A Five Day Glastonbury Festival will be held from June 21st
Glastonbury Festival (officially known as The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts) will be held this year from June 21st - 25th. The annual festival lasts five days and takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England. Aside from musical performances, Glastonbury Festival is also home to dance, comedy, theater, circus, cabaret and other arts acts. Organized by Michael Eavis, the festival is held on his own land, Worthy Farm in Pilton. The five-day arts extravaganza draws in major pop and rock artists to headline, as well as a slew of other artists who perform on smaller stages throughout the day.
Glastonbury Festival’s 2017 lineup headliners include Radiohead, Foo Fighters, The National, Lorde, the xx, Katy Perry, and Phoenix. The festival has a reputation of releasing hard-hitting lineups, and 2017 is no different. In the rock arena, Glastonbury Festival is offering up a variety of artists from Alt-J, to Barry Gibb, to The Flaming Lips, to Angel Olsen. Catering to more mainstream pop, acts like Clean Bandit, Ed Sheeran, Halsey, and Major Lazer will also be in attendance this year. Artists like Sampha, Solange, Thundercat, and Anderson .paak round out the lineup. As would be expected, it sold out almost immediately. The Glastonbury Festival 2017 lineup is impressive, no doubt. But what about past lineups? Let’s take a look. The inaugural Glastonbury was held in 1970 on the day after Jimi Hendrix died. By its second year, it hosted the likes of Joan Baez and David Bowie and drew a crowd of 12,000. Continuing to pull in big names, 1995’s showing included Oasis, PJ Harvey, The Cure, and Weezer; it was also the 25-year anniversary of the festival. 1995 was also the inaugural year of Glastonbury’s Dance Tent, an area dedicated solely to dance music, where Massive Attack and System 7 performed. As it became more well established, the genre’s included in the
lineup became more varied. By 2003, Glastonbury sold-out faster than it ever had before. The lineup included De La Soul, Moby, and Sigur Ros. Acts like Muse, Adele, and LCD Soundsystem graced the Glastonbury stages in 2016.
With such high-profile lineups, it is no surprise that Glastonbury Festival is one of the largest greenfield music festivals in the world. Annual crowds swell to around the 175,000 mark. Though Glastonbury has a solid and storied past, rumors of a possible relocation surfaced. The talk consisted of a possible move from Worthy Farm and change its name to Variety Bazaar in 2019. The rumors started with a radio interview with founder Michael Eavis, who revealed that there is going to be a new festival called Variety Bazaar located 100 miles from Glastonbury’s current locale. Of course, long-time fans were thrown into turmoil. Eavis’ daughter and coorganizer of Glastonbury took to Twitter to clarify her father’s statements, writing, “We’re still planning an event in the future at a different location — which we are calling Variety Bazaar. But Glastonbury Festival will always be called Glastonbury and will remain at Worthy Farm!” Thank goodness, the iconic British festival is here to stay.