Michael Eavis

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2008

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway on Desert Island Discs this week is Michael Eavis. It's more than 30 years since he launched the Glastonbury Festival at his dairy farm in Somerset. Back in 1970, the headline act was Marc Bolan. His fee for appearing was just £500 and party-goers were given all the milk that the farm's herd of Friesians produced.

Over the years Michael risked losing his farm in order to fund the festival, faced years when the event was mired in mud and was criticised for booking a hip-hop act to top this year's bill. But, he says, he always felt compelled to keep the Glastonbury Festival going and now it attracts 180,000 people each year and brings millions of pounds into the local economy.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: How Great Thou Art by Elvis Presley Book: Blake by Peter Ackroyd Luxury: A mouth organ with instruction book.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2008. My castaway this week is the founder of the Glastonbury Festival, Michael Eves.
0:31.2	A Methodist dairy farmer from Somerset, he's always had an intense love of music, so much so that in the 70s he used to play the Kinks track Lola to his cows during milking. These days the cows still get milked but every
0:44.4	summer they hear the likes of Primal Scream, Oasis or Amy Winehouse and the roaring
0:49.4	approval of hundreds of thousands of fans. A very long way, Michael Eves, then, from your first festival,
0:55.2	your headline act back then in 1970, I think it was, was Mark Boland.
0:59.4	What did this glam rocker from London make of rural Somerset?
1:04.0	Well he was great actually, it was absolutely amazing performance.
1:07.4	When he turned up though, he turned up at the gate in a Buick or a Cadillac,
1:11.8	was a huge American cart.
1:13.7	It was all covered in some kind of velvet or something.
1:16.9	They put my hand on it and just stroke,
1:18.6	I said, a super car, a nice car you've got.
1:21.7	Because I did security and I took the money on the gate I did everything in those days you know and so he
1:27.5	screamed we said take your hands off my car man so was I being too friendly or something I I asked, I don't know.
1:34.0	How much did you pay him for that gig and T-Rex?
1:36.0	Uh, 500 quid and I couldn't afford it.
1:38.0	So I paid the deposit at 50 pounds. I had to pay the rest of from my milk checks.
1:42.0	Is it true that you also offered the festival goers on that first occasion, free milk from your
1:46.8	cards?
1:47.8	They got free milk as well.
	...

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