Gatherings in the open air with music are as old as anything human beings have ever done. Some of the tensions that result on the use of land probably began between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers of the Stone Age!
The ‘Pop Festival’ became a more modern manifestation of people’s desire to gather and celebrate. We are after all, social animals. In the late 1960’s, they went to Woodstock and the Monterey Festivals by the hundreds of thousands. Alongside the commercial events, ‘Free Festivals’ developed. The events at Stonehenge became a magnet for thousands looking for alternative ways of living. People fed up with the exploitation, rules, squalor and general rip-off that so many events came to represent. They discovered something. It is a powerful vision. People lived together, a community sharing possessions, listening to great music, making do, living with the environment, consuming their needs and little else. [See the ‘Travellers’ gallery] .
Then there were the commercial events. Music being the main motive to attend with headline acts. Glastonbury being by far the biggest. They took months to set up but only lasted for three days … with oh so much crammed in, all for a price of course.
