page_title: Glastonbury Festival
section_title: 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Glastonbury Festival / History / 1990s
caption_attribution_description: Glasto 'Love' sign from 2003
context_page_description: Glastonbury Festival is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, in England. In addition to contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret, and other arts. Leading pop and rock artists have headlined, alongside thousands of others appearing on smaller stages and performance areas. Films and albums recorded at Glastonbury have been released, and the festival receives extensive television and newspaper coverage. Glastonbury is now attended by around 200,000 people, requiring extensive infrastructure in terms of security, transport, water, and electricity supply. The majority of staff are volunteers, helping the festival to raise millions of pounds for charity organisations.
  Regarded as a major event in British culture, the festival is inspired by the ethos of the hippie, counterculture, and free festival movements. It retains vestiges of these traditions, such as the Green Fields area, which includes sections known as the Green Futures and Healing Fields. After the 1970s, the festival took place almost every year and grew in size, with the number of attendees sometimes being swollen by gatecrashers.
context_section_description: The biggest festival yet was held in 1990; however, the day after the festival ended, violence – between the security guards and new age travellers (the so-called Battle of Yeoman's Bridge) – led to the organisers taking 1991 off to rethink the festival. An expanded festival returned in 1992, and this proved a great success. 1992 was the first year that the new age travellers were not initially allowed onto the site free, and a sturdier fence was designed. This success was carried through to 1993 which, like 1992, was hot and dry.
  In 1994, the Pyramid Stage burned down just over a week before the festival; a temporary main stage was erected in time for the festival. The 1994 festival also introduced a 150 kW wind turbine which provided some of the festival power. This festival also included the setting of a new world record on 26 June when 826 people, juggling at least three objects each, kept 2,478 objects in the air. Headliners Levellers set another record when they played to a crowd of as many as 300,000 people on their Friday performance, this is still Glastonbury's biggest ever crowd. This was also the year the festival was first televised by Channel 4; concentrating on the main two music stages, providing a glimpse of the festival for those who knew little of it. Channel 4's 4 Goes to Glastonbury brought widely expanded televised coverage of the festival for the first time in 1994 and also the following year.
  The TV broadcast in 1994 was a crucial factor in ensuring that Orbital's performance at the festival achieved legendary status. As a result, living rooms across the country were able to experience what a rave might look like, and suddenly dance music – which had been attacked by the establishment and mainstream press for years – didn't seem so dangerous. Indeed, 1994 was a crucial turning point for dance music's role at the festival. Speaking to The Guardian in 2013 about the Orbital gig, Michael Eavis noted that it marked dance music's appearance on the mainstream agenda. "What was previously underground made it on to one of the big stages, and there was no going back from there. As the police and the council made me very well aware, the buzz had been around the raves and the market sound systems and in the travellers' fields for years. But it needed a showcase to make it legal." The gig opened the way for others such as the Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack and Underworld, who all played high-profile stages in the following years – developments that led to the launch of the festival's Dance Village in 1997.
  1995 saw the attendance rise drastically due to the security fence being breached on the Friday of the festival. Estimates suggest there may have been enough fence-jumpers to double the size of the festival. This aside, 1995 proved to be a highly successful year with memorable performances from Oasis, Elastica, Pulp, PJ Harvey, Jeff Buckley, Jamiroquai and The Cure. This was also the first year of the festival having a dance tent to cater for the rise in popularity of dance music, following the success of Orbital's headline appearance the previous year. The dance acts of 1995 were led by Massive Attack on the Friday and Carl Cox on the Saturday. The festival took a year off in 1996 to allow the land to recover and give the organisers a break. This would be a pattern which would be followed every five years until 2011, with the gap year moving to 2012. 1996 also saw the release of Glastonbury the Movie which was filmed at the 1993 and 1994 festivals.
  The festival returned in 1997 bigger than ever. This time there was major sponsorship from The Guardian and the BBC, who had taken over televising the event from Channel 4. This was also the year of the mud, with the site suffering severe rainfalls which turned the entire site into a muddy bog. However those who stayed for the festival were treated to many memorable performances, including Radiohead's headlining Pyramid Stage set on the Saturday which is said to be one of the greatest ever Glastonbury performances. The live recording of "Paranoid Android" from
caption: The giant LOVE sign inspired by The Beatles
exif: {}