Once a year for a few summer days the Smallwood living room is converted into an auditorium as Glastonbury is beamed across from a Somerset field to a Wiltshire village. I always watch for quite a bit of the time, partly to try to keep my finger on the pulse of the generations which I see in school every day, and partly because I am just interested in music. One day I might even spot an outgoing member of Year 13 at the foot of one of those flags on long sticks, letting off steam at the close of the A level season. I wouldn’t blame them and, who knows, in June 2025 I might even be there too if my daughter will endure my company and look after me! Good or bad quality doesn’t really matter greatly, as there is so much to choose from that I always find something on a channel from Worthy Farm that at least entertains for a short time. At a time when the Arts collectively are under so much pressure, the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts takes on a prominence that is fundamental to the culture of the UK. For four days each summer this is the sound track to our lives.
And so it was in 2023, with everything building inexorably to the Sunday Headliner to top all of them – Sir Elton John on the Pyramid Stage in what may well be his last ever concert in the UK. From the first moment that the diminutive figure in a golden suit emerged from the wings to sit at an enormous Yamaha Grand, the scene was set for something memorable. Rumours say that there was the biggest crowd that Pilton has ever seen, an ocean of people spreading as far as vision would allow all wanting to join with a huge musical spectacle; boomers yearning for something to tell their teenage children about and teenagers wanting to see a legend who had started making music before their parents were born. After all I remember getting my first Elton John record (Blue Moves) when I was just 14 – and that was his eleventh album! He didn’t disappoint. As Mark Savage (BBC Music Correspondent) wrote Elton delivered the goods with a tight, focused, emotional, brilliant, muscular, lyrical, jubilant, celebratory, pyrotechnic display of musicianship lasting 2 hours. When the fireworks went off at the end there was time to draw breath. Everyone – including Elton John – looked drained, utterly euphoric but utterly drained.
The brilliance of artists like John give us all mile stones on which to hang our own personal recollections. Relocations, love affairs, births and deaths all become attached to pieces of music that appear to us at the right time. Last evening in Somerset Elton John gave more than just a concert, as he interwove his music with personal campaigns in support of young artists and AIDS/HIV research. It cannot have escaped many that the many-coloured stage lighting and pyrotechnics marked the coincidence of the concert with Pride Month and his long lived work for gay rights. As he performed hit after hit after hit from across the last 60 years of musical genius there was always another level of communication, a thoughtfulness and engagement which awaited discovery for those who took the trouble to look. The sun may well be going down on Sir Elton’s stage presence, but his legacy will persist for the generations to come in so many ways.
SDS
