Glastonbury:
All Downhill From Here

“It can only go downhill from here,” he told Pollstar, after The Rolling Stones, Mumford & Sons, and Arctic Monkeys helped make the festival a TV extravaganza.

“We can’t better that one, can we?” Eavis also admitted he may have been at least partially responsible for the standoff between the BBC and the Stones over how much of their set could be broadcast live.

“I told the BBC that I thought it’d probably get an hour and that’s why it expected an hour,” he revealed. The issue was further complicated when it came to the matters of overseas transmission and repeats.

“I think it was good that they reached an agreement, but believe the band didn’t want to let people down after I’d said it would be an hour,” Eavis explained.

The Beeb had shown its commitment to the event by promising 250 hours of coverage of this year’s festival, 34 hours on TV, including slots on shows as diverse as “Songs Of Praise” and “The One Show.”  At times,  the festival coverage had more viewers than the most-watched events from last year’s Olympic Games. The national broadcasting corporation had 296 staff working on the event, costing license holders around £2 million. 

Although there have been times when Glastonbury has made as many headlines for rain and mud as it has for music, this year Eavis was pleased to see the showers that came on the opening day.

“It had been so dry that we’d had to water the tracks around the site to avoid being in a dust bowl,” Eavis explained. “The river level was so low that I had to buy some water.

“That’s not great economics is it? I was buying water and throwing it away. At least the stuff that came out of the sky was free.”

The other acts helping Glastonbury set a new benchmark June 26-30 included Dizzee Rascal, Primal Scream, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and Vampire Weekend.