Glastonbury On The Skids?


With tickets selling out within hours and endless speculation about performers rife, it can mean only one thing: Glastonbury festival, Europe’s premier music event, is here again. But this time, topping the bill will be that miniature antipodean princess of pop, Kylie Minogue.

The one-time Neighbours star and has managed to convince festival organisers Michael and Emily Eavis that her particular brand of nauseating, anodyne pop music makes her a credible artist worthy of the accolade “Glastonbury headliner”.

But this is hardly unexpected when highlights of previous years include boy band reject Robbie Williams and perennial crooner Rod Stewart.

With hundreds of thousands singing along to Williams’‘Angels’ in 1998 it is perhaps a natural progression that fellow teen idol Kylie is poised to grace the main stage when she closes the festival on June 26.

Having rejected two previous advances by Kylie’s management company, Michael Evis and daughter have finally succumbed to her global appeal. The Somerset farmer quipped recently: “We’ll make her into a total star.”

Undoubtedly Kylie’s Showgirl Tour performance will be a huge success, attracting plenty of revenue, publicity, glitz and gossip; but this is just evidence of how much the festival has moved from the type of music that helped give it its legendary status in the first place.

Sequins, corsets and a massive stage show will dazzle the Somerset crowd, but it is only due to the changes that Glastonbury festival has undergone in recent years that the idea of Kylie at Glastonbury is a believable one. The porcelain pint-sized performer is an advertiser’s dream, and today’s Glastonbury festival demands such lucrative assets.

Glastonbury is now big business: corporate sponsors wine and dine guests in lavish VIP tents. Young hotshot record company executives party with the newest bands. Advertising hoardings are visible everywhere, and backstage, celebrities, complete with Gucci sunglasses and Prada wellies, pose and pout with purpose.

It is THE place to be seen, for bands and punters alike: a sort of Henley regatta but with plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll. It is a legitimate occasion on the social calendar; a sanitised, hedonistic playground where middle-class businessmen can roll up in land rovers for the weekend and not look out of place, and acts like Tom Jones, Tony Bennet and Rolf Harris can appear on stage without recrimination.

Increased costs in security, and the pressure of bagging the biggest names has meant that sponsorship is an inescapable reality. In the past the festival has been a chance for ordinary tent-going folk to revel in the freedom that the spirit of rock and roll embodied. Acts like The Smiths, Iggy Pop and Joe Strummer were mainstay, and the hippy retreat was a haven for the strange and the wonderful. Now, the “crusties” are more likely to bring their own shampoo and dental floss, and it is Burberry, rather than nudity, which is commonplace. Nevertheless, this promise of “alternative” attractions is a selling point for more many and makes the weekend a goldmine for everyone involved.

Television coverage has broadened the festival’s exposure to include family audiences but in doing so has diluted its raw, non-commercial appeal. Unsurprisingly, then, it will be Kylie’s glittery marketability, rather than, say, Pete Doherty’s drug-addled genius, which will be many people’s lasting memory of Glastonbury ’05.

The popularity of the festival is, however, undiminished, although it seems if you don’t have a super-fast broadband connection the chances of getting tickets are about as slim as Kylie’s waist. With demand estimated at as many as two million people, with eight million hits on the website, hundreds of thousands of fans were still left disappointed.

Stringent security measures now mean that the excitement of turning up on the day and either a) jumping the fence, b) wheedling a tout down to a slightly less astronomical figure or c) pretending to be in a band to blag it past security is now most definitely a thing of the past.

Although such security checks have meant that the number of “chavs” trying to steal your tent have decreased, something of the magic if Glastonbury has gone too.

The freedom and abandonment that encapsulated the summer’s greatest musical event is in danger of being bastardised by the very things that it was originally an escape from.

You will still hear the mindless ramblings of acid casualties talking about leylines and the benefits of psychedelic pear cider, and there will be lots of very good bands on display. But the steady decline into mainstream banality has begun.

What does it say about the state of Glastonbury when it takes the Stereophonics to complain about Kylie’s inclusion on the bill.

Glastonbury is traditionally a celebration of everything weird and wonderful. It has made careers, and has been instrumental in bringing rave culture to the mainstream by introducing dance tents at a rock festival.

Now, after complaints last year about the noise from residents became too much, late-night revellers will now have to groove in silence with DJ sets being filtered through headphones. The concept is baffling to say the least.

Glastonbury is struggling against the forces of commercialism, mass-marketing, and beaurocracy to maintain the ethos and credibility that established it its name.

As many festival-goers will agree, pop music, has its place and so does Kylie – on CD:UK or Top of the Pops, not headlining the greatest rock show on earth, where passion, energy and loud guitars have pride-of-place.

Novelty acts are one thing, (The Darkness watch out) but to expect a discerning, music-loving Glastonbury crowd to embrace the saccharine-sweet starlet is playing with fire.

Visually, the bombastic decorations and extravagant design will make for good television, but Kylie will have to pray that her audience is in a tolerant and forgiving mood, and that the heavens stay shut and don’t dampen proceedings.

With this to be Kylie’s last live performance for some time, we shall have to see whether the chart princess goes out with a bang, or just a disappointing pop.

Ben Moore-Bridger





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