ground

to come out and take over the people.

POUNDING DANCE MUSIC

It's going to burn them out.

You walk along the train track, then there's this big flaming spider

or pyramid thing at the end.

Looks like something out of, you know, the second Mad Max movie.

HYPNOTIC DANCE MUSIC

The stage is an artwork in itself to look at.

But then you've got all the performance art as well,

and then you've got bands and DJs playing the whole thing.

It's a wonderful combination of all the things that have kind of built up

over the 20 years of the whole kind of rave and dance music movement.

# It's a competition when he hit the rhythmous vowel

# It's ridiculous, my lyrics are wow Oh, oh, wow, wow, wow... #

# Wow, wow, wow I'm all goin' psycho now, now, now

# I'm goin' up and it's goin' down, down, down. #

Fire is the birth of human civilisation.

This is when it all started to happen,

then we became a bit different than the animals.

Hiya. This is something what gives me energy. I feel happiness,

I feel there is an energy for the life.

When I have not much energy, I go in the freeze.

I think all people have fire in their life.

# See that fire... #

Fire is the starting point, and it also will be the ending point.

# ..Keep burning... #

The city is fire, all the engines are fire.

The bombs are fire, the war. All is burning.

This is true of our civilisation from the beginning to the end.

We are living the fire life.

POUNDING PARTY MUSIC

All right, gorgeous, here we are at the Down Low.

This is where the real people hang out.

POUNDING DISCO MUSIC

Hookers, lookers, trannies and fuckers. Come on down.

We're all part of, like, the trannie freak community.

We're all free expressionists. There's no rules to speak of at all.

This is our paradise, this is our secret saviour.

I'm now outside the disco, because I'm passionate about arse action.

I think there's a regiment. I'm on a mission.

Hold the line! No more!

Make noise if you think I look amazing in the net curtain.

CHEERING

Fabulous, isn't it? Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Ingenue St John!

CHEERING

Bonjour!

Are you ready, NYC Down Low?

If you want to raise your right hand in the air...

# Can I tell you a story, sausage boy?

# Sausage boy lost his toast

# Let's try it with different bread

# Different sauce Different dip... #

SHOUTS BOOM FROM TENT

CHEERING

UPBEAT INSTRUMENTATION

I'm pushing my luck all the time. You know, with my neighbours and the village.

I'm still taking calls about noise in the night.

A lady phoned me and said, "The noise is terrible."

What time is it?

I said, "Well, the limits are agreed with the council."

"That's all very well, but my children can't sleep."

I said, "How old are your children?"

-It's half past three.

-"Eight, ten."

I said, "Well, in five years' time, your children will be here,

"so think about that." She put the phone down!

What I'd like to do is build this wonderful soundproof booth,

a total silent booth, amongst all the cacophony of sounds that the festival is.

Imagine walking into this world

of utter silence... You look through this window

at this pool, these waterfalls, and these beautiful mermaids,

just sat around on rocks in this magical little place.

With mermen as well, just floating in and out.

People looking down in this utterly silent world.

TANNOY BEEPS

'If you have been contaminated,

'you may experience the following symptoms.

'Perverted habits of thought.

'Excessive, pathologic or uncontrollable sexual desire,

'eccentricity of character, singular and absurd habit.'

This is the last vestige of the human race. I love it.

I'm infected, we all are. What are we going to do?

'The centre of contamination is suspected.'

That's the Snake Pit, the big glowing green one over there,

the source of contamination.

It's been condemned and shut down, but they've ripped open the doors

and they're still raving.

They really love the Virus, because it gives them,

like, loose morals and nymphomania and stuff.

They're like, "Bring on the Virus."

'Act now and report immediately to your nearest Shangri-La doctor.'

We had to change it into a dystopia because it's just more fun!

# Baby blue

# Yeah, yeah... #

I think you're going to meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger,

clean-shaven, freshly waxed.

If you haven't already, come through here

and continue your spiritual journey.

# ..Oh, yeah... #

I'm so sorry!

# ..Ooh, ooh... #

BOTH: Ta-da!

Let's show you the rest of the house.

I think those incredible conversations that happen

all over Glastonbury, around campfires, where people feel really relaxed and open

and they feel quite united with everyone around them.

The only way you really understand what's going on in your generation

at that time is to talk to people around you.

It's very sort of primeval.

tapping into that sort of...

I think deep psyche about storytelling.

After all, that's what ideas about Utopia are -

they come from stories,

people imagining the future, imagining a better place.

ETHNIC MUSIC

TANNOY: Good morning, campers.

This is an important public information announcement.

If you are the kind who self-medicates,

then you may be contaminated.

Although it was a great show and there was lots of good music

and stuff like that, there is also a sort of message there.

Perhaps, we can change things for the better.

You know, you see things in these areas that you just would

never see anywhere else.

It is a kind of Utopia, I suppose.

It is stretching the boundaries of the imagination

and it is fantastical.

We are living other people's Utopias. It is just that we don't not know it.

This is just because our Utopia is in the future.

I talk to people about the welfare state being a Utopian experiment

and they go, "What?"

And I go, "Yes. You bring somebody from 100 years in the past

"and walk them through a hospital today, they would think this is Utopia."

Utopi-what?

Never heard of it. Where is that, somewhere in Luton?

BELL RINGS

Recycle by dying.

The less of us, the more for us.

Make space for your fellow citizens.

# You can make the mountains ring

# Or make angels cry-y-y

# Though the bird is on the wing

# And you may not know why

# Come on, people, now

# Smile on your brother

# Everybody get together

# Try to love one another right now. #

Shangri-La, Arcadia, Un-fairground...

I can appreciate what they are doing, it is just not right next to where we are.

They are the sort of stunt

that ought to be out in the middle of the desert, not at Glastonbury Festival.

We preserve our grass up here.

Look, we have green, green grass to sit on.

A sea of brown mud down there, isn't it?

I got annoyed with them and they got louder, at half-four in the morning.

I was not entirely sure why that was necessary.

I just cannot take the noise.

It does something to me, that terrible, terrible noise.

Doof, doof, doof! Three days of that and I actually just want to kill somebody.

If something was to happen in there now on somebody screamed, we wouldn't hear it.

If somebody slips or somebody is annoying somebody else.

We would love to feel that we'll be in tune with the rhythms of the planet, the movement of the seasons,

and work with it rather than expending huge amounts of money

into some mega-spectacular.

I think that audience are youngsters who really just want to get out of it

on a very temporarily level, whereas we're more into it as a future lifestyle.

The green feathers have inspired us.

I think we are as inspired by them as they seem to be quite positive about us.

We haven't quite got there but without definitely getting into the idea,

if we could make this thing run-off bio-gas, for one.

Two, if we could make it run off bio-gas

-from last year's people's shit at the festival, or Michael's cows.

-Yes, definitely.

I rate festivals on whether I would like to live in them.

The green fields here...

I could quite happily live with most of these people all year round, but the neighbours are...

I would change to a more desirable area, I think.

# Wake up in the morning with a head like, "What you done?"

# This used to be the life I don't need another one

# Good luck cutting nothin'... #

We're not trying to like push anything down anybody's throat.

Well, not till later in the evening.

It's more of just desensitising people and having them feel comfortable

in a setting that has really unconventional activities.

# I don't feel like dancing when the old Joanna plays

# My heart could take a chance but my two feet can't find the way... #

The key, I think, with what we're trying to accomplish here

with Block 9 and Shangri-La is just having people have that out-of-body experience.

I can see that the looks and emotions and expressions

on their faces are just like, "I didn't know this about myself."

# Don't feel like dancing, dancing... #

Whoever you are, whatever you do,

it is a moment to just get dressed up.

Live life as though you are free.

One moment, please.

I'm sorry for the breakaway,

but I have just seen some ladies here, semi-naked.

-Hola.

-Hola!

And why for you, you come to Glastonbury? What's...?

Why are we here?

We work for Fairy Love, which is a stall

selling kind of...lots of crazy dress-ups, and we grant wishes.

Is like a hippie?

Kind of, but we're all about kind of self-expression

and, you know, people having fun.

Making you feel good about yourself and spreading lots of love.

-And so I can come to your store and buy some clothes.

-Definitely.

Yeah, and we'll dress you up. It'll feel amazing.

-And then I look like a true hippie.

-You can be anything you want to be.

-Anything.

-You girls are fantastic.

-Aww, thank you!

-And Glastonbury

-is what you are about.

-It is.

-I can't look any more.

Please. Please.

Have a good time!

'I have to justify in my head that it's right,

'because I couldn't do it if I thought it was wrong.'

Oh, my God!

-Oh, I'm torn.

-You're torn?

I have been torn!

THEY LAUGH

'Sometimes I get frightened. It's four in the morning, I wake up'

and I get moral dilemmas about where I am

and why I'm doing it and what I'm doing.

I wake up and I think,

"No, I'm OK, because we built 150 water wells in Gambia last year."

And things we're doing in Kenya, we're giving all this money

to charity to help people less fortunate in the world.

So by 4.30, I'm all right again, I think, "Oh, well,

"I'm doing all these things, it can't all be bad", you know?

We have to give away £2 million a year,

I reckon, to make it worthwhile.

Michael Eavis and the Methodism is interesting,

because you've got that with the diggers as well.

I mean, they are driven by their sort of...Christian belief,

which is not church-bound.

Often it's inspired people to set up their own little enclaves where

they can live out what THEY think the Christian way of life should be.

As a Methodist, it's the ultimate non-conformism.

We go against the trends of the establishment.

We've always been kicking against the traces, you know what I mean?

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-But perhaps this is the ultimate non-conformist show.

I was a bit unruly in my chapel, but Elvis would have appreciated

my attempt to convert those fucking hippies stoned out their minds

on them mind-altering new drugs like DMT, ketamine and M-D-Momma-A.

There is a major crisis in the orthodox religions of this planet.

Whatever kind of deity they believe in or they don't believe in,

I'm here to tell you mothers it's Elvis the Divine

is the one true deity, just going to come from this angle

-and sort us all out.

-Hallelujah!

PIANO MUSIC

THEY SING

# Ooh, the storm is threatening

# My very life today

# If I don't get me no shelter

# I think I'm going to fade away... #

Years ago, the hippies were saying, everything that's going on now,

they were trying to tell people about.

Global warming, they were trying to tell people.

And no-one listened because they were, like...

You know, they looked like beards with all their food in it

and, you know, peep-toed sandals and no-one wanted to listen to them.

But they were right. Later on, everyone's realised

that they were actually talking the truth.

# ..See the fire sweeping

# My very street today... #

Are we going to survive? Is this the future?

Are we going to manage to survive?

The potential climate crisis,

the potential energy crisis,

the financial crash that is still going on.

We were supposed to have got through it. It's still here, as we party.

Are we partying at the end of the world, or is this a new future?

# ..It's a shot away It's just a shot away... #

-This is total carnage.

-This is about

how do you survive in the fringes of society,

when the sort of mainstream idea of Utopia,

the consumerist Utopia, is either not within your reach

or that you have actually rejected it, you've dropped out?

We come to exterminate the consuming forces of this planet.

The greed.

I do everything creative out of recycled materials, found objects.

You can do everything with everything that's thrown away.

It definitely is our world.

I work with this and this is the very place to get inspiration...

..if you want to unite the world.

Put your hand in here. Fantastic. Are you enjoying Glastonbury?

-Yeah, it's amazing.

-Where are you staying?

In a tent, on the floor, up a tree?

-In a bush.

-In a bush?

-Yeah, in a bush.

-You're staying in a bush.

-Yeah. Nowhere to sleep.

Oh, my goodness. Who with - your mother, your father?

-My mother, just over there.

-You let this poor man stay in a bush?

-Yeah.

Like a monkey!

-OK, Glastonbury for you is fantastic, no?

-Amazing.

-The music and for to dance.

-Yeah. I'd recommend it.

# It's good to be wise when you're young

# Cos you can only be young but the once... #

I was taken out of school at ten, on an educational trip,

and brought to Glastonbury and given a tenner and an army sleeping bag,

on sort of Thursday,

and told "Come back here if you want us, but go and explore."

It was just phenomenal.

Completely blew my mind in so many different ways.

My horizons just wrapped all the way round as far as I could see.

I saw it as almost like an alternative society.

# ..So glad and live life longer than you've ever done

# Enjoy yourself It's later than you think

# Enjoy yourself While you're still in the pink... #

For young people, it actually teaches them

how to live without all the paraphernalia

that surrounds you in the modern world.

You can't get through on the telephone,

so they've got to learn to do life

without a mobile phone connection again.

You know, there's not easy access to the internet either.

They connect with people more.

They learn that it's OK to talk to strangers.

Strangers can actually be really fun to talk to!

# ..Enjoy yourself... #

It's a kind of raw form of education because they're teaching themselves.

# ..Enjoy yourself While you're still in the pink

# The years go by As quickly as you wink

# Enjoy yourself... #

-Ah, senor!

-Hello.

Il Harley Davidson.

-Hank.

-Hank.

-Nice to meet you.

HE SPEAKS HIS LANGUAGE

See these? I paint these.

This man is so fantastic artist,

he has time to paint Glastonbury bins.

With my crew.

Cos all these project Glastonbury could not help...

-Could not happen without a lot of people, no?

-That's right.

-A lot of...

-A lot of work.

-A lot of work.

-And a lot of love.

-Si.

Amor tambien. And amor is not always money.

-No.

-No.

-It's not money.

It's true.

So many people, this man included, Hank,

has been painting the bins to make them look beautiful for the festival.

There is an army of people on site.

There is an army of crew,

from the people that paint the bins to the people

that clean out the toilets, the people that build our venues,

the people that come in and cook our crew food -

there's an absolute army of people.

I think everybody's into it for the right reasons.

Nobody's doing it for the money, particularly,

nobody wants to be famous or anything like that.

Everybody wants to make something really good.

I'm just here cos I've always loved it.

I love the metal, I love the chaos of it, the art, the partying,

the entertainment, all just here - the free spirit of it all, you know?

Don't want to pay the bills,

but this is a complete labour of love, absolutely.

We needed our spirit.

We're artists, so I suppose that's the way of our life.

Keep doing things more wild

and keep working hard with ourselves.

I have to go and keep going!

'It's about people wanting to excel, you know, and do something unusual'

and something different, and something bold, imaginative.

It's not really about money, it's about passion.

Michael Eavis is prepared to stick his neck on the line

and let people do creative things.

He really wants us to just push the boat as far out as we possibly can.

He encourages us to do it.

He wants it to be as out-there as it can possibly be.

You've got the structure there, it came from the cranes, the docks.

They came round to me and said, "Can we get a load of old cranes?

"Can you give us 20 grand?"

I give them 20 grand, they go and buy the stuff,

and they come back and build it.

And they turn it into that, you see? And we're on the same page.

I've been six months doing this.

It didn't happen in the last five minutes.

I got a call, you know, from Caen Hill Locks,

offering me all these lock gates,

12x12, all covered in barnacles.

From the lock gate idea, Steve Barney's got a bullring idea,

I kind of took it over from him a little bit.

Steamrollered us, that's what you did.

I've done something different to what they had in mind.

But all together, it works. All together, it's worked.

-And it's a big team.

-It's a big team effort.

All together, it does work, yeah.

But I've got all these faxes and emails and things saying,

"Oh, we don't like this, we don't like that."

But in the end...do you know what?

-I didn't read one of them.

-LAUGHTER

So unique, so crazy.

All these places, not...just a dance stage.

Yes, they are wild.

Let's go!

Ooh!

Come on!

That's how we do it.

-# I see a clinic full of cynics

-Ah!

-# Who want to twist the peoples' wrist

-Ah!

-# They're watching every move we make

-Ah!

# We're all included on the list

-# The lunatics have taken over the asylum

-Yeah!

# The lunatics have taken over the asylum... #

The four nights that people are here are really interesting.

I think the Thursday and Friday, you can tell people are not that used to living with each other

and there's a bit more attitude and a bit more boisterous behaviour

and then as the weekend kind of progresses, people gel together

as a kind of mass and by Sunday, you've got some incredible energy.

It's very hard to tell the difference between people.

Your clothes are covered in mud so you can't tell how people are dressed,

but all those preconceptions of who you are and where you fit in,

all that sort of thing, are pretty much all levelled out.

# Ah!

TRUMPET SOLO PLAYS

# Oh...! #

Come on, people.

# ..I've seen the faces of starvation but I cannot see the point... #

There's something appealing about coming somewhere for a few days and losing yourself within it

and losing yourself with other people that you didn't know before

and making new relationships and having new experiences together

and then taking that back out into the world

and hopefully some positivity coming as a result of it.

# The lunatics have taken over the asylum... #

We're all on the same side here, we're all on the same level.

-Would you feel that?

-Oh, very much. That's what's important for people.

I say, we've got posh tents up there.

-See those posh tents?

-Yeah.

-They've got Rollers and Daimlers and all that up there.

They pay my neighbour to be looked after in real style -

your Rolling Stones people, you know what I mean?

They're all up there on top of the hill. When they come down here, we're all the same basically.

It's a great leveller, isn't it?

They're all enjoying the same thing.

I think it's a marvellous example of social cohesion.

We're in the rain, we're in the mud, we're queuing up for things,

but those things happen in normal life, don't they?

People don't get angry here.

You don't see a single fight, do you?

There's no aggravation, there's no greed, there's no anger, there's no jealousy.

I mean, maybe they fall out with girls and find pretty girls or something.

That's nothing to do with me cos there are a lot of pretty girls around.

People come and they get a thrill, a shock, and they see something different, know what I mean?

They don't know what it is. I was so inspired, you know what I mean?

I changed my life. I saw ideas of doing things I never would have thought I could do.

I saw that ordinary people like me could do amazing stuff,

wasn't about TV and having millions of pounds, just about having an imagination and an energy.

Do you know what I'm saying?

I saw that. That totally changed my life.

It's saying something about people able to be free

and not have to be trapped into work they don't want to do, money problems they don't want to have.

They don't have to just be consumers, just watching telly and going to work.

They could create something of that scale. That's what it is to me - inspiration and hope.

CHEERING

MUSIC STARTS

This is called

Where Has The Money Gone?

CHEERING

# Where has the money gone?

# Where did it go?

# Where has the money gone?

# Where did the money go

# Where has the money gone?

# Where did it go?

# Where has the money gone?

# Where did the money go?

# Where has the money gone?

# Where did it go? #

I think what's happening outside at the moment is you've got a group

of very, very greedy people, an elite group,

that don't care about the common person.

I think our government is completely screwing our own country

by screwing both our elderly generations and our young generations.

You know, I do a lot of work with youths

and their opportunities are just falling by the wayside by the day.

It's terrifying. I think they're absolutely insane.

I have no idea what they're envisioning for our future.

There's so many smokescreens and distractions that stop the everyday person

from actually seeing it for what it is, that we're being controlled buy people that just want power.

We're being ruled by greed and that's a very sad and dangerous thing that's happening.

# You don't have to wait to see me cry I'm always seen

# I haven't got a cobblers for this catastrophe

# It sends shivers into my blood

# Just want to ask a question

# Where has the money gone... #

We came out of the Thatcher years

and you were either for the system or you were against the system.

# ..Where did the money go? #

I think, personally, a bit of recession, a bit of poverty might make people more awake,

cos I think people have been asleep for the last 20 years.

They've been living these virtual dreams and spending virtual money

and expect everything to be done for them - I think they'll get a better quality of life

out of a bit of poverty and having to look after each other, you know.

There's definitely a lot of hedonism involved,

but I think a lot of people probably do come here and go,

"God, there's a slightly different way of behaving and living,"

and makes people think outside the box a bit.

If you think outside the box in one way

that can start to be applied to other areas of your life.

It's a necessity in our culture to create.

We need this kind of expression to let all of that oppression rip free and come alive -

we're going to make our own mad world whatever you try and impinge on us.

There's that moment when you get back to London

and you look around and nothing makes any sense,

and I'm sure that's probably what this feels like to a lot of people.

But when you've been here for a few days,

you get this sort of tweaked perspective

and it's really hard to re-enter the world

cos you're like, "What? Really? This? Is that enough?"

APPLAUSE

This is a song that is very much associated with Glastonbury for us,

which is called Common People.

CHEERING

When we played it in 1995,

I kind of made a speech

and it went something along the lines of, "If you want something to happen enough,

-"then it actually will happen."

-CHEERING

Although that sounds like a really corny kind of thing,

I think it's still true, that's the whole point of it, that anybody can do it,

not everybody will do it, but everybody's got it in them.

You've got it in you. ..You've got it in you.

You've got it in you.

It's in all of us

and that's what this place is about, what this festival is about.

This festival is bigger than us and bigger than you - it's a feeling.

It's not about me, it's not about you, it's about us.

CHEERING

This is called Common People.

MUSIC STARTS

All the way through, there are those fixed things that are common to all those people -

it's the looking at the stars in wonder,

it's the staring at the fire that somehow connects you with those generations in the past.

There will always have been a fiddler, after the story there will always have been a song.

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live with common people like you

# I wanna live

# I wanna live with

# I wanna live with

# I wanna live with

# Common people like you

# La-la-la-la

# You

# La-la-la-la

# You

# La-la-la-la

# You

# La-la-la-la... # Oh, yeah!

CHEERING

Louder!

When you come to Glastonbury Festival, you get a slice of life of how it could be,

with all the sound people running things and organising things

and giving all the good stuff to people, rather than all of the bullshit.

Whoever's in power, whatever's going on, whenever you come here,

you can always tap into that old-school culture, that old-school vibe

that has been in this country, I think, forever, since the beginning of time.

The free people, the free-thinking, free-minded people are all about giving to each other - love.

There's always someone trying to put it down, so you can't say it's utopian,

but you can say that we've created our liberty is sacrosanct,

and there ain't nothing that will change that.

# So fly me to the moon

# And let me play among the stars

# Let me see what spring is like

# On Jupiter or Mars

# In other words

# Oh, be true

# In other words

# Michael Eavis and Glastonbury

# We love you. #

Mwah.

I do get incredibly high. When I see things working,

like they did on Saturday and Sunday night this year...

..I mean, that was unbelievable. I mean, you can't buy that, can you?

And you can't buy it off the shelf, you can't go to The Bahamas,

and get that sort of pleasure - that's a very high level of satisfaction.

When you come into this place, you come into a different society -

a society that represents total freedom.

It's much better than the outside world.

This is proper living.

When we go back out through the gates, we're only existing.

Michael Eavis!

CHEERING

'The people that come here, they go away with a different concept of social wellbeing -

'an integration. It is thoroughly obvious to all of them

'that the social experience here does actually work.'

# And now the end is near

# And so I face the final curtain... #

When they walk out of here, they're all smiling.

People enjoy being together and living together and having fun together

and so it's a marvellous example of how the rest of the world could get on so much better

by what we do here.

It's just getting better and better and better.

As long as I'm fit and well and able, as long as I can enjoy it like I do now,

there's no stopping me, really.

# ..And more, much more than this

# I did it my way. #

See you later.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd