News June 2009
Michael Eavis plans to make way ‘for a new generation’ at Glastonbury
The 73-year-old Somerset farmer, who launched the festival 39 years ago, said he plans to hand over the reins to his daughter Emily and her fiance.
Previously, he said he would keep going until his eighties. But following the success of his daughter’s controversial choice of Jay-Z, the New York rapper, to headline the festival last year, he has started to transfer control over to her.
“I still feel I have an important role to play. Even if I go I’ll worry about the drains, the rubbish, the recycling,”
“I’m living on top of the hill now, away from the farm. So Emily’s taking over the house, which is nice. A new generation of Eavises can live here.”
The festival has come a long way since it was first launched as the Pilton Festival in 1970. With Marc Bolan and his band T-Rex playing, 1,500 people paid £1 to get in and enjoy free milk from the Eavis family’s Worthy Farm.
Today, Glastonbury is the centre of an annual pilgrame for some 150,000 people each year and attracts the biggest names in music.
Last month, Eavis was listed in Time magazine as one the world’s 100 most influential people, an accolade he collected at a New York gala alongside the Obamas, Tony Blair and Angelina Jolie.
He said the experience of being elevated to such a platform was a daunting one. “I like being a slightly chaotic dairy farmer who is a bit of a chancer and follows his heart. And then suddenly I’m on a par with Kate Winslet, Gordon Brown and Stella McCartney. I thought, ‘Oh my god, have I got to behave myself now?’”
He said that organising Glastonbury had been a rollercoaster ride, and not always enjoyable.
The 1980s saw the event take on an increasingly political slant, featuring CND, Oxfam and Greenpeace along with several hundred new age travellers.
The following decade is generally seen as its heyday but was also a stressful period: as many as 250,000 people – many gatecrashers – turned up to watch acts including Pulp, Robbie Williams, Oasis and Radiohead, with flash floods, evacuations and riots adding to the mix.
But it was last year that was his annus horribilis, Eavis said, with the choice of Jay-Z bringing claims of a betrayal of the festival’s rock tradition and preventing it from selling out for the first time in many years.
Eavis said he had only consented to have Jay-Z headlining because his preferred act, Radiohead, were not available.
“It was either that or cancel the show,” he said. “I knew (Emily) had sensible ideas so I had to go with that. It was the last throw of the dice for me. We either throw the dice or abandon the festival.”
In the event, Jay-Z was a huge success. This year, he said, the show will return to its traditional roots, with “thoroughly, thoroughly predictable” acts Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Blur.
Eavis admits he is still occasionally bemused by what Glastonbury has become. “I was out there at 7am this morning and there were all these people putting up marquees, generator tents, track fencing,” he said. “For a second I thought: what are all these people doing?”
