Oh how times change...
Middle earth to middle class
John Cunningham
Friday June 20, 1986
From the archives
Guardian
The instant shanty town of tents, food stalls and vehicles - freedom's last fling on the festival circuit - spreads across a couple of hundred of acres of hillocky Somerset. Somewhere in the middle stands an old bus, with bunks and sinks replacing seats. Its destination board says Stonehenge: but it is marooned rather than parked - a for sale sign hangs on its door.
More than 50,000 people are expected at the annual Glastonbury Festival. Many are there already. A few were part of the hippy convoy, blasted by government ministers and broken up by police. Others, like the owners of the old bus, never made it to Stonehenge.
But most, you couldn't label as hippy, drop out or misfit. What ought to worry Tory right wingers is not that a few longhairs are selling drugs or not sending their children to school but that the Glastonbury crowd encompasses so large a cross section of society that it is no longer wholly accurate to dismiss it as fringe or freakish.
The event is in its sixteenth year, and it is virtually the sole survivor among pop festivals because it has reinterpreted itself for the times. It is not freak like some of the pop marathons of the decade from 1968. It has to have a profit making base to survive. It is not idealistic in the manner of the peace movement during the same period. True, CND will benefit from it by an estimated £100,000. But it is not a campaigning event: the music is up front politics are laid well back.
The roots of the festival themselves are a paradox, and are due to a benign farmer, Michael Eavis's herd of 120 Friesians will continue to be milked twice daily throughout the festival.
But making the event a success now takes up nearly half his time. That is fortunate, he says, because farming generally is looking for new land uses, because of over production in cereals, beef and dairying, thanks to EEC subsidies.
Eavis, who is 50, reckons that the local Mendip District Council (Conservative controlled) continues to lighten the festival 'because they admire the entrepreneur bit, though they think I might be a bit of a nutter. ' Access to the festival is along tortuous tiny lanes: the wonder is that his neighbour's don't regard the crowds using them as being an a mass trespass.
Eavis says he spends a lot of time explaining the situation to the neighbours. There are free tickets for the villagers and funds for every club in Pilton whose members help with the organisation. This year, he has even persuaded the Duke of Newcastle to open up a road across one of his farms to allow better access.
Each year the festival survives, so with costs going up by 45% annually Eavis says he cannot see the event continuing beyond 1988. The programme becomes more ambitious each year: a classical music section has been added this time and features John Williams, and there are more fringe events. But as much as anything it is the crowds which shape the festival.
At the far end of Worthy Farm is Green Fields, a sort of faded hippydom where you can buy space cake, have a tarot reading or be massaged by an astral healer. An amiable musician, who says his name is Parcequedonc says that maybe 400 or 500 of those camped in this section are travelling people who lived an alternative lifestyle moving between country fairs in the 1970s.
The fairs have almost all disappeared, a few caravans are painted with psychedelic patterns, but most of the travellers live under tarpaulins. They don't know where they will head after Glastonbury but they seem to be in retreat.
The Green Fields have doubled in size this year. It has a debating tent for slugging out ideologies and another where you can join the peace movement. But that is not the crux of the festival.
Back towards the main entrance, the tents suddenly brighten into sharp colours and shapes. Not a BMW to be seen, but plenty of newish cars. Here you will find young people whose attendance ought to concern Mrs Thatcher: Clive Morgan 20, a builder when he can get work in Wales says 'I've got Conservative principles - you should get what you work for - but I wouldn't vote Tory. ' He's now on the dole but, for pounds 70 Glastonbury is good value as a five day holiday with his friends.
Some of them ought to be of interest to the Labour Party in its recruiting drive. Jacky Pettifer is one - 'I'm a CND member but that's all. ' She comes to the event for the atmosphere, not the politics: with the big name bands and 400 trading stands, it's her sort of break. She lives in Mumbles, South Wales 'but regularly travels to Asia to bring back jewellery and crafts for resale here.
It's quite easy to find people who are indifferent to CND, even though by being at Glastonbury they are contributing to its single biggest source of income. Mel Wood, lying on another patch of grass reckons that 'It's just a good festival. I regard it as an extension of a good night out. '
Mel Wood reckons there's nothing to choose between the main political parties. But he is prepared to spend two weeks' DHSS benefit on the trip here from Co Durham. 'But the dole gets boring after a while. I'd take any job I could get. I even kept my Mohican because I wasn't getting any work,' he says, patting his head ruefully.
A spirit of muted compliance is more pervasive than you might expect at Glastonbury . True, there are hustlers barking hash, acid grass' quite openly. True Michael Eavis has spent £6,000 specifically on antidrugs security. And true, the police are randomly searching bodies and cars that clog the sunken lanes that lead here. But the reality is more elusive. This festival isn't about pushing freedom to the limits, as it might have been 10 years ago it seems to be more about surviving in the recession.
But then, mid-Somerset has grudgingly come terms with the annual invasion. The three day festival will contribute about £2m to the local economy.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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The stories of 1985 mudbath were horrendous, but was ludicrously put off, amd I missed six Glastos (1986-1993) in the wild Systems From Back of Old Truck years ..... 
but instead of going on to glastonbury i went to the kent custom bike show..i'd had enough of hippies after 6 weeks of naked, tripping 
but i never did
