As the summer festival season draws closer in Japan, now is a good time to take a moment and recall the festival that has served as an inspiration for so many others (including Fuji Rock Festival). No, I'm not talking about Woodstock, which is a great example of how to run a nonsustainable event in which corporate greed sucks out the vibe like a vampire.
Rather, the fest I'm talking about is Glastonbury, the British festival of rock music and craziness that's been going strong since 1970. Held on the private property of farmer-turned-festival organizer Michael Eavis, in the epicenter of English myth (King Arthur was supposedly buried in Glastonbury, southwest England), Glastonbury delivers three days of music, madness and frequently mud on a nearly annual basis.
Along comes a documentary on the history of the festival, entitled simply "Glastonbury," and directed by none other than Julien Temple. Anyone who recognizes Temple's name may raise an eyebrow; Temple's career is closely identified with punk and The Sex Pistols, whom he immortalized in his films "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" and "The Filth and The Fury." One of the tenets of punk was a knee-jerk hatred of all things "hippie," and Glastonbury is certainly a direct descendant of the U.K.'s blossoming of "flower power." (See the DVD "Glastonbury Fayre," which documents the first festival in 1970 featuring Melanie, Traffic and Fairport Convention, for more evidence.) And yet Temple — like his friend and fellow '70s punk alumnus Joe Strummer, who appears in the film attacking a BBC camera crew — obviously finds common cause with both Glastonbury's independence and its continuing experiments in controlled anarchy.