We arrived at Glastonbury 1997 far earlier than expected, after a peaceful drive through the English countryside, and so the field we parked in was still pretty empty. There was loads of space to set our two man tent up conveniently near the car.
The friends we were with carried a tent in with them, as they strode off to a main gate about a kilometer away with their event tickets. Jack Lord and I, however, had arrived spontaneously, disorganised and ticket-less.
But Jack, as usual, had a plan.
Jack was a guy, I'd been dating for a few months, who I'd made my way to England with also somewhat spontaneously.
I suck at planning and have always flown more by the seat of my pants than first class but, while this has landed me in some less than comfortable situations, it's made for some interesting memories and stories.
Why is it we always seem to remember the times that didn't work out as planned far better than those that went smoothly?
We were, however, organised enough to be wearing almost knee high gumboots.
I can't remember but I'd hazard a guess it was Jack's suggestion to buy them for the festival. He was supremely organised so it wasn't a lack of planning that landed us at Glastonbury sans tickets.
It was more that Jack was also cheeky as f*ck and probably thought it'd be more adventurous to go over the fence.
He'd waltzed down the aisle towards me, on the plane over to England, with a naughty grin and said, "Follow me." without any more explanation. So I did. And I ended up sitting next to him, in first class, after he thumped his ass down into one of a couple of empty seats and unashamedly began to rifle through the first class goodies.
No. We didn't have tickets for that either and were politely, but curtly, asked to remove ourselves from the very much more comfortable first class seats, before the plane even took off, by a slightly frowning stewardess.
"It was worth a shot." said Jack cheerfully, as we made our way back to Economy. So Glastonbury 1997 it was without tickets, but well prepared with gumboots, for what later became known as "Year of the Mud at Worthy Farm".
And over the fence we went
We found a crew with some scaffolding at a random unmarked spot at the fence, paid them ten quid and climbed up to the top gumboots and all.
A moment of hesitation and I jumped, landing neatly inside the festival grounds alongside my current boyfriend slash outlaw. He was a good guy, really, and we made sure to find the Greenpeace tent, during the event, to donate funds directly to them and make up for our dodgy entrance.
Jack's logic was that they'd get more of the donation this way anyway.
We dropped some liquid LSD almost as soon as we'd landed and the festivities began in earnest.
Yeah. I was a bit of a badass once upon a time.
Psychedelics were my besties and I could party harder than most of the guys I met. In fact, my nickname was once "Hardcore". So given by the organisers of some big music festivals out here in South Africa during a private all nighter.
I'm not proud of this by the way.
But I do share my history honestly with people to offer others an alternative way of walking in the world, sober, these days. Because when I go through the line-up for Glastonbury 1997 with sober eyes and a now crystal clear mind I just wanna weep l'il bit.
Although I was there like a bear I was, also, sadly not "there" enough to really appreciate the smorgasbord of music crammed into those few days.
And I missed most of it as a result. 🙁
A travesty, I'd say now. But back then partying like a rock star took precedence over pretty much everything else.
Needless to say... no sleep was had on the Friday night at all and I can't remember much of it except thinking The Prodigy was shite and leaving the main stage after less than two songs... and then chatting to an old guy, who was a festie goer proper, as the sun rose with some music still pumping somewhere in the background.
I'm pretty sure we saw Massive Attack while it was still dark but can't remember much of that either to be honest. Maybe some lasers, but I could have been tripping.
A few hours after chatting to the old festival hardcore, Jack and I decided to get some sleep so we'd be fresh for Saturday night.
And that's where the trouble began.
We made our way to the nearest gate to walk the dirt road surrounding the festival and find our way back to our tent.
We'd convinced the human manning the gate that we'd somehow lost our wristbands during the evening festivities. Jack was an expert blagger and could convince anyone of just about anything. We would, due to his smooth talk, be able to get back in to the festival after a nice rest.
Out we went with now official bands, wobbling merrily (and I know now, far too hopefully) along the dirt road.
But here's the thing...
Because we'd come over the fence, we had f*ckall bearing of which gate we should have exited to find our campsite. And while we'd been partying on... the once relatively empty fields around the festival area had filled up massively with festival goers. And their tents.
They say roughly 90 000 people attended Glastonbury 1997.
All I can say for sure is this:
The chances, as we looked out over the now hidden beneath tents to the horizon fields, of us ever finding our tent were less than finding a needle in a haystack on a nearby farm with less tents but far more hay.
And being sleep deprived and still pretty f*cked up on acid didn't help much either.
We circled the whole festival more than once, scanning the horizon hopefully in between talking what was undoubtedly utter rubbish.
After an hour or more we eventually gave up and headed back inside to... well... I can't remember the plan. I think it was to find our more carefully prepared buddies and hijack their sleeping quarters for a couple of hours.
Yeah - people who use drugs are generally selfish assholes kids. True story. Don't try this at home.
Or, preferably, ever.
By this stage the mud was almost knee deep and it was really hard going.
Trying to keep your balance in some areas was a serious challenge. And even lifting a foot, out of the almost knee deep mud in places, took a concerted effort. The fact we were far from sober and stable, hadn't eaten for over 12 hours and were now sleep deprived as well made the journey to find refuge pretty comical.
It was even funny to us.
For the first couple of hours anyway.
We did find their camp-spot eventually and our buddies kinda rolled their eyes and went back to sitting around a drumming circle, still sparkly un-muddied and respectable, while we crawled into their two man tent and lay on the bare ground canvas.
They'd only brought the tent in for shade, as it turned out, so there was no bedding inside. It was bright and hot but we tried to get some shut eye. The tent was an almost fluorescent orange and the sun was well up. The remnants of the LSD were washing over me and the fabric of the tent as well as I lay there awkwardly staring up at the roof.
There wasn't really much chance of doing anything more than lying there uncomfortably and resting our weary bodies for a bit, honestly. But, somehow, Jack managed to pass out for a while.
I, after some restless minutes, decided to go foraging for food to see if that would bring me down to earth a bit and help me get some sleep.
Also... we needed food by this stage.
That mission must've taken just under two hours and all I came back with were some bags of crisps.
Jack woke up and scoffed a few of them down...
and off we went again for more fun and games.
I abandoned him closer to sunset on a dance-floor somewhere and, determinedly, went out of a main gate again in search of our tent on my own for some hours.
No success was had, more acid was dropped to stay awake for Saturday night and the next thing I remember was standing in the thick of a massive crowd in the dark of night, and mildly in awe, as The Chemical Brothers opened their set.
I was nuts about them back then and the visuals were outstanding.
"Oh. This is gonna be epic!" I thought and turned to smile at Jack who was wobbling slightly and looking a bit confused. His eyes looked a bit glazed when I looked a bit more closely. Then he reached out and kinda leaned on my shoulder a bit. Then he leaned on my shoulder quite a bit more. And then his knees suddenly buckled completely.
I grabbed him underarm and began to haul him through the heaving crowd, mad lights flashing as the Chemical Brothers set took off into their second number.
I managed to get him to some fencing a bit away from the stage, with enough space for him to sit on the ground and get some air. I sat there, listening to the crowd going off to one of my favourite bands of all time that I'd never seen live before, watching a guy urinate on the fence less than two meters away from us while I smoked a cigarette...
waiting for Jack to get his sh!t together so we could go back in and see the show.
It never happened.
He'd taken too much, couldn't handle the music and the mind-bending visuals and it's something I've never quite forgiven him for. Or allowed him to forget all these years since 😆
I've also never quite gotten over missing them live that night, quite frankly. The Chemical Brothers.
As we were making our way back to f*ck knows where because we were officially homeless in the mud for three days and suddenly had to accept the situation in full...
we happened across a stage with a pretty big crowd of people, sitting ever so quietly, watching a solo artist. I think it was the complete contrast to what we'd just walked out of that made us stand stock still and join the silent crowd as quietly too.
We just stood there, not saying a word, mesmerised by the artist on a seemingly empty stage because he was the only one vaguely lit by a single spotlight. Singing solo and playing a guitar. An acoustic set.
He was dressed in a yellow suit and hat, with a green shirt and a red or pink tie. I could have those garment colours in the wrong order because...
well... day two of no sleep and tripping balls.
But his get up was flat colour graphic pop. Bold and clean. And very unusual to see at a festival like Glastonbury at all.
We couldn't see his face because of the hat he wore pulled down low. His voice was melodic and low as well. The guitar sounded raw and beautiful. It was simple and honest after the incredible lights and noise we'd just exited. That's all I can say about it. And it was impossible to not be quiet and listen.
The music, and his energy, was hypnotic.
After a few songs, he put the guitar down as a backing track came on... a slow and simple electronic beat. He slowly removed the hat and what looked (from a distance) like a bald head and face with a skull painted on them appeared, as he began to slowly dance and remove the rest of his attire.
The suit came off as the bass-line unfolded. Slowly, piece by piece, he revealed his body to be also fully painted. A muscle and skeletoned skinless figure now on the stage, moving with exaggerated steps and arms bent at strange angles.
As he peeled off the final layers of his suit, he began to sing "Psycho Killer" and I looked at Jack with with eyes wide open, suddenly totally awake and sober as all get out. "It's David Byrne!" I exclaimed excitedly.
We'd been watching him for some 45 minutes without knowing who he was, yet being unable to walk away from the performance.
I thought for years it was body paint until I did some research today, for this story, and read he used this costume in a few shows.
That has to be the single most mind-blowing performance I've ever witnessed live. Randomly stumbled upon, on a Jazz stage tucked away on the walk back to wherever.
This was the line up for Glastonbury 1997
- The Prodigy
- The Smashing Pumpkins
- Supergrass
- Beck
- The Levellers
- Terrorvision
- Echo & the Bunnymen
- Phish
- Radiohead
- Ocean Colour Scene
- Dodgy
- Cast
- Ray Davies
- Nancy Griffith
- The Longpigs
- Republica
- The Wannadies
- Murray Lachlan Young
- Ash (replaced Steve Winwood)
- Kula Shaker (replaced Neil Young)
- Sting
- Van Morrison
- Sheryl Crow
- Billy Bragg
- The Blue Nile
- Donal Lunny
- Glastonbury Town Band
- 60ft Dolls
- Cast
- David Byrne
- Death in Vegas
- Dodgy
- Dub War
- Dubstar
- G. Love & Special Sauce
- Geneva
- Jonathan Fire*Eater
- Kula Shaker
- Longpigs
- Murray Lachlan Young
- Nanci Griffith
- Neneh Cherry
- Ocean Colour Scene
- Primal Scream
- Radiohead
- Ray Davies
- Reef
- Republica
- Scarfo
- Silver Sun
- Sneaker Pimps
- Stereolab
- The Chemical Brothers
- The Dharmas
- The Dolmen
- The Orb
- The Wannadies
- The Orb
- Roni Size
- Cheikh Lô & Youssou Ndour
- Daft Punk
Here are the musicians I remember seeing:
Less than two songs of The Prodigy, same with the Chemical Brothers and some of David Byrne.
As I write this today I just wanna f*ckin' weep.
If there's any reason to encourage people to not use substances it'd probably be this indication of exactly how much a person misses when they're high.
Yeah - they may think they're having a blast. The thing is... they're mostly missing the experience while they're actually in it!
And this doesn't just pertain to awesome music festivals.
“This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
So while I can regale you with some pretty entertaining antics about my misspent youth (yeah, there are some entertaining stories because some of the sh!t I got up to was pretty out there and there were also some really cool humans met along the way), what I feel I should share more of these days goes something like this...
That evening ended up with me so tired I was almost in tears. Eventually I crashed on the wet grass, on a damp blanket outside the electronic dance tent with people stepping over me. Desperate to get some sleep. It was there or bust.
Not so fun and glamorous after all, huh?
And not so funny either because I'd lost my sense of humour a few hours before that.
More. This wasn't the only weekend I found myself "homeless" because... well... there were more festivals on more substances.
Once when I didn't take note of where I parked my car before the sun set and boy did the landscape look different in the dark on acid. I tried to head back from the dance floor to get some sleep at around 2am. It never transpired, of course.
I walked for hours, met some people, danced some more in between attempts and eventually found the car way past sunrise. No harm done but some cold, lonely and frustrating moments.
Perhaps those cold, lonely and frustrating moments should have alerted me to the fact that I wasn't actually having that much fun at all. But the social anxiety I had seemed the lesser of two evils back then.
That trip to England and Glastonbury also ended up with me back-packing solo through Spain a few months later. Where yet another homeless night transpired.
A night of lying on a bench at around midnight in the Ibiza harbour, because I had nowhere to stay again. Another spontaneous arrival in a pumping holiday town with no more accommodation available.
I eventually made my way to a nightclub at around 1am because I was bored. I met some friendly guys at the club who were relieved to exchange a taxi ride back to their hotel room for their couch for the rest of the night, because they'd blown all their money on partying.
Yeah - because of my lack of planning I've been "homeless" for a night or two more than once.
Or thrice.
And I could spin this as me being a brave, adventurous spirit who didn't give a damn. I could do this by lying by omission. As many of us do at times when we want people to like or admire us.
Almost second nature now because we need to keep our masks on tight.
We believe we're being honest because we don't actively lie, but we rewrite history so often simply by enhancing the moments we prefer to share and omitting the details that make us more vulnerable.
Honesty, like most things, can be very relative.
The flip-side of all of these spontaneous (and blindingly expensive) decisions was this:
What I didn't fully comprehend back then, while I was tripping solo through Europe with only a back pack, some clothes, a single pot and a small roll up tent...
was that I was sliding slowly into a full blown psychosis that would see me lose over two years of my life.
You probably think it was all the LSD (and the MDMA because rave culture back then) that caused the ruckus. But, in truth, what was loosely diagnosed as "schizophrenia" by the time I walked in to the biggest government mental health facility in Cape Town some years later...
was caused by unresolved trauma and marijuana.
Yep. A marijuana induced psychosis would be the closest thing that could describe it.
And I was so far gone by the time I figured I might want to seek some help, that I had all of the signs of full blown schizophrenia.
I learned, some years later, that over 70% of the cases of schizophrenia in that specific facility are related to marijuana, by the way. A now legal substance the many folks are claiming to be some kind of miracle cure all. While I'm all for plant medicines, this obviously concerns me enormously because of my personal experience.
Especially with the kids smoking it as par for the course these days.
And the lack of education, on this particular plant specifically, which is mostly seen as harmless and now medicinal and legal.
It's not.
THC (the compound in marijuana that gets you "high") is a highly psycho-active substance. And marijuana, specifically, is touted to be (arguably) the worst drug a person can use if they have any small leaning towards psychosis.
And no. People who have psychotic breaks or who are "schizophrenic" are not "disordered". We've been badly misinformed by mainstream approaches to mental health for financial reasons alone. More to follow on this (again).
In my experience, a psychosis is caused by unresolved trauma and a conflict between personal perception and external circumstances. If you use marijuana in such circumstances you can head into a full blown psychosis pretty easily. And it is extremely difficult to come back from.
If you ever do.
Because the nature of being psychotic is that the experience is confusing, very frightening at times, extremely isolating and... as a consequence... very traumatic in itself.
It's like piling trauma onto trauma and some people either never make it back. Or some do... but never really get over it.
I did manage to find my way back and out of it in full.
And this affords me some really useful experience to refer to, when I assist others, and a very different perspective when I get to meet others who are still "in it".
They often make complete sense, by the way...
the "voices" and thoughts that come through when a person is struggling to make sense of things.
It's simply a more lateral way of the mind expressing itself, and trying to bring certain experiences into awareness, that needs to be listened to with open-mindedness and curiosity to be understood.
Like anything does, really.
It's sad, then, that people with these reactions are now simply labelled "disordered" and abandoned to lifetimes of prescription medications by mainstream doctors.
And also ethically questionable.
I found full recovery.
So I know it's possible for others.
But back to really living...
Now on my bucket list
Attend Glastonbury sober with the kids, with a camper van and own private toilet.
Oh...
I spared you the part about the toilets on Sunday. Suffice to say if you can "make one there, you can make one anywhere."
Not for the faint of heart.
So yes. Next time better organised.
And next time... only sober, fully fuckin' wide awake and 100% "in it" with arms and eyes wide open.
The way life should be done. 🔥
Names changed, for this story, for privacy.
Featured image photo montage created with a cool arty bot created by @ausbitbank
and a photo from LMAC by:
Contributed to the #LIL by @redheadpei.
Thanks for your generous contributions to Hive, guys.
Hardened Dreamer
Mother
Warrior
Determined Dancer
and Stargazer
still...
Beyond fear is freedom
And there is nothing to be afraid of.
To Life, with Love... and always for Truth!
Nicky Dee