Where next for Glastonbury Festival?
May 5th, 2008 | Published in Music History, Music News
Whither Glasto? The sad truth that Glasto failed miserably to sell out in minutes this year was underlined this weekend by the full page adverts for the festival that appeared in all the broadsheets. Same old hippy feel to the ad design - and when you look closely at the detailed lineup, all the usual suspects are there. It’s not Jay Z that is keeping folks away.
At Glasto 2007, it rained and rained and rained
After that, it rained some more. Critically, in the week before the festival it had rained in torrents, too. The festival ground was saturated before the gates opened. Here you have the perfect scenario for a mud bath to rival the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Historically, there’s nothing quite like Glasto mud, but last year’s experience puts all other muddy episodes in the shade.
Conditions were so bad that even for those who entered the gates well-equipped with waterproofs, wellies and good quality tents, the festival experience was a long way from fun. Last year, a visit to Glastonbury was an ordeal to be endured.
The ordeal wasn’t over when the festival ended. Soaked-to-the-skin festival-goers had to shiver in their cars in filthy muddy fields while local Somerset farmers charged an arm and a leg to tow them out, one at a time. For many, it took a full 24 hours to get home. Time off work was required to recover.
In the light of this experience, hopping on a plane to attend one of the new boutique festivals in sunnier climes seems very attractive!
Glastonbury Festival ticket prices and ticket procedures discourage the kids
In the festival’s heyday during the late nineties, droves of local kids jumped the fence. On the first Thursday of Glasto weekend, local secondary schools bowed to the inevitable and closed for a staff in-service day. If not, from year 10 upwards, staff would be faced with half-empty classrooms. The reason? All the local kids were already inside the festival ground, grabbing the best camping spots.
In the ensuing ten years or so, those kids have grown up, gone to university and got good jobs. I’ll put a pound to a penny that they make up the core of well-heeled “twenty and thirty somethings” who have snapped up tickets in the last few years.
Since the building of the new perimeter fence and the overall tightening of security, the festival has dropped off the local kids’ calendar. For local youngsters today, the Glastonbury Festival has become just another expensive national event that passes them by.
Price-wise, the problem is that festival-goers need to take a big pile of dosh with them, above and beyond the price of the entrance ticket. Unless they arrive armed with their own food and drink (and that is a mission in itself), punters need probably an additional £200 to survive comfortably inside the festival grounds.
Youngsters are just plain priced out. Besides that (even if they can acquire the cash) kids don’t have the patience to go through the tedious rigmarole of pre-registering. The Glasto ticket procedure is nearly as complicated as applying for a new passport.
For local kids in the ’90s, going to the Glastonbury Festival involved bunking off school and jumping the fence illegally. It was a glorious subversive teenage adventure. These days, the old hippy “alternative culture” magic evaporates long before you’ve even obtained your ticket.
Adding Jay Z to the Glastonbury Festival lineup won’t bring the kids back. If the festival organisers want to reintroduce young blood into the festival-goer demographic, they will need to think of ways to discount the tickets (perhaps by offering a special quotas of cheaper tickets to local kids) in order to attract them back inside the gates.
Search a festival near you
Decided to avoid the Glasto mudbath this year? Take a look at the Hop Till You Drop UK Gig Guide . There’s plenty of useful information about live music gigs, musical events and festivals in your locality.
