Five times heavy metal ruled Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival was first staged in the heady days when hard rock ruled the pop charts. The festival, known during its 1970 debut as the Pop, Blues & Folk Festival, famously had T Rex as its initial headliner, and has seen the likes of Quintessence, Steamhammer and Hawkwind play over its initial few years.
So, when people say that Glastonbury Festival never books any heavy music, they are talking about a strain of music that the whole festival was built on.
This was, of course, a time when the musical event was still working out what it wanted to be. It wouldn’t actually be called “Glastonbury Festival” until 1981, at first settling on Glastonbury Fair for the 1970s before briefly rebranding as “Glastonbury Fayre” in 1979, presumably, for the proto-renaissance fair crowd. However, when it did start becoming the greatest music festival in the world in the 1980s, they dropped all traces of the patchouli-scented world of hard rock and heavy metal like a bad habit.
On the surface, it looks like they kept that up for the next four decades. Going from strength to strength on the back of more palatable genres like indie and classic rock, along with, latterly, pop and hip-hop. However, if you look closely, you can see a few sets where hard rock and heavy metal bands set the entire festival alight, and point toward a future where Emily Eavis connects her father’s crowning achievement back with its roots.
So, let’s look at the greatest sets that heavy metal bands ever played at the world’s greatest music festival!
Five times heavy metal shook up Glastonbury:
Rage Against the Machine (1994)
1994 was a crowning victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. I can’t imagine Michael Eavis thought that this would be arguably the best and most influential year for Glastonbury Festival ever, as two days before it opened, he watched the Pyramid Stage itself burn down. A replacement was found, though, and it’s just as well because a truly absurd number of punters made the trip down to Pilton for 1994’s edition, in theory, to see The Levellers headline the (replacement) Pyramid Stage.
One hopes that those reported 300,000 people turned up early enough to see the second headliner too, because they would have been lucky enough to see Rage Against the Machine absolutely tear the place to shreds. If the few songs recorded for TV are anything to go by, they absolutely did, as the fresh-faced Rage look out on a sea of humanity going absolutely bananas for them. In a year where everyone from Björk to Orbital to Radiohead to the Beastie Boys changed the very face of Glastonbury Festival, Rage Against the Machine were just as vital and unmissable as any of them.
Nine Inch Nails (2000)
The footage you can find of this set on YouTube is cringe-inducing. Not because of the performance, to be clear, although the make-up is a little much. No, it’s cringey because of the smirking toffs the BBC found to present their coverage, telling you to go and make a cup of tea during Nine Inch Nails’ set. Presumably because they’re not Starsailor or some other bedwetting, Noel-rock wastes of space. Joke’s on them, though, because this was NIN in their devastating prime.
Reznor and co took to the Other Stage half a year into touring their 1999 effort The Fragile. While it’s clear that not all is well behind the scenes, Reznor is a week away from a heroin overdose and looks it, they’re still one of the most captivating live bands in heavy metal. A solid gold setlist sees the lead singer relate and play something resembling a fan-favourite set as well, and by the time a climactic ‘Hurt’ ghosts across a rapt Other Stage, one wonders why they’ve never been invited back. Possibly the heroin.
Metallica (2014)
Legit, this might just be one of the biggest gambles in the history of the festival. While the likes of Jay-Z had fossils like Noel Gallagher going purple with Daily Mail-infected rage, the news that thrash metal giants Metallica had been recruited was met with a different kind of response. In their case, they had actually cool people like Jarvis Cocker and Alex Turner wondering whether a band who’d released albums called Kill ‘Em All really fit the “peace and love” atmosphere of Glastonbury Festival.
The thing is, they’re probably right, Metallica didn’t quite fit with the history of the event. Fortunately, Glastonbury was becoming a bigger, more diverse beast than it ever had been before. It was time they rolled the dice on people who didn’t fit the surroundings, and ‘Tallica’ were still an inspired choice. Surrounded by an onstage crew of about 50 or so die-hard fans, they showed the world that not fitting in can sometimes be your secret weapon through the medium of riff after riff after motherfucking riff.
Babymetal (2019)
People have this idea that heavy metal is “serious”. That all those grim-faced boys in their black t-shirts growling over detuned riffs are meant to be taken “seriously”. Thus, when people who don’t get metal point out that it’s all incredibly silly, they do so with the same smug superiority that people who point out that wrestling isn’t real have. As if anyone who actually gets both those bastions of outsiderdom isn’t already well familiar with acts like Babymetal, for whom the silliness is absolutely the point.
Let’s be real here, Babymetal are a novelty act: Three teenage girls blending Japanese idol culture with pulverising modern metal. I doubt that many people are turning up to their gigs with their lyrics tattooed on their throats, but that hardly matters. They are what they are, but they also stay fresh, creative and memorable. It’s also one tailor-made for festivals, which makes sense considering they broke the UK with an appearance at Sonisphere Festival and continued that fine tradition by flying the heavy metal flag at Glastonbury.
Gojira (2019)
A few years away from becoming a worldwide concern thanks to their unforgettable appearance at the Paris Olympic Opening Ceremony, Gojira brought their brand of progressive, thoughtful yet ruthlessly heavy post-metal to Pilton. This may seem like a step down in grandeur from the likes of Metallica and Rage Against the Machine, but that’s almost the point. Anyone who’s been to Glastonbury will tell you that the real festival happens away from the major stages, and this was a perfect example of what you can find with a little luck and adventure.
The Shangri-La is one of the smaller Glastonbury areas, yet one of the most radical and exciting. Part festival stage, part immersive spectacle, part rallying ground for progressive politics, one never really knows what’ll happen there until it happens. Nowhere was this more apparent than in 2019, when it was taken over by the metal label Earache Records for a heavy metal makeover. Gojira topped the bill there and in front of 7000 fans, staked a claim for alternative metal’s place at the greatest music festival in the world.
