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1979 To The Present Day
"You'd think after 19 years it would get easier." - Michael Eavis (1989).
The next festival was held in 1979, in aid of the Year Of The Child. Peter Gabriel topped the bill, together with Steve Hillage, Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Sky, and Nona Hendrix. It was not a financial success.
Undeterred, and after a year's break, Michael Eavis started the modern run of festivals in 1981, this time to raise money for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Another Pyramid stage was built, this time a permanent structure which doubled as a cow barn for the rest of the year, until it burnt down just before the 1994 festival. Since 1981, the festival has been held most years, with breaks in 1988, 1991, and 1996.
In the early eighties, the attendance was around 30,000. By the beginning of the nineties, about 75,000 were attending, limited only by the space available on Michael Eavis' land and surrounding fields rented for the occasion. The official attendance was usually boosted by tens of thousands of people hopping the fences, which has led to tighter security and more and higher fences. Local objections to the event have been reduced, if not completely overcome, as organisational problems have been resolved and the community has realised that the financial benefits to the area are quite considerable.
"The essential power within Glastonbury is fusion - the melting together of diverse ideas, attitudes and energies." - Steve Hillage (1979 Glastonbury programme notes).
Since 1981, the music has always been an eclectic mix of reggae (Aswad, Steel Pulse, Black Uhuru), world (King Sunny Ade, Fela Kuti, Bhundu Boys), new wave & indie (New Order, Elvis Costello, Pixies, The Cure), decent pop (Howard Jones, Style Council), rock (U2, The Black Crowes), old hippies(Gong, Hawkwind), old timers (Jackson Browne, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground, Fairport Convention), and Van Morrison. The number of stages has steadily increased, both to accommodate the number of spectators, and also to allow individual stages to cater to narrower bands of taste, without affecting the overall diversity of what's on offer.
In the nineties, dance music has started playing a larger part, with a rave tent appearing in 1990, and bands such as Orbital and The Shamen on the music stages, all culminating in a dedicated Dance Tent in 1995. This was programmed by Steve Hillage of the System 7 dance crew, who had played the festival in 1979 as Steve Hillage, hippy guitarist.
Other regular attractions the festival has gained over the years include the Healing Field, with all kinds of alternative and complementary therapy on offer; the Green Fields, a marketplace of alternative lifestyles and ideas; and the Sacred Space, the most remote part of the site which now boasts an Ancient Stone Circle to help you chill out, and is definitely the place to be if you're still up at dawn.
With the end of the Cold War, the proceeds from the event now go to environmental and aid charities, mainly Greenpeace and Oxfam, plus a variety of local causes. The 1995 festival raised half a million pounds. As Michael Eavis has pointed out, Glastonbury is not a charity event, it's a business which happens to give all its profits away.