June 22 - 24, 1990 (Attendance: 70,000. Tickets: £38)

Reflecting the diversity of attractions and events within the festival, Glastonbury Festival took on the name of Glastonbury Festival for Contemporary Performing Arts. The festival’s 20th anniversary should have been a memorable year, and it was, but for all the wrong reasons. Confrontation between security teams and travellers who were looting the emptying festival site meant that unfortunately things turned more than a little sour. 235 arrests were made and £50,000 worth of site damage occurred. Still, The Cure, Happy Mondays, Sinead O’Connor and World Party gave it some welly (excuse the pun) regardless of the strife.

1991 suffered a dearth of festival fun due to the previous year’s occurrences.

Bobby Gillespie, lead singer from Primal Scream.
©Jason Bryant

By now, with the Cold War drawing to a close, Michael Eavis felt that people’s concerns were increasingly moving away from the possibility of nuclear war to growing concerns about the environment. In response to this, the festival took on Greenpeace and Oxfam as beneficiary charities. Indeed, 1992 was a good year for both charities with the healthy sum of £250,000 being divvied up between them (as well as some local charities). The festival was also linked with National Music Day and Tom Jones delighted the crowds when he popped up as a surprise guest – his trademark bobby dazzler brightening up any gloomy skies that lay ahead. Other acts included P. J. Harvey, Shakespears Sister and Primal Scream among others.

“What I associate most strongly with Glastonbury is not the recollection of specific incidents, but a hard-to-define mixture of excitement, pride, comradeship and fulfilment, which at good moments can add up to something quite extraordinary.” (Chris Howes) Glastonbury – An oral history of the music, mud & magic by Crispin Aubrey & John Shearlaw.

June 25 - 27, 1993 Attendance: 80,000. Tickets: £58

The festival now well into its stride simply continued to grow and grow in popularity and size. The advance only tickets were sold out by mid-June and everybody’s favourite golden oldie - Rolf Harris - made an appearance with his wobble board. More than £250,000 was raised for Greenpeace, Oxfam and many local charities and The Orb, Lenny Kravitz, Velvet Underground, Galliano and Stereo MCs strutted their stuff and kept the crowds happy and strutting, too.

June 24 - 26, 1994 (Attendance: 80,000. Tickets: £59) 

In rather untimely fashion, the famous Pyramid Stage burnt down in the early hours of June 13, 1994. Fortunately, a replacement stage was provided by the same company who provided the NME and Jazz stages. The festival’s impressive wind turbine made its first-ever appearance beside the main stage and provided 150kw of power for the main stage area.  Channel 4 televised the event live over the weekend; bringing the musical prowess of Bjork, Manic Street Preachers, Orbital, Lemonheads and The Levellers (to name but a few) to an even wider audience.

The gloom sparked by the Pyramid Stage’s fiery demise continued with a shooting incident involving five people; thankfully no one was badly injured. However, 1994 did mark the festival’s first death; a young man was found dead from a drugs overdose. On a brighter note, £150,000 was donated to Greenpeace, £50,000 to Oxfam and some £100,000 to local charities and good causes. But it’s probably safe to say 1994 was the ‘annus horribilis’ of Glastonbury’s festivals. 

June 23 - 25, 1995 (Attendance: 80,000. Tickets: £65. Demand for tickets had never before been so rife, the festival sold out in four weeks)

To help mark the festival’s 25th anniversary, two performers from the first event - Keith Christmas and Al Stewart - put in a reappearance. 1995 also saw the introduction of a Dance Tent, which proved to be a major success. Featured dance acts that year included Massive Attack, System 7 and Eat Static. The Stone Roses were forced to pull out at the last minute, however their replacement, Pulp, more than appeased the audience, as did Oasis, The Cure, Orbital, P. J. Harvey, Simple Minds and Portishead. The donation given to Greenpeace rose to £200,000 and for Oxfam to £100,000, with local charities benefiting by another £100,000.

1996 - Following the phenomenal success of the previous event, there was no festival in 1996. The farm and festival team enjoyed a well-earned rest, plus the reprieve gave the cows the chance to stay out all summer long. Moo-ing marvellous. 

June 27 - 29, 1997 (Attendance: 90,000. Tickets: £75)

The English weather put a dampener on things by producing torrential rain just before the weekend’s kick off. As a result, 1997 became known as the “Year of the Mud”. Undeterred, festival-goers boogied in their boots to The Prodigy, Massive Attack, Ray Davies, Radiohead and Sting.  Other highlights included a “dubhenge” made from upended VW beetles and campervans, as well as the first ever Greenpeace field with a reconstructed Rainbow Warrior and solar-heated showers.

The site expanded to 800 acres, a daily newspaper was published by music magazine Select and BBC2 broadcast events live. Greenpeace, Oxfam, WaterAid and Mid-Somerset CND were the main beneficiaries and, in usual style, Glastonbury did more than its fair share for ‘charidee’.

An enthusiastic mud surfer wallows happily in the quagmire.
© Jason Bryant

Once again the gods were not in a party (or even good) mood, with rain turning parts of the site into sloppy, slippery quagmire. Festival-goers nonetheless displayed admirable stamina, optimism and resilience, ignored the mud (apart from when surfing on it) and pointedly showed that they were most definitely in a party mood. Over 1,000 different performances on 17 stages included a new marquee for up and coming bands.

Robbie William’s rendition of “Angels” was fittingly met with a shaft of light through an otherwise dismal sky.
©Jason Bryant

The enlarged Dance Tent was as packed as ever and theatre highlights included the punk opera “Kiss my Axe”. Better loos kept everyone in high spirits, as no doubt, did the sight of American singer Tony Bennett rising above the mud in an immaculate white suit – true class. Over £500,000 of the festival’s income went to Greenpeace, Oxfam, WaterAid and many local organisations. A stonking line-up included the likes of Blur, Bob Dylan, Primal Scream, Robbie Williams, Pulp, Tori Amos, Roni Size and the Chemical Brothers.

June 25 - 27, 1999 (Attendance: 100,500. Tickets £83)

Finally the sun shone on Glastonbury again, bringing broad smiles to the faces of festival-goers and performers alike. Ironically,  £150,000 had been spent on downpour precautions. Smiling while they sang were REM, Manic Street Preachers, Hole, Fatboy Slim, the reformed Blondie, Al Green, Skunk Anansie, Lonnie Donegan, Marianne Faithful and Courtney Pine. This year offered the widest range of entertainment ever, with over 300 bands, a kaleidoscope of theatre, feasts of comedy and culture, and more than 250 food stalls – all publicised on a buzzing Glasto website and broadcast on BBC2.

Once again, Greenpeace, WaterAid and Oxfam walked away fully supported and their causes highlighted. The festival of 1999 was sadly overshadowed by the death of organiser Michael Eavis’s wife Jean. A winged wicker sculpture was ceremonially burned in her honour, whilst fireworks erupted into a moonlit sky.