To celebrate the release of our official Glastonbury 50 book (out Oct 31), Michael Eavis will be talking at the Yeovil Literary Festival on the evening of Friday 1st November at the Octagon Theatre.
Tickets are available now from the Octagon’s website.
Glastonbury Festival’s annual ‘thank you’ fundraising gig for villagers, workers and local people – known as the Pilton Party – returns to Worthy Farm on Friday, 6th September, 2019. It will be co-headlined by 2018 Mercury Award winners Wolf Alice and mystery Special Guests to be announced. Sam Richardson & The Renegades and Pattern Pusher complete the bill.
Following the in-person ticket sales, which began on Saturday, tickets are also now available to purchase online and in person from Bristol Ticket Shop and online from See Tickets. Tickets can also still be bought in person from the Festival office on Worthy Farm (Mon-Fri, 10am-6pm).
Pilton Party gates open at 5pm. Live music is due to finish around 11pm, with a DJ until midnight.
Car parking is free, follow the signs on the A361. Free shuttle buses will also run back to Shepton and Glastonbury towns after the show.
Please note, there is no accommodation / camping at Pilton Party, but head to Visit Somerset for info on places to stay.
For more information on Pilton Party, please click here.
Here are our photos from yesterday’s sold out 2019 Glastonbury Abbey Extravaganza, which featured wonderful performances from The Brue Boys, Lighthouse Family and headliners The Specials. Big thanks to everyone who came along and made it such a successful, well-supported event. See you for next year’s!
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Andrew Allcock
Photo: Jason Bryant
Photo: Jason Bryant
It was a vintage year for the Green Fields at Glastonbury. Check out all of Tom Widd’s 2019 photos from around the fields.
We’re very pleased to announce that The Specials will headline this year’s Glastonbury Abbey Extravaganza. The legendary ska pioneers recently saw their latest album, Encore, debut at Number One in the UK album charts. They will bring their fantastic live show to the Abbey’s historic surroundings on Saturday 3rd August 2019.
Also on the bill are Lighthouse Family, the multi-million selling duo known for hits such as Lifted, High and Ocean Drive.
Ticket prices have been held for the seventh year running, with advance prices for adults of £35 and £20 for a child aged six to 16. Any remaining tickets will be available on the gate, priced at £40 adult and £25 for a child. Accompanied children aged five and under do not require a ticket.
Camping options are also available. Click here for more info and to buy your tickets!
The Glastonbury 2019 T-shirts and hoodies are now available to order from our online shop – as are this year’s Free Press art posters.
A high-quality print of Stanley Donwood’s Official Artwork for Glastonbury 2019 is also available to purchase from Stanley’s website. The 10 colour hand-pulled screen prints are numbered and signed by Stanley Donwood and are a Limited Edition of 150.
Throughout this year’s Festival, our team of writers will be roaming around the site, posting photos to our @glastolive Twitter feed – giving you a flavour of what’s going on at Glastonbury 2019. And don’t forget to also follow @glastofest for news / updates and if you’re on site and you have a question, the @glastoinfo team are there to help. Our live coverage is powered by EE.
Check out the latest posts on the feed below:
David Bowie arrived at Glastonbury by train in 1971, and record numbers did the same for this year’s Festival (thanks for being green travellers!). That means Castle Cary will be very busy at peak times on Monday morning. Here are some useful tips for those travelling by train…
– Get to the station as early as possible – the first free shuttle bus to Castle Cary leaves the Festival Bus & Coach Station at 4am (and the first train departs at 4.53am)
– Trains departing Castle Cary between 9am and 3pm will be the busiest
– Taxis will not get you to the station quicker, as shuttle buses are prioritised – and do not try to walk (the roads around the farm are not designed for pedestrians)
– At peak times, there is very likely to queueing at the station and standing on trains – please bring water and snacks
– Other travel options include National Express and See Tickets coaches – get info on times and tickets from the Travel Information Cabin by Gate A
– Or, if you’re interested in Car Sharing, offer a lift or find one, at GoCarShare’s stall at the William’s Green Info Point
– For train times, information and tickets visit GWR’s Glastonbury page
– Please be patient with stewards and each other – we’ll try to get you home as quickly as possible
Click here to download Sunday’s edition of the Glastonbury Free Press which features an exclusive interviews with Emily Eavis, Jeff Goldblum and Jonathan Pie, plus Dan Bastille as our Glastonbury Agony Uncle and lots more.
Click here to download Thursday’s issue of the Glastonbury Free Press. This edition features a host of treats including exclusive interviews with Michael Eavis and Jess Phillips, plus The Chemical Brothers’ Ed Simons on the brilliance of Keith Flint and a host of other Festival-related pieces.
The Free Press is printed in the Theatre & Circus fields on a vintage Heidelberg press and is available now around the site, for free. Plus, you can get it from the Free Press printing tent, in the Theatre & Circus fields, where you can also buy souvenir Free Press posters.
NB: The Free Press team have spotted the date typo in the Keith Flint piece in the printed edition of Thursday’s paper – for which they sincerely apologise – but that has been corrected on the digital edition.
Our thanks to the amazing Free Press team of writers, designers and printers.
This year’s Glastonbury website poet in residence is Vanessa Kisuule, a writer and performer based in Bristol, UK. She has won more than ten slam titles and been featured on BBC iPlayer, Radio 1, and Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, The Guardian, Blue Peter, Sky TV, Don’t Flop and TEDx.
Vanessa has performed internationally and has two poetry collections published by Burning Eye Books: Joyriding The Storm (2014) and A Recipe For Sorcery (2017). She is currently the Bristol City Poet for 2018 – 2020. For more info, head to her website.
We will be posting Vanessa’s work throughout this year’s Festival, and she’s kicked us off with the wonderful poem below. You can also see her perform in the Poetry&Words tent at 4.05pm on Sunday 30th June.
The stage is a galaxy,
shouts of joy orbiting
around your heat and light.
Big. Black. Blessing.
You are all of these things.
I look down at my thighs,
sigh at the years wasted in
the antithesis of worship.
The ground is shaking.
A ceaseless tide of jiggle,
coming home to our own
thrones stoned in onyx.
Exorcised of liquid ghosts,
We sweat and we wail,
skin sacred as a Prince song.
You reflect us reflecting you,
a kaleidoscope of mirrors
gifting us kind and undying joy.
That voice bends and dips,
spits game, soothes spirits.
The moon is a pretty fuckboy
but we eclipse him, regardless.
Here. Now. Yes. You are all of
those things. Your laugh
a love letter addressed to
all of us, envelope upended,
all tits and ass and tears and
faithful tremor. We’re good as hell.
Better, even. As close to heaven as
us glorious heathens could hope for.
A little trickle,
A tiny, little trickle,
A microscopic, incidental,
inconsequential trickle.
That’s all it is, really.
A tiny, teeny, harmless, trickle
Barely kissing the polyester
terrace of my taut gusset
Just an itsy, bitsy, subatomic trickle
Hardly tickling the lettuce, if I’m honest.
And this? This awkward shuffle,
poor-mans-two-step-lock-kneed-Charleston,
is a dance craze that I’ve just created
to the syncopated rhythm of Portaloo doors
sw-swinging open and sl-slamming shut
And I can see it taking it off, really really taking off,
Those three glittered girls are copying me
as we speak
And this tiny, little trickle
is definitely not becoming a steady drip,
not a shy but tenacious geyser seeping
through my Marks and Sparks finest
to the famed freedom of Inner Thigh Valley
I’m just focused on the crash and shudder of
those doors, gifting the queue with ripe
wafts of what’s inside each time.
I’m not stressed, fussed or flustered
by this smell,
this queue,
This treacherous trickle growing
to a brazen drip, threatening to be a
FURIOUS FLOOD OF
IMPATIENT PISS,
THE VERY LIQUID
THAT FLOWS FROM
SATAN’S EYES AND PORES,
BRIGHT AS IRN BRU
AND HOT AS MOLTEN
FURY.
Nope. Not me.
I’m just stood here
Having a little dance
(that’s properly catching on)
That’s all it is, really
In mapping the width, breadth
and giddy sway, arrogant minds
are lost in Sisyphean tumbles,
fat tongues drown in tropes.
Such a muchness and just
Two soft eyes to drink it in.
The unbuckled truth is this:
it has never been about music,
though the open jaw of sound
sits wide as a whale’s and the
reverb swells like oceans and
we sing ourselves throatless
it is more: gospel guts untangled,
a pile of clock-hand kindling for
the ritual bonfire of time. All of us
a thick straggle of trapped noise
turned luminous. We ooze out
like the spilt milk of a sunrise,
stretched like yawning dough
drunk on Lazarus laughter.
In the gap between joy and
benevolent blades of grass,
there is a girl dressed as a naked
lightning strike, telling an old tale
of the future. But never mind all
that.The present is piping hot and
pulsing beneath this diligent,
softened soil.
Every anorak-ed disciple wears
a smile here – pan for them like
gold in a silty river. Now: weep
wordlessly at a song you’ve never
heard before, bleeding from a half
empty tent on Sunday afternoon.
Hold the intimate anecdotes of
shiny strangers like lucky pennies.
Tell yourself to yourself.
Stroke the knee of immortality.
Fill your wellies with this feeling.
Feel it and feel it and feel it and
Focus on one, pebble sized thing.
Christen it the god of all good things
on this fickle field of chance.
Then get on those tired knees
(mud and germs be damned).
Let that filthy awe make a feral
convert out of you.
The khaki carcass
of an Argos tent belches.
A beer can sails from his mouth,
a mangled femur bone follows.
His slick, blue skinned friend
is still famished, surveying
the field for sun slack flesh.
She spots her next meal:
lain on a crumpled halo
of wet wipes and woe,
Complete with come-down curved shoulders,
and a falafel-crumb-studded beard stiff
with five day sweat and garnished with glitter.
Delicious. Delirious. Doomed.
She reels him in, mimicking
the rumble of a jungle bass line.
Bearded Boy answers her call,
reverent as a glow stick, mouth
stretched in a wobbly O of worship.
At first he thinks the gnawing sensation
in his toes is a sudden chill in the air,
an errant piece of glass piercing skin.
Too late, he sees the tent’s teeth settle
into his ankle, hears the wet crunch
of blood and bone made snack.
A cluster of crisp packets cheers
as the tent jiggles back and forth,
a frenzy of focused mastication.
The victims’ screams rang across
the field with no ears to catch them.
Thousands of lazy folk leave their
fleeting weekend homes behind,
now they’re nothing but gristle
in the guts of guerrilla retribution.
A grim scene indeed, with a simple moral to heed:
The only guarantee that you also won’t be eaten
is to take your tents away this festival season.