Fact #140184
When:
Short story:
R.E.M., David Gray, Primal Scream, Royksopp, Electric Six, Idlewild, Morcheeba and others play at Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, Somerset, England, UK.Full article:
Steve Jenner (MD, Virtual Festivals) : In 2003, we put on a Glastonbury warm-up gig in London a couple of days before the festival. One of the headliners was a hero of mine since I was a teenager – Simon Friend, guitarist and songwriter in The Levellers.
Simon told us that he’d really wanted to go to the festival but couldn’t get a ticket. We said we’d see what we could do. When we arrived on-site shortly afterwards, we went straight to the Left Field, which we were involved with, so we knew the organiser Geoff Martin well.
We asked Geoff if he had space for a Leveller on his bill and he said he didn’t, because the festival had already started!. But, for Simon Friend, he would see if he could shift things around and eventually made space for a thirty minute acoustic set on the Sunday.
By this time, Simon was in Rome on tour with rest of The Levellers. After a few phone calls between us in a field in Somerset, his management in Brighton and Simon in Rome, it was all arranged – and Simon jetted straight back to the UK after the Rome gig, arriving at Glastonbury on the Saturday.
Sitting around a campsite fire with him playing me Levellers songs on request (and teaching me how to play a couple of their riffs I’d struggled with for years!) on Saturday evening is a blurry memory but one I will never forget.
Watching Simon performing unannounced to a tent packed with ecstatic Levellers fans (how word gets around at Glastonbury) the next day, and knowing that we had made this happen, is one I will cherish forever.
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Simon told us that he’d really wanted to go to the festival but couldn’t get a ticket. We said we’d see what we could do. When we arrived on-site shortly afterwards, we went straight to the Left Field, which we were involved with, so we knew the organiser Geoff Martin well.
We asked Geoff if he had space for a Leveller on his bill and he said he didn’t, because the festival had already started!. But, for Simon Friend, he would see if he could shift things around and eventually made space for a thirty minute acoustic set on the Sunday.
By this time, Simon was in Rome on tour with rest of The Levellers. After a few phone calls between us in a field in Somerset, his management in Brighton and Simon in Rome, it was all arranged – and Simon jetted straight back to the UK after the Rome gig, arriving at Glastonbury on the Saturday.
Sitting around a campsite fire with him playing me Levellers songs on request (and teaching me how to play a couple of their riffs I’d struggled with for years!) on Saturday evening is a blurry memory but one I will never forget.
Watching Simon performing unannounced to a tent packed with ecstatic Levellers fans (how word gets around at Glastonbury) the next day, and knowing that we had made this happen, is one I will cherish forever.