Who invented the glastonbury festival

Radio X looks at the history of the Pyramid at Worthy Farm. Harkin, who has died aged 83, was the architect and set-designer who came up with the plans for the festival's iconic Pyramid Stage.

Along with festival co-founder Andrew Kerr , Harkin was one of the original group of people who met at Glastonbury Tor in and persuaded local dairy farmer Michael Eavis to hold an arts festival on his land. Eavis remembers the pair approaching him with the idea: "They both became aware of very powerful feelings of spirituality and agreed the need for a new age of looking at life towards a utopian society. Harkin later remembered the inspiration behind the Pyramid Stage : a vivid dream: "I was standing to the rear of an open-air stage next to a drum riser, looking towards the audience that someone was addressing.

The first Glastonbury festival in just had a regular open air stage, but for the second festival in June , Bill Harkin created a frame out of scaffolding in the shape of a pyramid and covered it with metal and plastic sheeting. The pyramid shape is thought to have a powerful positive influence - which was an idea in keeping with spiritual movement of the early s.

Back to Main menu Virtual events Masterclasses. When were music festivals first held? The ruins of a stadium at Delphi, Greece. This eclectic and growing archive includes a range of material from across the Festival's diverse and creative performances.

It includes posters, programmes, designs, interviews, film, photographs, correspondence, t-shirts, tickets and other memorabilia.

Personal accounts, maps and documents trace the origins of the Festival, and document how it has grown from an audience of 1, in to over , in , with millions of others watching live on the BBC or streaming performances online. Press cuttings reveal the relationship of the Festival with the local community and backstage documents such as set lists, backstage passes and films provide information on the workings of the Festival, and its evolution.

Supporting political action is at the heart of the Festival and this is documented through pamphlets and imagery. It was attended by 1, people. Audiences enjoyed performances by Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex who played in place of the Kinks who were due to headline. By the festival had been renamed The Glastonbury Fayre and the date was changed to coincide with summer solstice, an anniversary celebrated at nearby Stonehenge, home to the world-famous Neolithic monument. Key organisers now included Andrew Kerr and Arabella Churchill.

The team drew up a manifesto which set out the environmental and spiritual focuses at the heart of the Festival's ethos. The Festival founders saw the event as a place for the "expression of free-thinking people".

In the same year, the first Pyramid Stage, a replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, was designed and built by Bill Harkin and crew out of scaffolding, expanded metal and plastic sheeting. The location of this now iconic stage was determined by the Glastonbury Abbey and Stonehenge ley line, an invisible line that runs through the Vale of Avalon and is commonly believed by esoteric traditions to demarcate 'earth energies'. The founders acknowledged Glastonbury's 3, year history and its importance as a destination for pilgrims for centuries, captured by William Blake in his poem Jerusalem , later used as the words for Hubert Parry's hymn.

Bowie and Quintessence performed on the first Pyramid Stage in The film is a great record of the Festival and reveals how it attracted hippies who identified with the counterculture movements that emerged in the late sixties. Sadly it does not include Bowie's memorable performance.

Back in , organiser Michael Eavis decided to host an al fresco concert himself after seeing Led Zeppelin headlining at an open-air festival. The Kinks were scheduled to headline, but later pulled out, and so the headline act was Tyrannosaurus Rex, later known as T. In the show became the Glastonbury Free Festival. The event was paid for by sponsors, meaning that keen festivalgoers were treated to acts such as the late, great David Bowie without having to pay a penny.

It was also the first year that the Pyramid Stage appeared. Designed to replicate the Great Pyramid of Giza , the stage was one-tenth the size of the original and was built using scaffolding and metal sheeting.

Glastonbury is the largest greenfield music festival in the world, and its numerous stages showcase artists from many different genres. The Pyramid Stage is still one of the most famous, and has had three different designs over the years: the original stage, a second version in and a third in , the latest measuring an impressive 30 metres 98 feet tall and created out of four kilometres two and a half miles of steel pipes. This was where dance music was introduced to the festival in , when Orbital performed to great acclaim.

What was previously a niche genre was suddenly taking over one of the main stages at Glastonbury, throwing dance music into the spotlight. As well as the two main stages, areas and performance spaces on offer today range from the Green Fields, where visitors can appreciate nature and its beauty; the Unfairground, providing sideshows and rides for festivalgoers; and the Kidzfield, where families can relax and have fun with rides and activities.

While the early festivals were free, prices have steadily risen over the years. The number of festivalgoers has also rocketed, from 1, to ,