Glastonbury Festival 26 - 29th June 2025 Provokes Memories Of His Own Attendance In 1987 by Alfred N.Muggins

2/7/25
    Alfred was reminded by one of the writers on abctales, who had been there at the festival in the 1970's, that he might have liked to write about his own visit to the festival in excessively muddy 1987! He remembered it well, and largely fondly, although he did lose the sole of one of his walking boots, deep in the mud on the drying out Sunday of the weekend. His boot was gripped by something deep in the mud and would not come back out. So he pulled and pulled, and the boot and his foot came out of the mud, but minus the sole of his boot. Luckily the walking boot was sturdy enough for the boot part to still be whole, except the sole had come off. He found he could still walk around in the boot, which was just as well because he hadn't brought any other boots and his trainers would have been completely inadequate in that squelch. That boot never let any of the mud or moisture into wet his foot thankfully, but after returning home he did have to fork out for another pair of walking boots, as in those days he did quite a lot of walking with his friends. He had been lucky, and he knew it. He never could quite imagine what it might have been that gripped his boot sole in the mud, and caused it to be ripped off?
      One of the main reasons he chose not to actually write about the 1987 festival properly was the fact that the United States was currently falling into dictatorship, and therefore  there were far more important things to write about at this moment than a 'silly' festival 38 years ago. At that time it would have been unthinkable that the US, at that moment winning, or about to win, the Cold War, against the far more lumbering and even 'evil' Empire of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was soon to see the break up of that 'Empire'. Even the Republican movie star President Ronald Reagan seemed unlikely to destroy or dumb down America to the levels that Donald Trumpenstein was currently doing in the States. It was still quite possible even then to view the US as being a permanent superpower and quite uncorruptible on the world stage, despite its illegal interventions into 'socialist' Nicaragua, it's underhand secret deals with extremist Islamist Iran, and its peeling back of assistance to the poor.
     Of course the Festival at that time in 1987 was raising money and awareness for CND - the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Thankfully a number of nuclear proliferation treaties at that time did result in reductions of the nuclear threats, and the most important reduction came from the fact that the nice Russian leader of the USSR Gorbachov decided to negotiate a path which did in fact lead to the dissolution of his own state (the USSR) and its break up into smaller self governing republics, and an end to the Cold War. So soon after the festival's political purpose seemed rather less important. Even at the time Alfred's main reason for being there had been musical rather than political. Like most people the thought of nuclear war always did make him profoundly cautious and worried, but he could see some sense in having them as a deterrent to the other side, whoever that might be, in particular the lumbering Communist giant, the USSR. Thankfully neither side had come to blows in a direct, and definitely not a nuclear way. It seemed for most of us, for a long time, that the problem had solved itself!
      A couple of days after this year's Glastonbury (2025! Where did all those years go?!) he put some of the Festival highlights on catch up TV (BBC) while with his care client, and was quite transfixed by how fresh it all sounded. After a while he realised that all was not lost, and that music was still alive and kicking, despite the internet give away and the super expensive concerts to make up for it. All is not lost (except probably in America!?)
Further Memories:
     Alfred remembered back in 1987 that it had still been raining on the Friday Morning of the Festival and the place was very soggy! Still youth benefits from ignorance and excessive zest, so he and his friends were perfectly keen and excited. Indeed it looked as if by lunchtime, when the bands were getting started again, that the rain was actually stopping, although it still felt rather damp. (Come on Merlin! Do your magic!) The first act he saw, of the day, according to his now quite distant memory, was the fantastic World Party, who he now realised had perfectly well anticipated Donald Trumpenstein's madness and greed (and his buddies!), particularly with their fantastically accurate 'Ship Of Fools'! A cool band, of sufficient flexibility to appeal to 60's fans as well as New Wavers, who seemed to care about the world in an intelligent way. A great performance, and he was already a fan by the end of it!
     Other bands and acts came and went, on a few stages. They wandered around, seeming to have all the time in the world in those youthful carefee days, taking in as much as possible. His memory unfortunately could now no longer even name many of the other acts, but the next big memory he still held was of walking around through the evening audience on the hill, while New Order (from Manchester! - in which he had lived and done a difficult course the year before!) performed their sparse and strangely mechanical sounding music. The reason he wandered at that time was that he wasn't very familiar with much of their music yet at that time, except for 'the hypnotic 'Blue Monday'! (Everyone who was relatively young at the time knew that one, particularly if they had recently spent time at a University, and gone to any discos/night clubs!) and he was feeling a little bored and restless, if you can believe that? After a couple more years he had caught up with New Order's wistful and intensely moving modern music a bit more and was listening to their Substance album rather a lot, so he finally clicked and he was able to enjoy their concert as a disjointed memory, a lot more than when he actually saw it!