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| June | 23 |
| 2004 |
Do you long to free yourself from the shackles of convention? Do you gaze into space, bemoaning the fact that your life is one long obligation to family, work and friends? Are you panting with anticipation at the thought of this week’s Glastonbury Festival, knowing that for just a few days in the year you will be free to be yourself, free to commune with Nature and free to indulge in the hedonism you think life should really be about?
Then grow up.
There are few more pathetic sights than the annual paeans of anticipatory pleasure in the run up to the Glastonbury Festival. To hear the drivel that pours forth from its habitués, one would imagine that Glastonbury is some sort of mystical experience: an opportunity for the world to be a better place thanks to the positive karma that spreads throughout the ether, for those who make the effort to attend to turn themselves into better people for communing with Nature, and for those who miss out to think about how, next year, they too might take part.
The truth is that, far from making the world a better place, Glastonbury represents much of what is wrong with it today.
Glastonbury is not a departure from the norm but its very archetype — a clichéd, typical and deeply worrying reflection of how those with time and money choose to abrogate any sense of propriety, decency and upholding of legal, let alone moral, values.
The illegality of the drugs that fuel the Glastonbury experience is the least of it. Far worse is its sheer immorality and hypocrisy, based on the idea that law-breaking is fine so long as it is confined to “our sort of people” and takes place in a field of teepees. It’s only wrong when it’s committed by oiks.
There are few more grotesque double standards than those of the moneyed middle classes who take their children with them to experience the “mellow” (or, to be precise, drug-addled) atmosphere. It is what used to be known as the moral corruption of minors. They complain about drug-fuelled crime. Yet they somehow think it right to teach their children, by their own example, that drug taking is a good thing — the best way to relax.
Glastonbury is the epitome of the “let it all hang out” attitude that has so warped society — the idea that restraint and attentiveness to others is something not to be admired but to be sneered at, and that we are only truly free when we respond to our inner-most urges. It is the difference between sitting still and quiet at a string quartet recital and lying spaced out on the ground as the caterwauling of a fellow drugged-up performer wafts over you. One is despised as old-fashioned and buttoned up, the other commended as being at one with nature.
Not that Glastonbury is entirely without merit. It does allow one to apply the “Glastonbury Test”, a useful guide to public policy. Whether it involves welfare (“the tests for benefit eligibility are too harsh”), education (“a proper education revolves around children being allowed to express themselves”) or crime (“we need to appreciate the social stresses that force people to commit crime”), we can use the Glastonbury Test to determine the moral framework from which such ideas emanate. If the advocate eulogises Glastonbury then we know immediately to rule out his opinion as being based on the same dangerous, deluded fantasy that underpins the festival.
If you doubt me, look at the sheer crass stupidity of those who worship at the Glastonbury altar and claim that they are somehow leaving their usual life behind. Tickets to this year’s event started officially at £112; they were trading yesterday on eBay for more than double that amount. Add in the cost of getting there, camping (or, for the true hypocrites who want to empathise with nature but then retreat to the comfort of a hotel, the cost of a bed) and the ubiquitous drugs and we’re talking perhaps £500 a person. It is no more a retreat to Nature and feeling at one with the rest of humanity than a meal at Gordon Ramsay’s or the August villa in Tuscany.
Glastonbury should, rather, be seen for what it really is: the ultimate well-off druggie-wannabe- hippy weekend — a venue no less exclusive than Cowdray Park, Royal Ascot or Glyndebourne but without the restraint. And a gathering which, in its celebration of so much that has destroyed the norms of decent behaviour, has nothing to commend it beyond making for an easy identification of the forces that continue to warp society.
MessageSpace
A curiously misplaced and sour-bellied rant, invoking phantoms largely drawn from the author's imagination.
Most habitues I know look upon Glasto as a chance to catch up with live music (a huge choice of big names) once a year in fairly pleasant surroundings-- if Eavis gets the logistics right. Drugs aren't particularly rife, there's no State subsidy, profits go to charity and the company is considerably more congenial and variegated than the international white trash and corporate-hospitality climbers one encounters at Cowdray Park. Altamont it isn't, but thank God for that.
What a down some people have on others enjoying themselves, and how bitterly some social conservative snobs resent the emergence of *new* British institutions.
Right on, Stephen.
Yet another blight on our society that had its roots in the '60s.
This morning, it's raining...heavily. Long may it continue to do so
What a pathetic. ill-researched and nasty article.
I shall send the Times a piece demonstrating that people who own race horses and frequent tracks are living in an anachronistic pre-motor dream world of tall rural toffs and forelock-tugging dwarf jockeys, wasting thousands of pounds of their money gambling or buying animals which are too slow to pull a milk float.
A curious low for you, Stephen.
I'd ask if you did any research, but I assume you just rattled the article off to pay the bills.
If one rejects the music on grounds of quality - and, clearly, the musicianship is not of a high order and dominant drum rythms are always mechanistic and lowering to conciousness - and then spurns the equally debilitating pull of crowd behaviour and, especially, the childish, faux-meaningful alternativism that so colours proceedings, one is left wondering what objective good attaches to it all. Charitable outcomes aside, I can't think of a single one.
That doesn't mean that I would stop punters enjoying themselves. Live and let live and all that. But I do think that their enjoyment is intellectually and morally lowering. For that reason, noting this fact is a positive contribution to life. Those who castigate Stephen merely for the fact of his criticism miss this point and demonstrate that, for them, freedom to do the festival scene - to do anything they like, really - overpowers other, higher and more humane considerations. Grow up indeed.
What a poor piece
Usual po faced conservative mumbo jumbo - how dare young people have any kind of fun, all the 60's fault etc ad nauseum till you overflow with bile
Vile, fancy spending that £500 so badly. Surely spending a weekend at ascot betting on the outcomes of prefixed races is a far better way to waste money.
You don't post for a week, and then this! Why bother, the horse proving expensive to keep.
Astonishing. In your defence, I guess you have a distinctly polemical style, but that really is the most appalling toss anyone could ever dream of writing. Yes, youth culture is largely based around the taking of drugs; big wow Stephen. How can you constantly chirp on about nannying champagne socialists and simulataneously snobbishly trash the taking of drugs? That is what people do. They work and then they relax with their friends, mostly by taking a nasty little number called alcohol. I'm sure the 60s were a significant decade for this cultural phenomenom, but I'm also pretty damn sure the free market has had a not so insignificant role as a pusher along the way as well. And by the way, how much do you think the 'oiks' have to spend for a week on the lash in Ibiza? Its got nothing to do with the moneyed middle-classes mate, that's the price of a few nights entertainment these days. Just recalled a portly Times correspondent getting drugged out of his head in Brussells testing hangover cures. Any ideas who that could be anybody? As for your 'Glastonbury Test' Grow up.
I get the impression that Mr Pollard doesn't enjoy art half as much as he enjoys thinking he's cultured. Going to string recitals (any old one will do, they're all BBC4 approved) probably suits him because he doesn't have to think or say anything. He can just sit and preen because he's not like those daft people who bother to be discriminating and don't treat widely variable aesthetic experiences as cultural tokens to whip out when you want to look intelligent without actually doing anything. I've got nothing against classical music - I've played in a quartet myself - but the idea that listening to the "right" things (anything old) is necessarily edifying is just a joke. A complete moron can read Tolstoy and plenty do, just to say they've done it and avoid the pesky pressure of having to prove themselves intelligent and thoughtful in any real way.
As for the "let it all hang out" rant - it's called leisure and everyone indulges in it and yes, hypocritical people have a problem when those who are not "people like us" indulge in the wicked activities we want to keep for ourselves. And unless Stephen is prepared to be equally censurious of drug-taking amongst those who share his political views, he's one of the hypocrites.
Hmmm, an outbreak of midsummer madness from Stephen, it appears. Last year we had a rant agaisnt that bastion of middle class sport, the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Now we have a piece slagging off the liberal middleclass's fondness for old rock music and the odd bong. I know you have to write for a living and stir things up but come on, you can do better than this.
Think about it, Stephen, would you like it if I wrote a piece slagging off the sort of folk who support Spurs? Exactly.
"And a gathering which, in its celebration of so much that has destroyed the norms of decent behaviour, has nothing to commend it beyond making for an easy identification of the forces that continue to warp society. "
Bit like the CBI conference, then.
Nothing on the local elections, nothing on the European elections, a long silence while you get on with 'real' work and then this rant!
And you've got the bare-faced cheek to ask for donations. To pay for what exactly? Therapy maybe? You're one very sad man.
You can't possibly begin to understand the pull of festivals like Glastonbury/Reading etc. unless you like that sort of music. As Stephen has often made clear, he like opera and other forms of classical music so it really comes as no suprise that he hates Glastonbury so much.
Funnily enough, not everyone finds sitting around silently in formal evening dress listening to people sing in languages nobody can understand fun or exciting.
As for your point about wasting money as someone who spends a lot of money gambling on horses you can't talk.
Personally, I don't really think much of Glastonbury - I prefer Reading because it is more rock/metal oriented. The point is, just because you don't like the whole festival experience, it doesn't mean everyone else should hate it too.
And you got the sack before you even started your job at the Times? I can hardly believe it, what with such clarity of thought and barbed wit! So tired. So very, very tired. And if you are going to insist on getting a 14 year old to write your pieces for you at least have the decency to inject them full of heroin and send them to Glastonbury to do some research first.
what a load of old rubbish this article seems to be...
have you attended glastonbury?? or just going off what you hear from tales from people who heard off some one else??
seems to me you have just gone to total extremes in the article and cant see anything in there you have provided that is actual fact about the festival...
perhaps if you go for your self you may actually find it is a good place to go to and full of happy people from all walks of life, not just the "wannabee druggies" and part time hippies as you so put it...
grow up and report fact not mis represented fiction and you might be taken more seriously
I see you've clearly done your research. That was sarcasm. It's a popular form of verbal comedy in modern society. Probably a result of 60's liberalism.
'the true hypocrites who want to empathise with nature but then retreat to the comfort of a hotel, the cost of a bed'
As I'm sure you don't know, you are not allowed to re-enter the festival site once you've given over your ticket. The festival bands clearly say 'not valid for free entry'. "Oh no", I hear you cry, "but these people buy three tickets purely for the pleasure of sleeping in a bed. That's how rich and hyrocritical they are." It's not possible to buy more than one ticket for one person to stop touting (that's the selling of tickets at rip-off prices like those you have mentioned from ebay).
I think that you need to leave your little office of classical music (which I do enjoy on grounds of it's merit NOT it's class association) and books on the WW2 and maybe go out into the real world for a bit - perhaps even attend Glastonbury festival 2005 and then re-write this article based on research and with evidence supplied for your crude statements. If you're not up for camping, than tipis, campervans and, according to you, hotels are available. I can assure you it won't cost you £500 pounds either unless you intend on buying food to take into the festival with you. Camping is included in the price of the ticket (yet again you haven't done your research have you?) and you do not have to buy every trinket that takes your fancy. Neither will you be forced to take drugs. They aren't even pushed on you, which is more than I can say for most places outside of Glastonbury - including Cambridge. The most you'll have to spend on food in one day is £15 but food is also available for free in the Krishna tent. You can get there from london on the National Express for £30. I spent £250 in total in 2004 at Glastonbury festival. That includes my tent, camping equipment, ticket, travel (including a taxi home from the train station), food, a skirt, a blanket, and two tops. I did not buy any drugs.
Stephen
I'm so glad you don't find Glasto appealing, words fail me.
It's absolutely everything you say it is, and worse!
Well it's good to know that you won't be there Stephen, as Glastonbury is not for narrow-minded idiots such as yourself. personally i am totally opposed to the consumption of illegal drugs, yet I am eagerly looking forward to going. The two things are not inextricably linked: people take drugs everywhere, not just at Glastonbury festival.
It's cheaper and more environmentally-friendly to attend Glastonbury than to fly out to Majorca, far more culturally stimulating than sitting on the beach in the Algarve and has a better sense of community than climbing the Eiffel Tower.
So grow up; If it's not for you it's not for you, but Glastonbury is, in essence, a good thing.
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