The sun rose over Day 3 of the 1997 Glastonbury Festival. We’d managed to survive all the rain and mud of the last few days to make it to Sunday. We’d had a great time, and were lookin forward to the last day of music, but we had decided that we’d pack the tent up and sleep in the car so we could beat the rush out on Monday morning. So before the first band of the day Andy and I started dismantling everything and making a few trips through the mud plains to the car.

Quick cautionary tale : Due to all the mud, and not wanting to have to try and put on mud caked boots in the middle of the night, we’d been using a couple of plastic cider bottles if we needed to go for a pee over night. Coming back from one of the trips to the car, dropping off our bags and tent, we discovered that the two bottles of “cider” that we’d left at our site had been pilfered by some lucky chancer who obviously saw what they thought were two pretty full bottles of alcohol just laying unattended and had decided it was their lucky day. Part of me has always wondered when they discovered that the contents wasn’t apple cider (well, I’m guessing part of the contents was apple cider in a sense…) and would have loved to seen their reaction. Anyway folks, if you see unattended bottles at campsites in festivals it’s probably wise to just leave them be…

We’d woken up and dismantled everything early enough that we still managed to catch the first band of the day, Perfume, on The Other Stage at 10.30am. Perfume were a UK Indie band that had a few Indie hits, but they also split up later this year, but atleast they managed to get a Glastonbury appearence under their belt before they did. They were ok but not really my thing.

The next two bands on The Other Stage would go on to be festival headliners around the world later in their respective careers. But for now they were two more indie rock bands building their reputations and working their way up. At 11.20am was a Welsh band called Stereophonics, followed at 12.10am by Scottish band Travis. Both bands would release their debut albums later this summer – with Travis’ “Good Feeling” reaching #9 and Stereophonics “Word Gets Around” getting to #6 – and both would then have a string of #1 albums for a while afterwards. I was not a fan of either band. They played the kind of music I found pretty boring and uninspiring. My opinion of Travis didn’t really change over the years, although I was amazed to discover in 2005 that a couple of songs I really liked, “Dakota” and “Superman” were both by Stereophonics. I ended up picking up the album both songs were on, “Lanuage, Sex. Violence. Other?” and it was one of my favourite albums for quite some time and one I still listen to these days. Never managed to get into their other material though.

Heading over to the Pyramid Stage we saw another Scottish band, The Blue Nile, who had been around since the mid-80’s. I knew the name, but would be hard pressed (then and now) to name any of their songs. I thought they were better than the three earlier bands, but not really by much. Still wasn’t keen. Hmm… Sunday hadn’t started as well as the previous two days… well, that was about to change…

At 2pm Billy Bragg appeared on the Pyramid Stage. now I had always been a bit dismissive of Billy Bragg. I hadn’t been all that keen on his music and he was very (left leaning) political. My opinion of him change with their performance. He was ace and his music certainly works incredibly well at festivals… especially after several days of being caked in mud and removed from civilization! Great stuff!

American Sheryl Crow was next up, bringing her blend of Country Rock to Somerset. Her best known track was “All I Wanna Do” from 1994 but she had plenty of great tracks and was really good. Certainly got the festival jumping.

We then headed back over the The Other Stage to see Welsh Indie Rockers Super Furry Animals who had a string of Top 30 singles from 1996 all the way through to the mid 00’s. Not really my thing, but they were good live. They were followed by Lo-fi rockers Pavement who’d just released their fourth album, “Brighten the Corners” earlier in the year. I knew of Pavement but they weren’t a band I had anything from. They put on an excellent show though. Staying on The Other Stage, with the rain starting to return to the festival, we watched Live. I’d seen Live back in April (GIG 325) and was going to see them again a few days after the festival finished. Whilst I liked them, and they were good live, I’d have probably given them a miss at Glastonbury had there been other bands in the timeslot that I had wanted to see – but the choices were either Sting, The Jungle Brothers or Beth Orton – none of whom grabbed me – plus Andy had never seen Live and was keen to check them out. They were, once again, very good.

We headed over to the Acoustic Tent for the first time so we could catch Ani DiFrano. I’d gotten in to Ani Di France with her 1996 album “Dilate”, which is a great album to this day. It was her seventh album, she’s up to twenty albums now – with several dozen more live albums, compilations and other works. I had been looking forward to seeing her live for a while so having the opportunity to catch up on the Sunday evening of Glastonbury wasn’t something I was going to miss. Plus the Acoustic Tent was, as the name suggests and unlike The Pyramid or Other Stages, under cover – and the rain was certainly picking up again. Ani was really, really good and I’m so pleased to have caught her live. She would have been my favourite of the Sunday had it not been for an unexpected band to pip her at the last minute.

The rain outside had now become torrential and as we were both undercover in the Acoustic Tent we decided that we’d just stay there and stay dry whilst we could. There was one more band on, and they’d be the last one we saw before the festival closed down and we’d head home tomorrow. It wasn’t a band we’d planned on seeing, or had even really acknowledged would be playing… but they turned out to be one of the Top Three bands of the festival alongside Republica and Neneh Cherry for me.

The Bootleg Beatles are, as the name suggests, a Beatles covers band. They not only cover the songs but have multiple cosutome changes throughout their set to dress the way The Beatles would have been dressing at the time of the songs they were playing. Whilst I obvious know the Beatles, and know a load of their songs due to the amount of airplay they received, I didn’t at this point own any Beatles albums (my parents did) so wouldn’t really be what I’d call a fan. I liked them well enough, the same way I liked a number of bands from the 60’s and 70’s that I’d heard growing up on the radio or parents stereo.

The Bootleg Beatles were phenomenal live and the absolute best way to wrap up my inaugural Glastonbury Festival.

After the encores had finished we headed to the car park (having packed away the tent earlier in the morning) and slept in the car overnight. We decided to leave about 5.30am as we were both awake and wanted to beat the rush of departures before the car park jammed. The car park was a mud pit though. I had to try and push the car from behind whilst Andy tried to manoeuvre it to some track that had been laid down so it could actually drive on its own. Of course I was completely covered head to head with mud as the wheels spun! But it worked and we managed to get the car out of the car parks and on to the main road so we could head home. Apparently it was a mess a few hours later, with all the cars leaving just making the mud situation worse, so I’m glad we decided to leave when we did. It also meant I was back home by 9.30am and could have a nice warm shower and something to eat which wasn’t noodles, pulled pork baps or bacon burgers!

A fantastic three days of music, despite the weather trying it’s best to dampened things. I had two more festivals lined up for the summer of 1997 and was very keen on also getting back to Glastonbury again in the future.