Festival Guide: Glastonbury Festival 2017

Name: Glastonbury Festival Of Contemporary Performing Arts

Where: Worthy Farm, Pilton, Somerset

When: 21st – 25th June

Headliners: Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Ed Sheeran

Also Featuring: Biffy Clyro, Solange, Stormzy, The Jacksons, Katy Perry, Laura Marling, Sleaford Mods, Kate Tempest, The Flaming Lips, Craig David, Haim, British Sea Power, Girl Ray

A Brief History: 47 years since their first festival, the Eavis’ farm has become a world renowned site where, for one long weekend only, the young and old, the rockers and ravers, the naked and famous (not the band, although they have played) can party in their tens of thousands. This will be the 35th festival, although the team’s work carries on long after, not only with the cleaning up (“Love the farm. Leave no trace.”) and planning for the next year, but with charity too. It’s no secret that Glastonbury doesn’t pay their headliners as much as other festivals, but they don’t profit as much as other organisers either, with the majority of the money shared between Oxfam, WaterAid and Greenpeace.

How To Get There: With their constant focus on all things green, Glastonbury rewards festival goers who travel on public transport (coach, train) or cycle to the the site with vouchers to redeem against food or merchandise. Over the last few years the car park has opened at 7.00pm on the Tuesday, allowing the early risers to have their tents pitched by 10.00am on Wednesday, ready for the long weekend ahead. Public transport information can be found at the festival website.

Gigslutz Top Tip: There are over 100 stages at Glastonbury, with something to offer for anyone and everyone, for the loud and quiet, the young and old, the wild and the demure… And one of the festival’s main attributes, in addition to its infamous headliners, is its incredible array of upcoming and exciting new bands and artists. Personal highlights of past years have included intimate sets from Courtney Barnett, Slaves and Florence And The Machine on the John Peel stage, and this year we highly recommend you check out Gigslutz favourites Girl Ray, Declan Mckenna and The Moonlandingz, as well as the undoubtedly exciting (yet to be announced) winners of the Glastonbury Emerging Talent competition.

Memorable Moments: So many to choose from! Although I wasn’t there, I’ll always remember seeing Pulp’s headline set in 1995 and desperately wishing I was old enough to be in the crowd. And I’ll certainly never forget being in the presence of the legendary Dolly Parton as she gave a sparkling, energy-filled performance on the Pyramid Stage in 2014.

What We Said Last Year: We were blown away by Damon Albarn, impressed by Two Door Cinema Club and touched by the numerous moving David Bowie tributes. Read about some of the things we learnt at the festival here.

Did You Know? The fallow year (which sees the festival take a break to allow the land to recover) was originally planned for this year, but has been pushed back to 2018.

How To Get Tickets: They’ve all gone, of course, and in record time too. But there’s set to be a resale this month for the few remaining tickets.

The Playlist:

[spotify track=”spotify:user:gigslutz:playlist:3F0LptHyZxr7ItzZTmYDMg”]