Glastonbury Festival | FESTIVALPHOTO
| Glastonbury Festival The first Festival was held on the day after Jimi Hendrix died, over a two day period and before long “word had got around”. It was the Blues festival at the Bath & West Showground that had inspired Michael Eavis to begin a festival of his own although on a smaller scale. Acts included: Marc Bolan, Keith Christmas, Stackridge, Al Stewart, Quintessence. It's like going to another country, a hip and thrilling Brigadoon that appears every year or so. Coming to Glastonbury involves a fair amount of travel, and probably a queue to get in but, when you get past these impediments, you enter a huge tented city, a mini-state under canvas. British law still applies, but the rules of society are a bit different, a little bit freer. Everyone is here to have a wild time in their own way. The Festival site has distinct socio-geographic regions. The more commercial aspects are around the Pyramid, Other and Silver Hayes, which feels as if the West End of London a Saturday night has been removed to a field and thoroughly beautified. Unlike the West End, visitors are on every guest list, from the night time cinemas to the biggest gigs. But that busy whirl of excitement is not to everyone's taste. To accomodate the more laid-back reveller, more chilled out areas like the West Holts and Acoustic areas are in easy walking distance. If that's still not the relaxed state a Glasto-goer is after, there's also family oriented areas like the Kidz Field, the Theatre and Circus fields. And if you're into the more alternative, less noisy aspects of festival life, you can always head up to the Field of Avalon, the Tipi Field, and the Green Fields. At the top of the site is the Sacred Space - the stone circle is a modern construction, but it has already seen as much celebration and ceremony as some of its forebears. Sun-up on a Sunday morning, with drums and torches and chanting and an astonishing measure of joy from the sleepless revellers at the Stone Circle is a glorious sight to behold. The Festival takes place in a beautiful location - 900 acres in the Vale of Avalon, an area steeped in symbolism, mythology and religious traditions dating back many hundreds of years. It's where King Arthur may be buried, where Joseph of Arimathea is said to have walked, where leylines converge. And the site is ENORMOUS - more than a mile and a half across, with a perimeter of about eight and a half miles. http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/ |
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Covered festivals: Glastonbury Festival 2011 Glastonbury Festival 2014 |
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During an interview with Nick Grimshaw on Radio 1 this morning, Muse's Matt Bellamy, who headlines the festival's Friday night Pyramid stage slot, invited Adele to duet on stage with him.
Muse will become the first act in history to have headlined every night on the Pyramid stage when they return to Worthy Farm for the third time this year, and when asked what advice they would give to Adele ahead of her first headline slot, Bellemy said "The best thing to do would be to come the night before, and watch us, and come on and sing a song with us - sing ‘Feeling Good’ or something, take the pressure off, like a no pressure little moment like that. Or just watch a few acts, and get a feel for the stage before you go on.”
Here's hoping Adele might take him up on the offer!
The original 120,000 tickets sold out in less than half an hour back in October, but if you haven’t managed to get your hands on Glastonbury tickets this year, it’s not too late! This year the ticket resale of a limited number of cancelled or refunded tickets is being held on Thursday 14th April and Sunday 17th April.
You’ll need to make sure you’ve registered by 5pm on 13th April though to be able to take part in the resale.
Here’s the dates you need:
-Thursday 14th April 6pm. A “limited quantity” of COACH tickets. These are tickets only for people getting to the festival by coach
-Sunday 17th April 9am. General admission.
No deposit scheme is offered, so have the full amount ready. The exact number of tickets being resold is not known.
The full line-up for Glastonbury was announced at the end of March, with Coldplay, Muse and Adele headlining the Pyramid stage.
If you missed out on a Glastonbury 2014 ticket in October last year, then you may still be able to get one in our ticket resale, on 24th and 27th April. A limited number of cancelled/refunded tickets - available following our payment balance window closing earlier this month - will go on sale in two stages:
The resale for Ticket + Coach packages will take place at 7pm BST on Thursday, 24th April, followed by a resale of General Admission Tickets, at 9am BST on Sunday, 27th April.
If you would like to get a ticket in the resale, you will need to be registered.
GO GREEN TO THE FESTIVAL
If you already have a Glastonbury 2014 ticket, but haven't yet planned how you'll get to Worthy Farm, then we'd encourage you to come by public transport or bike. National Express is running coaches direct to the site from more than 70 locations, while First Great Western is now taking advance bookings for train tickets to the Festival. Plus, all Green Travellers to this year's Festival will be eligible for discounts and the chance to win some amazing prizes.
CHECK OUT OUR EMERGING TALENT COMPETITION FINALISTS
Earlier this month we hosted the live finals of our 2014 Emerging Talent Competition. The winners were the wonderful M+A, who won a slot on one of our main stages at this year's Festival, plus £5,000 from the PRS Foundation in association with PRS for Music.