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Fact #140123

When:

Short story:

Glastonbury Festival at Pilton, Somerset, UK, attracts 40,000 fans who pay £16 each to see Echo And The Bunnymen, Aswad, Joe Cocker, Style Council and The Boomtown Rats. A souvenir programme costs a further 90p. By 1985, Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis’s Worthy Farm has become too small to accommodate the festival so the neighbouring Cockmill Farm land is bought, adding 100 acres to the site. £100,000 is raised for CND and local charities.

Full article:

Emily Eavis (daughter of Michael Eavis) : I played on the pyramid stage when I was five, in 1985. It was just awful, nerve-wracking. It was absolutely unplanned. I used to have complete denial about the festival going on. I used to shut the doors and curtains and pretend it wasn’t happening.

It felt like my home was being invaded. They were all arriving, taking over, and you don’t know what’s going to happen. So I would lock myself indoors and play my violin. Then, for some reason, somebody said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if Emily played on stage with her violin.’ And the next thing I remember, I was there.

I went on just before the Style Council. They were headlining and the only tune I could play was Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, but the crowd kept doing like these huge encores, so I kept coming back on and repeating the same song.

I have to say it put me off for life. Never could I go down the performance road after that. I remember the stage crew, these really massive blokes, going, ‘Dim the lights!’ so I couldn’t see that there was 40,000 people out there.

It was such a really full-on thing, especially for a little child. I could see the intensity on people’s faces as they walked down the drive of the farm to go and pitch their tents. They had this amazing look of determination to have the best time of their lives, and you didn’t know what was going to happen over those three days.

I also remember people queuing up to buy milk outside the farmhouse.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Music Week, 12 Mar 2007)