Working Week/The Untouchables/Midnight Oil/The Style Council: Glastonbury CND Festival, Somerset
William Shaw, Smash Hits, 3 July 1985
MUD: IT'S what you get if 40,000 people tramp around a small farm for 48 hours in almost constant rain. A lot of mud. By Saturday, the second day of three, Glastonbury Festival looks a lot more like a refugee camp than a really "fun" place to be thousands of sodden tents in a sea of oozing, squelching, splashing, horrible mud. And, for that matter, the crowd look more like a bunch of prisoners of war than people on a weekend's holiday.
The sensible ones have brought wellies and waterproofs; the less prudent have done their best with plastic bags, putting them on their heads, on their feet, over their t-shirts. Very elegant.
Mind you, there is a lot to see. In small marquee tents you can get a glimpse of every imaginable type of "alternative" performer — jugglers, acrobats, mime artists, conjurers, comics, folk singers, poets and more. And from the hundreds of stalls you can buy hand-painted beads, hand-made pottery, hand-printed cloth, hand-made sandals, not to mention the Indian incense sticks that seem to be everywhere.
In amongst the chip vans, hippies offer you strange looking soya burgers for 50p, and yes, there really is someone selling lentil soup, served from a huge and dodgy-looking bubbling pot.
But the biggest gathering is around the main stage, a bizarre grey pyramid bearing a large white CND symbol to remind you of the cause to which you've donated most of your £16 (!) entrance fee.
As the jazzy Working Week leave the stage the rain gets even harder. ("Wow man, this is getting really heaveee.") Replacing them, The Untouchables do their best to lift the gloom, bounding around wildly on the raised platform, and some members of the crowd respond by flinging themselves about in the mud in an attempt to dance.
Behind the stage it is just as muddy as in front. Paul Weller, foolishly dressed in a pair of white trousers, is gingerly tip-toeing around watched by the day's compere Alexei Sayle: "I don't know why you don't all go home," he mutters.
After an appearance by Australian rockers Midnight Oil, Sayle takes the stage to fill the gap before The Style Council. "I've got an announcement," he booms at the crowd as they stand in inches of muck. "Somebody has lost a contact lens out there." The crowd groans at the joke.
As the opening chords of 'You're The Best Thing' strike up, thousands of muddy feet begin the laborious trek towards the main stage as Weller (who's now wisely changed his trousers) and Talbot romp enthusiastically through a selection of favourites — it's the least they can do for the wet crowd standing out in the drizzle.
"This one," announces Weller, "is called long 'Hot Summer'."
Laugh? I almost cried.
© William Shaw, 1985