Glastonbury Fayre by Will Carruthers

[dirtysteve]

I read A Book Of Jobs by Will Carruthers (the bassist in Spacemen 3 and then the first incarnation of Spiritualized, and he toured and recorded with a lot of other bands too) a while ago and there is a fantastic chapter recounting one of his Glastonbury experiences, working on a food stall poaching eggs at the 1997 festival before getting distinctly psychedelic towards the end. It's a great read so figured I'd share it here for those with the common interest. I've trimmed the PDF down to just that chapter and stuck it here: [link snipped - mod]

 

It really is a good read, captures a lot of the madness of the festival. Will is an excellent writer, his book Playing The Bass With Three Left Hands is the best music bio I've ever read, and his earlier effort A Book of Jobs is great, too (available to buy via his website for a fiver btw). Even if you've got no interest in the bands he was in, these are still excellent books and well worth your time. They paint an exceptionally bleak picture of the life and tribulations of aspiring musicians...

 

Here's a little snippet to whet your appetite describing the first opening of the heavens at that notoriously wet festival:

 

Quote

It was the day before the festival started, so we had a little time to get settled in and so we made our way to the back of the cafe and found the little campsite where we were to pitch our tents. There was a fire pit in the middle and a makeshift shelter at the back to keep the wood dry. I slung my pack and helped my friend put her tent up. 

 

When it was up it looked quite tragic. Bits of it sagged and flapped in the breeze and there was no flysheet, so if it was going to rain, it was going to rain in. I looked up at the ominous and bruised sky and decided against joining her in the tent for the evening, although she had offered it to me, and had said that if I really needed it I could sleep in it. I had gotten the feeling that she wasn't too keen, or that maybe that she was super keen and didn't want to tell me she was. Anyway, I declined the offer and opted to lay my sleeping bag out on two full coal sacks at the back of the makeshift wood store. It would make a lumpy bed but it seemed like the roof would keep the worst of the weather off and at least I wouldn't be sleeping on the ground in the teeth of the approaching storm in some sodden and disintegrating nylon nightmare with my friend's mother. I was carrying the good old British army sleeping bag that had been my main bed for the last few years and I had gotten pretty used to sleeping rough in it at this point in my career. The weather didn't really bother me too much and I was still young and fairly adaptable. I was thirty years old.

 

As the light faded and night drew in, we all settled around the fire and made our peace with each other and with the world. Alcohol was consumed and joints were smoked to soften the ground and to ease us in our various minds. The atmosphere was genial and convivial, though unfortunately the same could not be said of the weather that was holding back but was still preparing for a display of unusual ferocity. For the moment, our merry band of itinerant chefs and bottle washers were comfortably joined in the circle of the fire and gradually, during the course of the evening, people straggled off to their various tents and camper vans to get some sleep before work. When the time came, I made my excuses and settled down on the coal sacks in my stinking sleeping bag. The last of our group were sitting about three feet away from where I was sleeping but I slipped away to dreams easily enough through the last of the fire and the end of their laughter and tall stories.

 

Sometime during the night, the storm that had been threatening all afternoon, finally broke free. Great slaps and growls of thunder pushed and pulled and the sky was lit in ragged and flaming seconds. Rolling waves of rain swept in and crashed against the far reaches of the horizon. The water howled through. Sheets of it until you'd think there was no more left in the world and then, unbelievably, there was, as if someone was flinging down buckets of the stuff from just above us. Welts of it, a great whip of weather to send the animals jagged and make the birds wish they were fish again, coming down hard enough to flay any beast caught out. It was washing the vanities away, washing everything away, stretching from here to god knows where and god knows what it was going to make of us. It was a great biblical flushing of everything we'd tamely pegged and lashed, never dreaming a storm like it.

 

Rivers formed, and kicked and curled as the weather swept away what we thought we knew with a psychopath's disregard for the things it took. The click clack growling air, lightning shot, stabbed and flickered and showed the bones and skulls beneath our quaking flesh, as the breakers of the sky crashed and sucked back into themselves, resting only to gather force for the next onslaught. We were caught in a monumental coupling between the earth and the sky, rolled in the world's bed-sheets like bugs, and pounded with each thrust of its elemental desire. For once, despite the illusions we had been granted for the sake of our sanity and to ensure we didn't just weep and despair at the fragility of our lives, we understood our size and our place in it all. The sky flexed its great flanks and shook what it held as the hooves of that great storm galloped over the earth and everything on it shook with the pounding.

 

Somehow, after the first fury had passed and it had settled down to a mere torrential downpour, I managed to get off to the land of nod for the last couple of counted and precious hours before work. I slept with the rattle of the rain on my makeshift shelter and with my mattress of coal keeping me just proud of the rivers and lakes I dreamt were rising around me.

 

 

 

Edited May 4 by kerplunk
copyright

[kerplunk]

Sounds a good read but I've deleted your link to the whole chapter pdf for copyright reasons.

 

You need to show you've got the author's permission to be doing that