My 20 years in the crowd at music festivals
Legends, disappointments, deluges, frustrations… Here are my highlights and low points. What are yours?
The legends
David Bowie, Isle of Wight Festival 2004
Fun fact: Isle of Wight Festival1 is held in Newport every June on the local secondary school’s playing fields during GCSE and A-level month. What’s more important? Exams or rock music? Somehow the two co-exist. In 2004, a new generation of fans could be found sitting on the grass with revision books open, waiting for David Bowie to take to the stage.
I’ve written about how I became number 15,203 of the David Bowie fan club in 1975, and I’ve seen him twice, first at Milton Keynes Bowl during his Let’s Dance era in 1983, then in 2004 at Isle of Wight Festival, where I could not believe he was on our home turf.
It was a good set, spanning his 30+ year career, but he seemed subdued. I put it down to him having been on tour for a long time.
Later that month he had heart problems which required surgery, and it put an end to him performing live. We had seen his last UK concert.
REM, Isle of Wight Festival 2005
Michael Stipe, oozing charisma, with his signature band of blue paint across his eyes, is my favourite ever festival memory. REM played gorgeous renditions of their hits, including Everybody Hurts, Losing My Religion and Nightswimming. Slightly marred by my daughter’s friend, Ben, knowing ALL the lyrics but singing off-key, very loudly, in my ear.
REM stopped touring three years later and broke up in 2011. I looked up their Isle of Wight Festival performance on YouTube and I’m transported all over again.
In fact, 2005 was a good year all-round, as I noted in my diary at the time:
Friday: Supergrass. So good I wished they were on later and had longer.
Faithless: wasn’t a fan before but got hooked.
Sat: Ray Davies – what a stunning feel-good performance.
Sun: The Magic Numbers – sweet!
Snow Patrol – their hit song, Run, was bathed in perfect sunshine. Special.
REM. Stunning. Been rewinding the C4 coverage of them ever since!
Oh, and funny petulant band moment: Embrace frontman carping: “There’s even people sitting down over there. Get off your arses – there’s a band on!” Indicating, er, the Disabled area. Whoops!
The Rolling Stones, Isle of Wight Festival 2007
I thought The Rolling Stones were getting on a bit in 2007 when Mick Jagger was 63. Now I’m in my sixties, that doesn’t seem old at all and I’m not surprised that he was still strutting like a rooster.
I noted in my diary that, between songs, “Mick Jagger did his best impersonation of a regular punter when addressing the crowd: ‘Bit expensive though, innit? Two quid for a bottle of water…’”
Fleetwood Mac, Isle of Wight Festival 2015
I’ve been in love with Fleetwood Mac since I was 16 and my first boyfriend played me their album Rumours. I fixated on its cover image of Stevie Nicks in a wafty cape and ballet shoes. She’s hooking her leg over Mick Fleetwood’s knee. He looks like he belongs to a historical re-enactment society and does nothing for me. But I’ve always wanted to be more Stevie.
I’d never seen them live, then in 2015 Christine McVie, who had left the band in 1998 when she was 55, agreed to rejoin for the tour. Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsay Buckingham and Christine McVie headlining Isle of Wight Festival? I couldn’t believe my luck.
They were superb. They played wall-to-wall hits, everything from The Chain through to Tusk, Rhiannon, You Make Loving Fun and Gold Dust Woman and they made it look easy.
Christine McVie died in 2022, aged 79.
Muse, Isle of Wight Festival 2007 and 2022
I was blown away by Muse when I first saw them in 2007. I noted in my diary, “Matt Bellamy: ‘Quiet but deep’. A man of few words between songs, but who needs them when you’re that good. I bet he got his Grade 8 piano and guitar.”
I was excited for their return in 2022. Ian and I pushed our way closer to the front this time, but the truth is, what you see as an average height woman at a Muse gig is a sea of men’s armpits.
What you mostly hear is those same guys doing a bad karaoke version of the band’s greatest hits*, drowning out actual Matt Bellamy, who has momentarily put down his guitar and is almost within touching distance, but you still can barely see him for all the guys punching the air and waving their iPhones.
At least I’m at armpit level. There are women far smaller than me. Ian took pity on one petite lady, adrift in a sea of giants when Pink headlined Isle of Wight Festival in 2010. He offered to let her sit on his shoulders. “Then Pink flew across the arena suspended on wires and threatened to decapitate her,” he remembers. “It was like watching a low-flying crop duster approach. And my discs were compacted for ages.”
That’ll teach him for being chivalrous.
The most beautiful: Bestival
Ah, I miss Bestival. DJ Rob da Bank and his wife, Josie, a designer, created magic each September at Robin Hill Country Park on the Isle of Wight, between 2004 and 2016. It was a boutique festival with ambition – headliners included Pet Shop Boys, Stevie Wonder, Elton John – and imagination, encouraging fancy dress and silliness.
The country park setting meant if you tired of the action, you could just wander off into the woodlands and chill. It was full of little pockets of invention and thoughtfulness. Discos hidden in pretend trees; a Come Dancing tent where you could learn to jive; tree climbing, if you wanted to be adventurous.
Bestival’s family-friendly version, Camp Bestival, at Lulworth Castle in Dorset, is still going. I camped there with my son several years on the trot when he was little: our summer expedition. We loved it.
The muddiest festival: also Bestival
This was the scene at Bestival in 2008, as I queued for pie and mash. The “Hill” at Robin Hill gives you a clue as to why it was quite so apocalyptic. The incessant rain, plus everything and everyone at Bestival, poured down into the valley, where the stages were situated. (The Human League, Grace Jones, The Specials and Gary Numan were on the bill. I imagine they were supplied with snorkels.)
We chose that year of all years to hire a tipi. A coir mat was no substitute for a proper groundsheet. We lasted one night.
My then six-year old son said, “I can’t believe this is supposed to be fun.”
Special mention for Isle of Wight Festival 2012
The rain arrived before the punters that year, which led to massive delays on the roads and at one point, three ferries were queuing up in the Solent waiting to berth. People slept in their cars en route to the campsite, some without food. As one friend quipped, “Why didn’t they go to a shop? After all, you are never more than 10 minutes’ walk from a fudge shop on the Isle of Wight."
I fielded phone calls from relatives, who’d seen the chaos on the news, and were concerned for my welfare, even though I was cosy at home and didn’t go near the site until the main arena opened on Friday.
Islanders were affected by the jams, too. Funerals were missed at the crematorium. Students disembarked from school buses held up for hours in traffic and walked home. Some schools had to close altogether.
Headliners that soggy year were Tom Petty, Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen.
The most frustrating festival
V Festival, Weston Park, August 2003
This sounded a dream line-up: PJ Harvey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Morcheeba, Coldplay. We stayed with my sister in Stafford, took both our families and two cars. I was driving one, Ian the other.
Our son was a toddler, not yet two. We claimed a spot towards the back of the arena and threw down a picnic blanket. Rookie’s error. Everyone else wandered off to get closer to the action, leaving me lumbered with the baby and the bags. What had been a clear view of the stage at 2pm when we arrived was totally blocked by 6pm and people were stomping over our stuff.
PJ Harvey was brilliant, in her “rock guitar” phase, wearing a silky white mini dress and stiletto boots, singing To Bring You My Love.
When Coldplay struck up, my sister and I decided to do the responsible thing and exit early to beat the rush and give the baby a sensible bedtime. My car was close to the arena, which had been ideal on the way in, but it meant we were at the back of the queue to get out. We were stuck in that queue until 3am as everyone else got priority. With my one-year old son in the back. Aaaargh.
Ian and the others were home long before us, but couldn’t get in because my sister had the key. Ha!
View from the stage
Common People Festival, Southampton, May 2015
What’s it like to perform in front of 30,000 people at a music festival? I found out in 2015 when the choir I sing in was asked to open and close Fat Boy Slim’s set with harmonised renditions of Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat and Praise You. A total buzz! I can see why rock stars (and rock star DJs) never want to retire.
*If you would like a sound and vision taste of what it was like in the throng for Muse at Isle of Wight Festival 2022, here’s my 30-second clip of Uprising.
Do you have any stand-out music festival memories, good or bad? Please do comment if you’re able. I love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks to everyone who engaged with last week’s piece on my 1984 Interrailing adventures. Your own travel stories in the comments were wonderful.
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Until next time!
© Wendy Varley 2025
Back in 1970, an estimated 600,000 people descended on Afton Down to watch Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Doors and other legends at the third Isle of Wight Festival. The locals objected to the chaos and that was the end of the Isle of Wight Festival for the next three decades. (There’s a terrific behind the scenes documentary about the 1970 festival titled Message to Love – Isle of Wight Festival 1970, I think only available as a DVD unfortunately.)
In 2002 promoter John Giddings persuaded the local council to let him revive it. The first year it was a modest affair called Rock Island (Robert Plant and The Charlatans headlined), and after that it became re-established as a major music festival.
This is fun! I wrote about music, too, today. I wrote about Broadway show tunes. Although I think we're about the same age (you may be younger?) the music you wrote about was not my first go to. I can tell you about favorite musicals, but not so much about favorite concerts, though I did go to a few. David Bowie lived in Woodstock, and used to come into the bookstore where I worked. He wore very "regular" blend in clothing: slacks, windbreaker, button down shirts, and loafers. He was awfully lovely, and was always looking for street maps. He kept forgetting that we only carried hiking maps, and each time, I'd send him up the street to the town's hardware store...they sold maps! The year he died, we devoted our story slam theme to him. Each story had to include the line "We can be heroes, just for one day." I published the piece on my stack a while ago. xo
Glastonbury. 86 I think. Still a cnd festival and stalls selling hash brownies and people getting scrumpy in their inflatable plastic pillows! A far cry from what I expect today is like. The Cure, killing joke, the waterboys and of course lots of others. I still have the programme but following the theme of your last newsletter I am currently interrailing at 58 across Europe with my husband! Fun times! 😁💜