Glastonbury Festival is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, 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 the largest greenfield festival in the world, and is now attended by around 175,000 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 good causes.
Inspired by the ethos of the hippie, counterculture, and free festival movements, the festival 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 gate-crashers. Michael Eavis hosted the first festival, then called Pilton Festival, after seeing an open-air Led Zeppelin concert at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music.
The 2009 Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts was held from 24–29 June 2009.
In a similar way to previous festivals, tickets for the 2009 event required pre-registration (of a photograph and personal details) through the festival website. Registration opened on 1 September 2008.
Tickets were able to be purchased via the See Tickets website or by telephone. A limited number of tickets were available by promotion through the Western Daily Press and competitions run by Greenpeace,eFestivals and The Guardian.
Ticket lines opened on the morning of 5 October 2008, and customers were able to place deposits for tickets (£50) or buy them in full (£175). Tickets required full payment by 1 February 2009.
On 22 January 2009, at Midem 2009, Michael Eavis announced that 90% of the event's 137,500 tickets had been sold. He also stated that although headliners had not been confirmed, he was awaiting confirmation from the acts he had approached.
The 2008 Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts was held from 27 to 29 June 2008.
The ticket registration system that was established in 2007 continued in 2008 having won numerous awards, including Best Innovation at the 2007 UK Festival Awards. Registration was available throughout February, online and from Millets camping stores. It closed on 14 March, however due to tickets not selling out, registration for the festival was re-opened at 4 pm on Tuesday 8 April allowing those who hadn't previously registered to purchase tickets.
In July 2007 site owner and organiser Michael Eavis stated that 40 percent of tickets for the upcoming festival would be sold by telephone in order to attract more teenagers to the event. Eavis was quoted as saying that most sales being on-line during 2007 resulted in most festival-goers being "too middle aged and respectable". The logic of this reasoning seems questionable, however, as internet use is traditionally associated with youths, certainly more so than ownership of a phone line.
The trees are grey here
The soil is damp and cold
His senses are filled with drought
After his flee from the temple
Rites made him shiver from fear
Now waiting for someone
To proclaim salvation