The Archive .
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June 20-22th 1986.
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Psychedelic Furs,Ruby Turner ,The Pogues,The Waterboys, Amazulu, That Petrol Emotion,Howard Hughes ,Rodney Allen. The Cure, Lloyd Cole and The Commotions, Black Uhuru and The Wailers,John Martyn , Latin Quarter, Loudon Wainwright 111. Level 42, Madness, Robert Cray Band ,Simply Red,Christy Moore, Gil Scott Heron,The Housemartins,Buddy Curtis Stage two/acoustic tent acts included Airiwa Posse, Brilliant Corners, Forest Hillbillies, Frank Chickens, Fuzz Box, Maxi Priest, Happy End, Microdisney, Nightingales, Phranc,The June Brides, The Potatos , Robyn Hitchcock, The Go Betweens, Half Man Half Biscuit, Ted Chippington, Fuzzbox, Dream Syndicate, Billy Bragg, Ozric Tentacles, Sambatucada, Three Mustaphas Three, Woodentops, Zinica |
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© Dave Kotula -visit his flickr site to see many more great Glastonbury pix |
Again,as we can see from the lineup, this was a bigger Festival than the preceding year’s event. Due to the growth in audience numbers there were additions to the farm office, communications, welfare and medical teams. The Theatre and Children's Areas moved to new homes, the first Classical music tent was introduced and the market areas relocated from the top of the site. £130,000 was raised for CND and local charities. 60,000 attended . The weather was generally much kinder than in 1985. although one correspondent remembers it raining on the Friday during the Psychedelic Furs set. "Bishbosh's "memoirs of the festival below indicate just how easy it was to obtain hallucinogens at the festival and that for many the music was just incidental to the overall experience of the festival itself. |
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Glastonbury
1986 Next day went exploring round Greenfield and travellers fields. Met up with more mates from Cov. I scored some White Lightening acid, two for five quid. Rather pokey…warped my head for a bit. The other had managed to get more acid. It wasn't exactly hard to score, just wander up to the bridge near the travellers field. Actually it was better to go a bit further into the secluded area around there…less hectic, dodgy hustlers….more chilled dodgy hustlers!. Anyway
went for a walk around with Chris, did not get very far…when we
got towards the main "Babylon" area…It was just too
mental…peaking on acid..and it just seemed to be getting stronger
…wobble..wobble. |
By 1986 many more travelers were attending the festival following the demise of Stonehenge free festival © Dave Kotula |
1986 ticket courtesy Erika |
Went back to the mental security of our camp and skinned up.Jibbered at the others loosing it. Dawn, Cathy, Mick Cash. Cathy had lost her sunburn cream and was rantin..doing everyone's heads in. Every time she started. I just imagined the Reginald Perrin sketch where he thinks of his mother-in –law and visualises a Hippopotamus! I told Mick and we spent the next few minutes...pissin our selves laughin'. Evening came and the acid was slowly chillin…lovely..face paint…wander round rather aimlessly..Micks hair blue dye washed down his face..all rather bizarre. Went to sleep as it was gettin' light…Dawn, Cathy, Me and Mick in a two man tent! Sunday…sunshine
within bands, I seem to remember "Lloyd Cole & the Commotions"
were on at some time, Not exactly my thing but tolerable to sit &
get stoned to. Loudon Wainwright the Third was on a smaller stage, not
far from the Greenfield. Aide (Who previously went to Oxford free with
me) had bought some hash oil. The geezer he got it off made a baccy
mix (yuck) and we got twisted on Chillums. The baccy made me spin out
( seriously..don’t smoke it even now it makes me literally puke).
Span out to Loudon W. for a bit then went into the bushes and puked
up. Went and got an ice cream from near by van…sorted me right
out! |
Greenfields wind turbines © Dave Kotula |
To put all this in context, at the same time as Bishbosh was tripping the light fantastic , there were others who were beginning the long road to establishing their own alternative businesses and putting the eco message of the Greenfields into practice . 1986 was the first year that the alternative Circus "Croissant Neuf " attended Glastonbury. Andy and Sally were old Convoy veterans who had moved on and formed a performance group, 21 years later they are now the oldest established family run venue at Glastonbury , running a totally solar powered tent and stage and about to hold their own festivals known as " Party Neuf " . Indeed they are a legend within their own lunch boxes, as well known as Wango Riley's and The Mutoid Waste Company in the as yet unwritten Glastonbury history books . |
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Remnants of the Peace Convoy at Glastonbury 1986 |
It was the first year that the Mutoid Waste Company were at Glastonbury , this madcap company specialised in creating huge parties in London , intially to fund their sculptures, but they swiftly mutated into an integral part of the emerging Rave scene. They were eventually forced to move to europe due to police harrassment , but for a few years they transformed parts of the Glastonbury site into scenes resembling a set from a Mad Max movie . This demented madcap punk/psychedelic alternative universe in the midst of fairly mainstream rock festival summed up just how diverse Glstonbury was becoming in its range of attractions . One of the ways that Michael Eavis managed to continue to hold the festival was by spending vast amounts of his a time explaining the situation to the neighbours. He provided free tickets for the villagers and funds for every club in Pilton whose members helped with the organisation. in 86, he even persuaded the Duke of Newcastle to open up a road across one of his farms to allow better access ( the roads to the site are narrow and have traditionally caused problems during the festival ). |
Mutoid Waste Company art © Dave Kotula |
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Timeline
| Friday 20th June 1986.
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Saturday 21st June 1986
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| Sunday 22nd June 1986.
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1986 sitemap courtesy Bod |
Recollections
Roy Gurvitz , who ran a food stall at Glasto for many years had this to say about the spirit of the festival in the middle 80s
Since 86 I’d been working at Glastonbury as a site crew member, which paid pretty badly, but the concession was that you got a bit of space over the weekend. In those days, you could do pretty much what you liked with the space. Some people ran cafes, some people ran bars, and we tried to maintain the essence of a free festival.
Attended
as an end of 1st year party from Uni, a bunch of us driving down in a battered
Ford Transit and sleeping in an enormous marquee someone had borrowed. You
reckoned the weather had been kinder than '85. Well I wasn't there in '85
but I do remember having to bail out of the Cure (one of my favourite bands
at the time) because the rain was so so bad. I also remember a very spectacular
thunderstorm during Lloyd Cole, with lightning flashing behind the stage in
time to the music. Madness were great fun, taking crowd demands for the football
score (England were playing Poland that day) in good spirit.
There was al manner of, shall we say 'free enterprise' being conducted, and
anything that could be sold pretty much was, & was done so openly.
Gil Scott Heron was great, as were the lasers that accompanied the end of
his show - they were very much a new thing then.
Happy Days :-)
Paul White
Hi there,
I found your fantastic website and thought I'd send you my memories - such as they are - of Glastonbury 1986, my first festival.
I had heard so much from mates about festival culture I was GAGGING to go, my whole thing was bands but of course I loved drinking and the rest of it whilst seeing bands - but 1984 the year I left school and through 1985 I was still a festival virgin. So with some mates who'd 'seen it all before' I bought a ticket for Glastonbury 1986 (£17!!!) because two of my fav bands were playing - The Cure and The Furs and I'd been assured there'd be a shitload of roots rock reggae bands too - perfect. I came down from London on the Thurs night with my mates John, Billy and Brochie and we stayed with our friend James in his parents lovely Georgian home by Stroud (easy for some). Really early on Fri morning we were up and into James shitty purple Datsun and off to Pilton.
I remember quite a long car queue to get in and clear weather Fri daytime, in the car queue we each bought plastic jerry cans of scrumpy, EVERONE did, it smelt of shit, tasted great. We had no tent, no blankets, nothing, didn't matter as it was hot. We mooched around the field in front of the pyramid stage, where on the path at the top of the field looking down on the stage there were pushers yelling out the name of the drugs they were selling - "ACID!", "BLACK HASH!","WIZZ!" etc etc, I was amazed that this was so easy and nobody gave a fuck, no police, no aggro, sun was shining. We scored, speed and hash for Billy, John, James and I and Broch (who was a bit older) some White Lightening LSD, because he took one look at the punters and announced "there was nothing else to do". We all thought it was really odd that because there were no police you could yell the names of drugs like Evening Standard sellers outside tube stations, so we and started doing Standard seller as dealer skits ourselves until being told to fuck off by some Hells Angels. We watched the Waterboys (or was that 87?) who we all really liked and then started to dick about.
We went out of the band fields - coming out of the pyramid stage field to the left there was a burnt out van (or was that '87??) and Brochie had his scrumpy flagon balanced on his head. There was a camper van (normal now but seemed a middle class risk in the circumstance then) trying to get through the crowd. A couple of really drunk punks jumped on it and started to scream the question "are you made of shit?" at the freaked out driver and girl in the front, over and over again, really loud. It was hysterical.
Then we turned right up to the greenfield and I don't remember anything about the afternoon except feeling I was really in another world, the people hosting the greenfield were not rock/band/yoof culture tribes I knew, they had (to my experience at the time) a really alternative lifesyle thing going on, it wasn't scary, people were great. We sat for ages in the field right at the top where the half baked 'stone circle' is now. Then it was a few tents and some really aggressive horses galloping about going bonkers.
James and I were massively into the Furs, they headlined and we were really excited. We fought our way to the front, it was raining heavily so we took all our speed in one go. The band were amazing - 'President Gas' - we went apeshit. The band finished and we got all together again at the path at the top of the pyramid stage field. We were all wet and really cold, we each bought blankets, £1 for a crap synthetic one or £2 for a nice one, we all spent a quid and then went back to the stall after a minute to upgrade to £2, noone had any money left and back to the shitty Datsun to all try and sleep in the car wizzing our tits off, a long night fidgeting.
Memory starts to subside here, Saturday haven't a clue except for being amazed there were cassettes of the Furs set from the night before already and The Cure, who were TOTALLY sensational, a powerful and psychedelic set and at one point I'm sure there was a thunderstorm in the distance beyond the Pyramid stage as they played, with forked lightening in the sky as a backdrop to the band. Far out! Fucked if we were going to do another restless cheap drug night developing a rash in the Datsun, we'd collared some Uni mates of John's who he had bumped into, they had a big canvas tent and kindly let us all sleep there until asking for "£2 each for the shelter" in the morning on Sunday (Matt Phipps/Simon Abbott), bollocks to that and we we talked our way out of it with an enthusiastic contribution to whatever earnest student save-the-whale group discussion that was going in the tent.
Sunday
- again a memory blank during the day bar the weather being good, I recall
a Tory blue rosette wearing gimp striding about campaigning (for real! although
again that might be 87) and spending the day in the greenfield - where we
now felt like veterans (Dalai Lama cider from the convoy, hash from the dreads
on the railway track etc etc). Madness, who I hated but the others thought
funny, played and the sax player swung about on a rope. Taj Mahal was really
boring. I've not been the same since, my first festival was outstanding. Love
and peace y'all, if only Killing Joke had played...wishful thinking.
'87 brilliant too.
'89
acid house took over, convoy/acid punk scary shit subdued by cool kids all
hugging each other and frugging like crazy.
Lots of love
Al
Recordings.
Once again the dear olde BBC were around with their state of the art wax cylinder recording devices and they managed to archive a fair few recordings of the festival.
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Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians.6-21-86
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The Waterboys Glastonbury 6-20-86
Excellent Soundboard |
The Cure 6-12-86 sbd
Multiple versions of this show available, audience and FM . |
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The
Pogues
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The
Psychedelic Furs
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An aud 15
min. Bootleg Video also exists of part of the Pogues set :
A Pistol For Paddy Garcia (beginning missing) / The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn
/ Streams Of Whiskey / Billy's Bones / Repeal Of The Licensing Laws / Transmetropolitan
/ Sally MacLennane
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions 6-21-86 Glastonbury Festival FM/A to A+ 14 tracks 57:13minutes |
Robert Cray Band 6-22-86 Glastonbury Festival . Fm broadcast No track info to date |
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Billy Bragg 6-21-86 Billy Bragg Glastonbury Festival (Accoustic Tent)
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Billy Bragg 6-22-86 Glastonbury Festival (Accoustic Tent)
Both these sets are available for legal download at the Archive.org |
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The Housemartins Glastonbury Festival
'86- probably aud .
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John Martyn BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert 6-21-86
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Ruby Turner Glastonbury Festival 6-20-86
Released as a live album - can be found on Amazon
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External links .
Tashs Glastonbury pix great photo archive of many festivals including Glastonbury .This is THE site for unique festival photos of the 80s and 90s .
Dave Kotula Has a great slide show of around 50 Glastonbury photos from 1985-87.