According to popular belief, Bowie’s two-hour performance at Worthy Farm in Somerset on June 25, 2000, was not only the highlight of that year’s Glastonbury Festival but also one of the best, if not the best, in the festival’s history. In terms of Bowie’s own career, it is widely regarded as the one instance in which he reclaimed his position as the current monarch of contemporary music, instantly changing him from a person whose best work was behind him to an unparalleled performer who inspired and impressed audiences and artists who were not even born when he started his career.
Whether as performers or organizers, many people who were a part of the Glastonbury gig have called it their best moment. While co-organizer Emily Eavis stated, “I often get asked what the best set I’ve seen here at Glastonbury is, and Bowie’s 2000 performance is always one which I think of first,” keyboard player Mike Garson of Bowie remarks that “people still talk about it as the best show ever.” According to Bowie’s public relations representative Alan Edwards, “David knew it had been a seismic moment when he came off stage.” After that day, everything was different.
High art, low chicanery, opportunism, luck, and plain old-fashioned brilliance all play a part in the intriguing tale of how he ended up performing the iconic gig of the second half of his career. “I wouldn’t quite describe it as ‘underhand machination’: more like ‘accidental brilliance,'” according to Edwards.
Michael Eavis attended Bowie’s performance at London’s Astoria the previous year with a sense of anticipation and interest. The set that Bowie performed quickly dispelled this, fusing songs from Hours with lesser-known songs from his early career, such as “Cracked Actor” and “Repetition.” This did not necessarily imply that Bowie was playing at the caliber of a headlining act at Glastonbury. “My understanding was that Michael Eavis did indeed leave the Astoria gig half way through,” Edwards says tactfully. Even Bowie thought it was a bit outdated to be the festival’s main act. Edwards says, “David wasn’t in any great hurry to do a festival like Glastonbury.”
Edwards, ever the publicist, idly followed up on a story in The Sunday Times that implied Glastonbury would be open to seeing Bowie perform. This is referred to as “a punt” by public relations professionals and as “a lie” by those outside of that prestigious field. “Bowie to Headline Glasto” was all that was written in the headline. “The Glastonbury ticket office was inundated with ticket enquiries like never before in their history,” as Edwards noted.
The backstage catering at Bowie’s most recent Glastonbury performance was nothing more glamorous than Eavis’s kitchen, where performers were fed milk and eggs. The event drew 2,000 attendees, the majority of whom were accustomed to recreational drugs. This was a completely different idea. “After a few days, neither [my colleague] Julian Stockton nor I had heard from David and we were worried that he was annoyed,” Edwards wrote in his memoir. He then sent us a message saying, “You’re very naughty boys.” Never do that again. Excellent work.
Bowie had anticipated playing a three-hour, career-spanning set, but he was peremptorily told prior to the festival that this was not possible. Bowie was nervously awaiting the birth of his daughter Lexi with his wife Iman. He wrote, “What crap news!” in a journal he kept for Time Out. “Yesterday, I had my production manager call England to find out how late we could play at Glastonbury the next morning, only to discover that the promoter would be fined £20,000 per minute if I dared to go past the curfew. What a futile endeavor.
Bowie was unusually nervous when he arrived at the festival on June 25 to perform on the Pyramid Stage. The crowd was significantly younger than his typical following, and the site had a boisterous and unruly atmosphere due in part to gatecrashers who had increased the allowed attendance from 100,000 to about 250,000. Bowie would be playing concurrently with the more energetic act Basement Jaxx, who were headlining the Other Stage, following Travis and Chemical Brothers as the previous nights’ main acts. His amazing ensemble, which included Oxford bags and an Alexander McQueen frock coat, was a deliberate visual nod to his former look.
The vast majority of the audience didn’t care; they were more interested in entertainment than education. Garson remembers, “It was magical, but it could have gone wrong.” He became anxious when he entered the audience and saw that there were 250,000 people. “Go and warm up the audience,” he said, turning to face me. “They don’t want to see me,” I think as I step outside. Then comes the crazy part. I take a seat at the keyboard, but nothing sounds. One hundred engineers are plugging things in. As it happens, I had turned off the volume. Imagine, then, that we went out with a band and that when we sat down, there was no piano. You don’t get off to a good start, which would have ruined the entire show.
After a bizarre beginning, Bowie reached his creative zenith over the course of the following two hours. He once lost himself enough to exclaim, “This is so cool for us, it really is cool.” I absolutely adore it! There were some unexpected moments, even though it was a greatest hits set. Not to Bob Dylan’s level of obscureness, but enough to keep the audience guessing what they were listening to before the inevitable, enormous chorus exploded, many of the most well-known songs, including “Let’s Dance,” were subtly rearranged. Almost all of the songs were sung and performed as well as they had ever been. Bowie, who was experiencing laryngitis, was first uncertain about the gig’s reception but was quickly comforted by the positive response.
“You will never take David Bowie at Glastonbury, 2000, for granted again,” wrote columnist and renowned Bowie fan Caitlin Moran in The Times after the event. Additionally, Moran noted in his concluding paragraph: “O, my God, you will miss him, when he’s gone! It will seem as though half the lights go out and never return because you will miss him so much. The performance became, quite rightly, revered as that of an artist at the pinnacle of his considerable powers as word of it spread among the enthusiastic concertgoers.
When he was gone, we would really miss him.
