10 times the Other Stage was the heart of the Glastonbury Festival
Ask any Glastonbury Festival lifer and they’ll tell you that the Pyramid Stage is for tourists. Sure, a Macca or a Dolly Parton or a Leonard Cohen will draw them to the main stage once in a blue moon, but to them, the real ‘Glasto’ happens at the fringes. It happens at the smaller stages where you discover some new band that’ll take over the world. Or at some stone circle in a deep, dark corner of the festival, only discoverable while on a very specific strain of E.
However, if you’re new or even if you’re in the early stages of your Glastonbury career, that can seem a little intimidating. You never know what’ll happen if you throw yourself into the most niche corners of the world’s greatest music festival without a primer for what you’re doing. So, if you’re ready to start adventuring, the Other Stage serves as the best starting point for the lesser-spotted sides of Glastonbury.
You’ll see a more esoteric, alternative strain of music while still looking forward to some of the biggest, most exciting names of the day. I mean, look at the (at the time of writing) upcoming bill on the Other Stage this Saturday. Ezra Collective into Deftones into Charli XCX goes ferociously hard, and if you look into the history of Glastonbury’s second stage, you’ll find no shortage of similarly incredible moments.
So, here’s a list of the greatest sets, moments and lineups to ever grace Glastonbury Festival’s unsung hero, the Other Stage.
10 times the Other Stage was the place to be at Glastonbury
Portishead (2013)
Booking an act that flies in the face of Glastonbury’s vibe of hippy good times is always a big ol’ risk. After all, the weekend where a field in Pilton becomes the centre of the musical universe has become far more about the vibes than the music. Those are carefully maintained, and, if you’re not careful, booking someone who has no time for them can lead to the almost comically awful sight of Primal Scream trolling the Pyramid Stage for the hell of it.
On the other hand, sometimes the folks at Glastonbury Festival need a brief respite from MDMA, flower crowns and having your aura cleansed. The world is a terrifying place, and you need to confront that with music, rather than distract yourself from it. Portishead’s astonishing Other Stage headline slot in 2013 was exactly the tonic people needed as the trip-hop giants provided a cathartic dose of reality with their intense yet stylish sounds.
Iggy and the Stooges (2007)
Sometimes, watching your idols of rock get old can be very dispiriting. A reminder that Father Time spares no one and makes us all older, more sensible and more boring in the end. However, Chronos clearly chickened out when the man born James Michael Osterberg was next on his “to visit” list. Nowhere is this more apparent (or understandable) than when Osterberg, known to the world as Iggy Pop, headlined the Other Stage on Saturday night of the Glastonbury Festival 2007.
Pop, having turned 60 a month prior, proved himself as dangerous, unpredictable and outrageous as he’s ever been in an absolutely colossal set. One that saw him howl “I can’t stand this bullshit anymore!” halfway through and invite the entire crowd onstage. An invitation which seemingly half the crowd thought it rude to turn down. With a cool 50 extra bandmates around him, the band kicks in to ‘No Fun’. Utter magic that few bands have created before or since.
The Streets (2024)
It’s easy to sneer at Glastonbury and the way that hippies can get all dewey-eyed about just the right song hitting at just the right time, when the sun breaks through the clouds or the rain stops (or starts) at just the right time. However, in 2024, The Streets showed that the festival’s feted vibe of togetherness is no myth with their Other Stage set, which is completely fitting for a man like Mike Skinner.
The Streets’ mainman has spent his entire musical career searching for a bloke-ish transcendence. While he’s achieved moments of it on record, this was an entire live set of it. What’s more, it took place in that holy moment where the sundown bathes everything in gold. Skinner felt it too, spending large portions of the set in the photo pit, walking into (sometimes even onto) the crowd and talking to the audience like he was one of their own up there. Principally because that’s exactly what he was.
Dave (2019)
Hip-hop has always had a rough ride at Glastonbury. Jay-Z was a revolutionary booking that had assorted Gallaghers and their acolytes soiling themselves with rage. The less said about Kanye, the better. However, British hip-hop has always gone down a lot better. Stormzy and his Banksy-designed stab vest waltzed away with one of the defining headline slots of all time. However, on the Other Stage that very same year, there was a moment that might just be one of the most famous in the history of the festival.
Off the back of his debut album Psychodrama, Dave was already halfway through one of the most anticipated sets of the weekend when he spotted a young man in the audience wearing a Paris Saint-Germain shirt. Clearly, this was a man aware that their captain at the time shared a name with one of Dave’s biggest singles. Dave invited Alex on stage, gave him a mic and, five years, and 44million views on YouTube later, Glastonbury history was made.
Blur/Oasis/Radiohead/Pulp (1994)
One can imagine that every scrap of space available at the Other Stage (then called the NME Stage) on Sunday night at Glastonbury 1994 must be taken up by time travellers to see arguably the greatest individual bill in the festival’s history. Certainly the most star-packed, give or take the odd Inspiral Carpets appearance. At the time, it must have been bizarre for that band to see their old roadie take the stage playing guitar for the fifth band to play that day, some newly signed ‘Manc’ lot called Oasis.
After a slightly bewildering set from hip-hop nobodies Credit to the Nation and a no doubt sterling turn from national treasures Chumbawumba, Pulp were up next, one year out from their career-defining Pyramid Stage slot. However, the night belonged to the final three bands. Radiohead debuted a number of songs from The Bends, Blur began their Parklife victory lap and gave headliners Spiritualized an absolute mountain to climb as a follow-up. Once-in-a-generation stuff, but you never know with Glasto, it could always happen again.
Lorde (2017)
In 2017, Lorde was tasked with one of the ultimate poisoned chalices in pop. Her debut single had been one of the biggest hits of the decade, and her debut album followed suit. Now, the pressure was on for the Kiwi icon, still only 21 at the time, to do it all again. History tells us that while her sophomore effort, Melodrama, was a critical darling, no one really noticed at the time. To them, I say go back and watch her titanic headline slot on the Other Stage in 2017.
Right there, you’ll see a whole lot of people absolutely losing their minds over the newly released Melodrama, alongside a stage set and a performance that shows that Lorde was taking no chances on making this a night to remember. The climactic ‘Green Light’ has to be seen to be believed, with dancers carrying green flares whipping the massive crowd into an even bigger frenzy than they were in previously.
Queens of the Stone Age (2002)
The footage of this set is pretty freely available on YouTube. One has to wonder whether any of the countless people you can see walking across the campsite and deciding against checking out this new band absolutely mullering the Other Stage have spotted themselves in the footage. Maybe they can’t bear to remember the time they could have seen one of the 21st century’s defining rock bands at the peak of their powers at Glastonbury and decided against it. That would be understandable.
After all, this was after Rated R had turned the band from stoner-rock curios to one of the most exciting outfits in the world. This was when they were cooking up Songs For The Deaf, the album that would capitalise on that momentum and send them skyrocketing into the mainstream. Most of all, this was when they had literal Dave Grohl drumming for them. I wouldn’t want to remember passing up that opportunity, too. At least we can relive it today.
Orbital (1994)
Michael Eavis is a national treasure and deserves a whole lot of credit for making Glastonbury as boundary pushing as it is today. It’s something of a miracle that he was able to look past his own tastes and put such a wide variety of bands on, but for a while, rave music was his limit. He could put everything from Hawkwind to Kool & The Gang on, but repetitive beats? They had no place at Glastonbury. At least for a little while.
After a few dipped toes into having dance music at the festival, 1994 saw the moment it went all in. Orbital topped the bill and, in front of 40,000 people going utterly ballistic, the bet paid off. While the NME Stage on Sunday is remembered by history, as mentioned previously, the only thing anyone was talking about at the time was how much Orbital smashed it. And whether anyone had any of those ‘Es’ they’d heard so much about.
Lady Gaga (2009)
To many, the announcement that Lady Gaga was playing at 2009’s Glastonbury Festival was as much a sign of the end times as Jay-Z’s headlining slot the year before. You have to remember, this was still the Gaga of ‘Poker Face’ and ‘Just Dance’, when she was considered nothing more than a gimmicky, upstart pop diva. The idea that she would be given a slot at the greatest musical festival ever seemed akin to giving Jedward or The Cheeky Girls a slot. Then the gig actually happened.
Yes, Gaga was just as ludicrous and shocking as people expected. She wore a brassiere that shot sparks, wore a see-through jacket made of bubbles, and rode a scooter onstage. However, she also rocked just as hard as anyone else that entire weekend and showed off the sheer musical chops that, at the time, precious few people were aware of. Gaga the pop star died there, and Gaga the musical and cultural force was born.
Christine and the Queens (2016)
So, 2016 sucked. It sucked in much the same way that every single year that came after it has sucked but, back then, we hadn’t experienced it before. Bowie died. Then Leonard Cohen died. Then Prince died. Things were desperately sad, then things started getting really scary. That year’s Glastonbury Festival started up in a desperate state. The news of the Brexit referendum result filtered through the site on Friday, 24th, and the overall mood of the festival was lower than it’d ever been.
This wasn’t helped by the fact that the weather was apocalyptic even by the festival’s standards. Michael Eavis called in and said that he’d “never seen mud like it in [his] whole life”. This gave the poor acts opening up their stages one hell of a rough crowd to warm up, both spiritually and literally. Of all of them, precisely one was up to the task and in doing so, arguably created the greatest Other Stage moment in the festival’s long history.
Christine and the Queens used that moment to break into the mainstream. Crafting a performance so wonderfully human that even the most rain-soaked, mud-encrusted punter in total despair at the state of the world had to crack their first smile in days. It’s very telling that the album that Redcar was pulling from during that performance was named after the very thing that people needed more than ever in that damp, depressing moment: Chaleur humaine—to us British, human warmth.
