✍️ GLASTOMONIAL GALLERY

A crowdsourced collection of Glastonbury testimonials showcasing the Festival’s historical impact through the community’s stories, memories and photographs.

The Glastomonial Gallery is a concerted community project celebrating the history of Glastonbury Festival through the words and images of Glasto-goers themselves.

Scroll down to learn more about the project, how you may contribute and browse a mosaic of Glastomonials – encompassing testimonials, stories, memories and more…

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“IT WAS 1970 AND MY FRIEND AND I DECIDED TO ATTEND THE PILTON FESTIVAL” – MARILYN LONGDEN

“I think we’d seen it advertised in NME (New Musical Express) or maybe our local record shop. We had just turned 17 & were doing a secretarial course in Barry, South Wales. This is what I looked like then. We each told our parents that we would be staying at each other’s houses and they had no idea that we were off to the Festival!”…

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"APART FROM MICHAEL EAVIS NOT MANY PEOPLE CAN CLAIM TO HAVE BEEN AT THE FIRST 2 GLASTONBURY FESTIVALS" - WILL BLOMFIELD

“Apart from Michael Eavis, there can’t be many people who can claim to have been at the first 2 Glastonbury festivals and fewer still who can claim to have been celebrating their birthday on the day the very first Glastonbury (then known as the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival) kicked off on 19th September 1970. But here I am, clutching a balloon on my 2nd birthday with Pilton festival’s tiny scaffold stage in the background”…

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“IT WAS 1970 AND MY FRIEND AND I DECIDED TO ATTEND THE PILTON FESTIVAL” – MARILYN LONGDEN

“I think we’d seen it advertised in NME (New Musical Express) or maybe our local record shop. We had just turned 17 & were doing a secretarial course in Barry, South Wales. This is what I looked like then. We each told our parents that we would be staying at each other’s houses and they had no idea that we were off to the Festival!”…

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"APART FROM MICHAEL EAVIS NOT MANY PEOPLE CAN CLAIM TO HAVE BEEN AT THE FIRST 2 GLASTONBURY FESTIVALS" - WILL BLOMFIELD

“Apart from Michael Eavis, there can’t be many people who can claim to have been at the first 2 Glastonbury festivals and fewer still who can claim to have been celebrating their birthday on the day the very first Glastonbury (then known as the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival) kicked off on 19th September 1970. But here I am, clutching a balloon on my 2nd birthday with Pilton festival’s tiny scaffold stage in the background”…

"THE 1971 EVENT WAS A FREE FESTIVAL, THE SECOND-EVER GLASTONBURY AND THE FIRST YEAR OF THE PYRAMID STAGE" - SHEILA BURNETT

“I travelled from West Ken with my sister in a van of weekend hippies bearing brown rice, mung tea, Wacky Baccy and one, maybe 2 tents. We stopped at Stone Henge on the way wafting and reclining on the stones. We erected our tent facing the Tor made an X with sticks tied with silver balloons thus identifying our home for the next 3 nights. The line up included Bowie, Traffic, Fairport Convention, Hawkwind, Melanie, Arthur Brown and The Worthy Farm Windfuckers. Arthur Brown played late into the night to a bombed-out hallucinating audience of 12000″…

“THE 1971 EVENT WAS A FREE FESTIVAL, THE SECOND-EVER GLASTONBURY AND THE FIRST YEAR OF THE PYRAMID STAGE” – SHEILA BURNETT

“I travelled from West Ken with my sister in a van of weekend hippies bearing brown rice, mung tea, Wacky Baccy and one, maybe 2 tents. We stopped at Stone Henge on the way wafting and reclining on the stones. We erected our tent facing the Tor made an X with sticks tied with silver balloons thus identifying our home for the next 3 nights. The line up included Bowie, Traffic, Fairport Convention, Hawkwind, Melanie, Arthur Brown and The Worthy Farm Windfuckers. Arthur Brown played late into the night to a bombed-out hallucinating audience of 12000″…

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"MY FIRST YEAR WAS THE 1971 GLASTONBURY FAYRE" - TERRY MAINE

“It was a long time ago, we all just walked in and listened to great sounds, you could see people dancing, some in the nude, that was a new one for me. No rain. People doing their own thing, no trouble, relaxed and friendly. All brought together by music. I had never seen anything like it before”…

“1979 WAS THE TIME OF PUNK” – TONY MACINNES

““For me, music was a lifesaver, I’d experienced the childhood from hell with poverty, homelessness and violent abuse thrown at me from an early age, the ’60s had been a living hell. When I felt locked into depression as a teenager music was the way out for me, I swear I owe my life to it sometimes because it certainly helped to blank out suicidal thoughts from a very early age. I’ve suffered with depression a lot since childhood, I was diagnosed with PTSD from it and still feel the effects right up to this day”…

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"MY FIRST YEAR WAS THE 1971 GLASTONBURY FAYRE" - TERRY MAINE

“It was a long time ago, we all just walked in and listened to great sounds, you could see people dancing, some in the nude, that was a new one for me. No rain. People doing their own thing, no trouble, relaxed and friendly. All brought together by music. I had never seen anything like it before”…

“1979 WAS THE TIME OF PUNK” – TONY MACINNES

“For me, music was a lifesaver, I’d experienced the childhood from hell with poverty, homelessness and violent abuse thrown at me from an early age, the ’60s had been a living hell. When I felt locked into depression as a teenager music was the way out for me, I swear I owe my life to it sometimes because it certainly helped to blank out suicidal thoughts from a very early age. I’ve suffered with depression a lot since childhood, I was diagnosed with PTSD from it and still feel the effects right up to this day”…

“MY FIRST GLASTONBURY WAS IN 1981 WHEN I TOOK THESE PHOTOS” – SIMON DAVIES

“There were plenty more but sadly lost. The view of the stage is from our tent, I guess this was Friday morning, I didn’t know the couple near the stage but it gives an idea of how close you could get. New Order were a highlight for me along with an onstage scuffle between Roy Harper and Ginger Baker. The photo of the two old ladies is in the 50th-anniversary book of the festival”…

“AT MY FIRST GLASTONBURY IN 1981 IT BECAME OBVIOUS I WASN’T GOING TO MAKE IT BACK ON SUNDAY NIGHT” – DEREK WILLIAMS

“At my first Glastonbury in 1981 it became obvious I wasn’t going to make it back on Sunday night, so that was the one and only sicki I ever threw. The highlight of that year was Hawkwind, a sadly truncated set because they ran out of time, but still a classic”…

“MY FIRST GLASTONBURY WAS IN 1981 WHEN I TOOK THESE PHOTOS” – SIMON DAVIES

“There were plenty more but sadly lost. The view of the stage is from our tent, I guess this was Friday morning, I didn’t know the couple near the stage but it gives an idea of how close you could get. New Order were a highlight for me along with an onstage scuffle between Roy Harper and Ginger Baker. The photo of the two old ladies is in the 50th-anniversary book of the festival”…

“AT MY FIRST GLASTONBURY IN 1981 IT BECAME OBVIOUS I WASN’T GOING TO MAKE IT BACK ON SUNDAY NIGHT” – DEREK WILLIAMS

“At my first Glastonbury in 1981 it became obvious I wasn’t going to make it back on Sunday night, so that was the one and only sicki I ever threw. The highlight of that year was Hawkwind, a sadly truncated set because they ran out of time, but still a classic”…

“I remember such an exciting buzz I didn’t eat a thing all day, just ran on adrenaline. At the end of an exhausting day traipsing around I had a bag of exposed film and was heading for the exit to get back to our office in Exeter to process and go through the negatives. Back then we weren’t shooting digital and still got our hands dirty with chemicals”…

“I have so many memories of the Glastonbury Festival but one that springs to mind is a story that includes Gilbert O Sullivan. I followed his Range Rover onto the site many years ago, I think 1995″…

“MY FIRST YEAR COVERING THE FESTIVAL FOR THE NATIONAL PAPERS WAS 1997” – TIM CUFF

“I remember such an exciting buzz I didn’t eat a thing all day, just ran on adrenaline. At the end of an exhausting day traipsing around I had a bag of exposed film and was heading for the exit to get back to our office in Exeter to process and go through the negatives. Back then we weren’t shooting digital and still got our hands dirty with chemicals”…

“A STORY THAT INCLUDES GILBERT O’SULLIVAN” – CHRIS DIFFORD

“I have so many memories of the Glastonbury Festival but one that springs to mind is a story that includes Gilbert O Sullivan. I followed his Range Rover onto the site many years ago, I think 1995″…

“My introduction was a pretty disastrous festival in 1990. My lasting memory from that year was when a helicopter landed in the crowd to airlift a girl to hospital during The Cure’s headline set. I wonder if anyone has any photos of that, not least to confirm that it actually happened?”…

“I’d been on the stand-up comedy circuit for a couple of years and was playing a disastrously attended night in Camden back in the winter of 2004. As the 7 audience members shuffled out of the pub the compere, Paddy Bramwells, checked his phone and mentioned to me and the other remaining act that his friend Arabella Churchill was looking for comperes at Glastonbury. “Wanna do it?” We both said yes”…

“GLASTONBURY IS WHERE SPIRIT INVITES YOU TO TAKE A TRIP THROUGH CHILDLIKE WONDER” – WOODY COOK

“Glastonbury is the only place on earth where you can walk barefoot for hours, with no danger of stepping on glass and pass thousands of people who have nothing but love for you, stalls, music and culture that is so expansive you can never explore it all. From having my bag returned to me by a man in a full 3 piece suit at 9am at the stone circle, who knew me by name, leading to me to believe he was Morpheus, to discovering hidden bars located in the walls or down a rabbit hole”…

“GLASTONBURY IS WHERE SPIRIT INVITES YOU TO TAKE A TRIP THROUGH CHILDLIKE WONDER” – WOODY COOK

“Glastonbury is the only place on earth where you can walk barefoot for hours, with no danger of stepping on glass and pass thousands of people who have nothing but love for you, stalls, music and culture that is so expansive you can never explore it all. From having my bag returned to me by a man in a full 3 piece suit at 9am at the stone circle, who knew me by name, leading to me to believe he was Morpheus, to discovering hidden bars located in the walls or down a rabbit hole”…

"WORD WENT AROUND THAT THERE WAS GOING TO BE A MASS JUGGLE AND WORLD RECORD ATTEMPT” – ROD WARD

“My girlfriend, who has since become my wife, told me about a festival she had attended in 1981 and said she was going again in 1982. I was working in London at the time and had no transport so I hitched. As she was there on her motorbike I carried a skid lid. Standing at the start of the Great West Road a guy on a bike stopped and kindly picked me up”…

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WORD WENT AROUND THAT THERE WAS GOING TO BE A MASS JUGGLE AND WORLD RECORD ATTEMPT” – ROD WARD

“My girlfriend, who has since become my wife, told me about a festival she had attended in 1981 and said she was going again in 1982. I was working in London at the time and had no transport so I hitched. As she was there on her motorbike I carried a skid lid. Standing at the start of the Great West Road a guy on a bike stopped and kindly picked me up”…

“I’ve been involved in the Unfairground now for 10 years, well almost 10, the 50th (cancelled) Glastonbury was going to be our 10th anniversary year. It was a blow having our 10th birthday party postponed we had a lot planned and a huge appetite for the celebration”…

“I never really sought Glastonbury, Glastonbury found me – due to fortunate circumstance, as I was getting ready to settle into early middle age and my own festival memories were sinking into the dim and distant past”…

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT

LEARN

About

“Legend tells of an enchanted Brigadoon that appears for only 5 days a year at midsummer in the flowering meadows of the Vale of Avalon. It is said that there may be found entrancing music, amazing spectacles and wonders beyond compare” – A temporary city where stories and memories are created and woven into the very fabric of one’s soul.

Since founded by Michael Eavis back in 1970, the Pilton Pop Folk & Blues Festival (as it was known back then) has taken root and blossomed from an organically intimate assemblage, into the legendary known-the-world-over [Glastonbury] Festival it is today. As the years pass and times come and go, the Festival continues to flourish into a distinctive incarnation of itself – holding true to its original spiritual past, while bonding the people through new shared experiences on the hallowed grounds of Worthy Farm.

We launched the Glastomonial Gallery – initially known as the ‘Once Upon a Time in Glastonbury’ project – back in April of 2020, due to the cancellation of Glastonbury Festival and the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, inspired to find fellow Glasto-goers who would like to share their Glastonbury stories, memories and photos!

The goal of this project is to put the people who make Glastonbury Festival the most magical place on earth, front and centre, while helping everyone during challenging times, uniting the community and keeping spirits high!

The submitted Glastonbury testimonials or ‘Glastomonials’ as we like to call them, will hopefully become part of a bigger archive bearing a unique historical perspective, accounting for anything from “what Glastonbury means to you” to that crazy-hazy-Glasto-4am-half-a-memory-of-a-story, you just have to tell the grandkids.

We’ve already had some amazing Glastomonials come through and can’t wait for you to contribute yours too!

WHAT'S YOUR GLASTOMONIAL?

CONTRIBUTE

Submission Guidelines

Below you’ll find a submission form where you can submit your Glastomonial.

Glastomonials can be whatever you like them to be – good or bad, funny or sad, as short or long as you wish, and should be accompanied by your Glasto photos that best capture the essence of your Glastonbury Festival experience.

We ask that you share your stories, memories and any crazy / quirky / funny / magical details you can recall – Please make it as expressive as possible.

Once submitted and reviewed, it will then be published on the website and shared across our social channels.

If you would prefer using email rather than the submission form below, feel free to hit us up at: [email protected]

Thank you for taking the time to be a part of this project!

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