The Isle of Wight maintained its status as the lucky festival with blue skies and no rain for the fifth year in succession. Despite the balmy conditions, the acts on stage over the first two days seemed unusually concerned about the audience's welfare.

“Is anyone pissed yet?” inquired the Wombats singer, Matthew Murphy, as the Liverpudlian trio brought their set to a hectic finale early on Friday night. Quite a few, apparently. “How many of you are mental cases?” asked KT Tunstall, who went on to suggest that a quarter of the crowd were likely to go nuts, literally, before too long. Not as a result of listening to her polite and gently polished soft-rock, they weren't.

Pharrell Williams, of N*E*R*D, had a more traditional line of inquiry: “How ya feeling out there?” bawled the frontman of the American rap-rock collective whose thunderous, bass-heavy riffs and cyclonic passages of percussion rattled the windows clear across to Newport harbour. The Kaiser Chiefs closed the night with an energetic set, performed with a brash flourish. They even included a couple of smart, new, as yet unreleased songs, an almost unheard-of break with tradition at a festival that tends to be a little too steeped in the stuff.

Times Archive, 1969: Bob Dylan at the Isle of Wight Festival

'He came here to do what he had to do and he's done it, and I'm afraid that's the end'

This was the tenth Isle of Wight Festival to take place since 1968, and it certainly straddled the generations in terms of the bands and fans that it attracted. Headlining on Saturday night were the Sex Pistols, the group who promised us “no future” and have since elected to live in the past instead. John Lydon (aka Rotten) resembled a character from the television show Life on Mars, railing against “homo” bands and the lack of “fanny” among the audience at the front. “You're so quiet, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” he berated the 55,000-capacity crowd — several times. The problem was that although the Pistols performed brilliantly — far better than they ever did 30 years ago — they didn't have enough hits at their disposal truly to galvanise an audience such as this.

Earlier in the day, Kate Nash was more in sync with the mood of the moment, bringing a light, jejune touch to bear on an audience revelling in the afternoon sunshine. The Enemy soon put a stop to all that with their thinly disguised homage to the Jam, huffing and puffing their way through a set that was all smoke machines and Union Jack speaker cabinets and mannered opposition to some sort of personal injustice or other.

As expected, Iggy Pop and the Stooges trumped everyone in the shouting, yelling and prancing stakes. “I feel all right,” yelled the 61-year-old provocateur, as he leapt and limped around the stage. Ian Brown certainly wasn't feeling all right, having been pulled off stage the night before, causing an injury that had required ten stitches. He got off to a slow start, accused the audience of being “jaded” and “lazy”, and went downhill from there.

Meanwhile, over in the Big Top, the Sugababes provided an oasis of fun, glamour and wall-to-wall hits. Such a modern, uncomplicated indulgence felt quite wicked. And curiously, the crowd loved it.

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