Glastonbury 2009
(BBC Two, BBC Three and BBC Four)
Oh, how the televising of live music has changed. Get a group of young people
at a gig in 1985 and the cameramen had only one mission: to find some chick
on her boyfriend’s shoulders, with her top off, so he could crash-zoom in on
her tits. Cameramen used to live for pop concert tits. Give them a tipsy
19-year-old girl singing along to Livin’ on a Prayer with her
mams out, and they’d go home happy men.
This year, however, the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage was marked by what, as far
as I know, was the first ever gay crash-zoom. When Lady Gaga took to
the stage on Friday afternoon it was in an outfit of such extreme theatrical
fetish wear that she made Grace Jones at Studio 54 look like Dana at a cake
bake. Her top was see-through, her buttocks hung from a red rubber thong and
she wore a garland of S&M steel spikes around her head.
“Do you . . . fancy me?” she asked, kissing the tip of her finger. “Because I”
— bright, carnivorous smile — “ fancy all of you.”
She turned around, offering her twink-ling bum to the crowd. She was,
essentially, preparing to have group sex with 20,000 people. The cameraman,
however, had clearly just seen something totally mesmeric — and instead
executed an urgent crash-zoom on her peep-toe shoe-boots from Prada.
But then this is modern Britain, and Glastonbury is a modern festival. Indeed,
in many ways, what modern Britain has become is, in small but important
part, down to Glastonbury. Glastonbury has gone from being
“counter-cultural” to just . . . cultural. Any guide to Britain in 2009
would take in Cambridge, Alan Bennett, Brick Lane, Trooping the Colour — and
Glastonbury. With its deeply rooted eccentricity and good-natured politeness
— even in an MDMA wasteland at 4am the queues for the toilets are never
anything other than extremely orderly — it has become another aspect of
Britain that informs, inspires and, to be fair, also quite amuses other
nations. You have, after all, got to love a supply teacher dressed up as a
fried egg dancing on a bin to Madness.
And the greater part of Glastonbury’s acceptance into — and subsequent
informing of — the mainstream is down to BBC coverage. The festival never
used to sell out before the BBC went down there in 1997. From that point
onwards the festival crossed over from merely “the biggest event in NME
readers’ calendars” to something that even Daily Mail
readers had heard of — albeit with harrumphing paper-rattling over
breakfast.
But the BBC coverage always causes some controversy. Initially, you’d be
hard-pressed to fathom why, on settling down for the start of BBC Two’s
full-on coverage.
“Hello! And welcome to Glastonbury 2009!” said Mark Radcliffe and Lauren
Laverne, twinkly eyed and wellington-booted. In the BBC treetop house they
had Glastonbury at night behind them. It’s a sight now as inimical to June
as the Centre Court at Wimbledon.
“I know why you’ve tuned in,” Radcliffe continued. “You heard it’s been
raining here, and you wanted to see us all sloshing around in waders. Well,
ha! It’s been dry here since midday. Tough luck.”
Over the next three days the BBC knocked out 111 hours of TV coverage, ran
live on Radios 1 and 6 Music, and handled its own “Introducing” tent. It
also ran its own backstage sessions — including one from the milkmaid-faced
Lisa Hannigan, who had the unenviable task of playing just after Bruce
Springsteen had turned in a two-hour 40-minute set that came across like
thunder in a denim jacket discovering the New World. Hannigan countered in
the only way she could — by playing a song of minute, acorn-cup tininess,
and then looking as if she was going to lie down and faint.
But by Monday morning parts of the press were up in arms. The Mail
yowled: “BBC under fire for £1.5m ‘Glasto Army’ as it sends 414 people and
Alan Yentob to cover a pop festival.” There was further outrage that the BBC
had subbed tickets for senior personnel — including Yentob, the deputy
director-general, and the head of Radio 1.
It was fairly clear that the Mail had never been to Glastonbury — which
has more than 1,000 acts and where, on several occasions, the BBC has had to
actually bale out of its compound and build another one when the
weather became too bad. The 414 staff is nothing. I want to send
three of me to Glastonbury, and I’m just there for kicks — I’m not
broadcasting the whole event.
The second contentious issue is on a very different scale. It comes from fans
of the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage, and it’s about a single person: the
presenter Jo Whiley. Now I’ve met Whiley, and she’s a lovely person to talk
to. But from the way most viewers talk about her presenting style you’d
think she was a cross between Hazel Blears and Clostridium difficile,
with an “edgy” fringe.
To be fair, she didn’t do herself any favours last year when, in discussing
Led Zeppelin, she shruggingly referred to them as “before my time” —
scarcely a comment to inspire confidence in a Radio 1 DJ. But it’s her
on-screen style that seems to inspire the main rage — a decades-long,
squirming awkwardness that makes her look as if she’s about to corkscrew
right off her chair and start drilling into the ground. This awkwardness
extends into her conversational rhythm, which is angular — possibly
free-jazz — in origin. A Radcliffe and Laverne link is a free-flowing
conversation between two people relaxed enough to crack some gags. A Whiley
link, on the other hand, is a bit like someone’s just run into the room,
madly banging a set of clackers off the walls. And she always looks on the
verge of panic when she interviews bands — as if one of them might suddenly
mention Led Zeppelin, and she will have to reply, “Sorry — you see, they
were before my time.”
Still, you don’t watch Glastonbury for the presenters. That would be like
going to the festival itself to buy a hat. This year everyone was tuning in
and turning up for Springsteen — a living legend of Americana, in a field
half an hour from Chippenham. This year I had the privilege — and, indeed,
temporal confusion — of first going to Glastonbury itself and then coming
home and watching it all over again on TV while suffering severe sleep
deprivation.
Living through the two separate experiences highlighted the difference between
TV coverage — however admirable — and the real thing. Down at the festival,
a field of people were so thrilled they were in the same field as Bruce
actual Springsteen that they applauded individual drops of sweat on his
forehead. Even the moment when the man in the crowd next to us took aim at
an empty Coke bottle and filled it to the brim with urine — all the time
swaying in an alarming manner — did nothing to dent the desire to get in a
car with Bruce — probably a T-Bird, whatever that is — and drive straight
across the desert while screaming Brooooooce!” While, in all
probability, he shouted Brooooooce!” along with you. If there’s one
thing you can say about Bruce Springsteen, it’s that he’s still very excited
about being Bruce Springsteen.
The texts that I and my friends were getting from home, on the other hand,
suggested it came across slightly differently onTV.
“What’s it like there?” one friend asked. “Because he’s just started doing
some Irish jig b******s, hasn’t played Born in the USA, and
looks like an aching bell-end from here.”
There is a hardcore, borderline jihadist group of people who believe that the
BBC shouldn’t cover the festival at all; that, rather than it being a nice
consolation prize for those who couldn’t get a ticket, it has actually
ruined the festival — bringing in a new audience of breadheads and
squares who “thought it looked crazy on TV”.
But you know what? By and large the BBC and Glastonbury work to each other’s
mutual benefit. Glastonbury couldn’t afford the likes of Springsteen or
Jay-Z unless it could tempt them with the bonus of huge television exposure.
The BBC and the viewers, of course, get one of the defining events of the
British cultural year.
And as for the “real” festivalgoers — well, ultimately, they don’t have much
to complain about. They’re at Glastonbury. They have won the year’s golden
ticket to the chocolate factory of rock.
On the Sunday afternoon, at the “real” festival, I climbed up, out of the main
site, and on to a hillside that was entirely empty. I felt like Laurie Lee,
albeit Laurie Lee eating a sausage in a bun. It started to rain — slow rain,
like the kind you get in Hardy novels before people get off with each other
behind a hayrick. I took off my shoes. I ate some more sausage. I was aware
of a band playing far below me — but at first, they were just a part of the
general sensual overload. Then I suddenly realised that the band were the
Rockingbirds — a band whose records are stacked up in our kitchen, and whom
I’d thought broke up in 1995. It was a beautiful, birthday-type surprise —
one of a thousand surprises simultaneously going on all over the valley.
I put my shoes back on, and walked back down the hill, back into Glastonbury.
It was still raining. It was not raining on the viewers of the BBC coverage;
even if they pressed the red button. And I felt sorry for them.
Click here to read more of
Caitlin Moran's TV reviews
