By Ian Woolley
Farmer Michael Eavis has always stayed close to his roots. Born just down the road to where the world-famous Somerset festival is held, this incredible man has certainly put the village of Pilton on the musical map…
50 YEARS OF GLASTONBURY – PART 1 (THE BEGINNING)
He was 10 years old when he moved to Worthy Farm. Attending Wells Cathedral School was some achievement for this stammering farmer’s boy but it didn’t phase him one bit. It was here he discovered Radio Luxembourg under the bedclothes and his musical bug had been bitten.
After he left at 15 he joined the navy and scraping a first-class pass, travelled the world with the merchant navy.
Despite loving this nomadic life, just 4 years later he unselfishly gave it up to take over running the farm when news came that his father had terminal cancer. He learned quickly.
After he had passed away his mother wanted to sell the farm but after a visit to the local bank manager, Michael was determined to keep it in the family. A loan gave his mother the chance to retire and despite the doubts of the manager, Michael toiled on. It wasn’t easy though as his marriage collapsed with the pressure.
Michael had made this primitive sound system in the cowshed which blared out the hits of the day.
Michael Eavis admitted that his big milking song was Lola by the Kinks!
As the swinging sixties drew to a close, 1970 was the pivotal year that his festival dream came to fruition. Taking his new wife Jean after chapel one Sunday, they took a trip to the Bath & West Showground to see the blues festival. What they both saw had an immediate effect on Eavis. Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were there and the flower power love was everywhere.
He vowed to hold his own but his wife Jean dismissed it. “Don’t be silly, you’ve no idea how” she said. He admitted she was right.
Wasting no time, he rang the biggest venue in the area and asked for the contact details of the Kinks manager. Well, the cows liked them for a start. After the band was confirmed for £500, Michael’s reasoning was to sell tickets for just a £1 and if 500 were sold then he broke even.
After three months of planning and then his headlining act pulled out (as would Wayne Fontana who was another booked to perform at the festival).
Michael admitted later “I think this mini-festival run by a farmer was a bit beneath them. To be fair, it was”. Luckily for the Eavises, the Kinks manager had a plan B. “Well, as luck would have it, I’ve got Marc Bolan from T.Rex and he’ll do it for the same fee”.
Luckily for Eavis, Bolan was performing in Minehead that weekend and true to his word Bolan eventually turned up at his farm in person but the musician wasn’t a happy bunny.
Now muddy lanes are one thing, but an eight-foot-wide American limo covered in velvet was no match for the brambles this glam rocker encountered down the tiny farm lanes getting there. If the cosmic gods had pre-warned Bolan, this gig was one he’d have passed for sure. This was no teenage dream.
So on the day after music lost one of its greatest guitarists of all time in Jimi Hendrix, Bolan (and Mickey Finn as a fledgling Tyrannosaurus Rex) wowed the expectant crowd and the first foggy Eavis festival passed without a hitch.
‘Mad Mick’ Ringham played the discs and other performances from Quintessence, Duster Bennett, Steamhammer, and Al Stewart pleased all who attended.
As if to show God’s approval, the clouds parted in the late afternoon and the sun shone over the congregated hippy gathering of 1,500.
Mick Ringham would later recall “There was only one stage and the whole thing was gentle, like a country fete, only with longer hair. It was Woodstock with ‘scrumpy’. I only saw two policemen all day, and they were sitting down.”
In truth behind the scenes, Eavis was skint. The ‘cosmic one’ was eventually paid from the next five month’s milk profits at £100 a month.
“I have since been assured by many people in the business that if I had advertised Tyrannosaurus Rex as the main attraction, then I might have had ten times the number of fans turning up,” Eavis told the local press.
Would Michael’s first forage into being a music promoter carry on? Sure enough, another Glastonbury festival was held in 1971 – and that year saw the first appearance of the Pyramid Stage – an iconic part of the festival’s mythology.
In part two, we look at the Churchill connection and the sacred powers involved in the next Glastonbury.
Excerpts from GLASTONBURY 50 (The official story by Michael Eavis and Emily Eavis) out now. Available via www.orionbooks.co.uk .