Glastonbury's baaaaaaaack!
Emily Eavis helps organise the festival with her dad, Michael - she gave us the inside line on what's going on this year...
There’s much more to Glastonbury than just the band stages: what are you excited about this year that you think people should check out?
This year we have a new field called The Park. We introduced it to accommodate the extra numbers for this years festival, and it is gonna be an amazing spot, right at the top of the site, with incredible views, and top entertainment.
But the music’s definitely important, so whose performances are you looking forward to?
Did I mention our new area The Park? Well, there's a very exciting line-up there this year, including African express, incorporating many artists well and lesser known in an amazing 6 hour African music experience. We also have a few fantastic unsigned acts that I'm really excited about during the afternoon slots. Arcade Fire should be
great, looking forward to them and The Klaxons I will definitely be watching!
Any new features for this year?
Yes, our new area with art installations, music on a new open stage, cafes and bars, magicians and several other surprises hidden in the top right hand corner of the site.
How is the site looking? Are you going to be ready for the hordes?
It's looking good, the fence is going up, the ground is a bit dry, but a few more days rain should sort it out...just a few! Then we'll absolutely be ready for the hoards, even more than previous years with our new licence.
The festival’s getting harder to get into, as it’s so popular, so you’re under pressure to deliver a cracker – are you confident?
Absolutely, we still feel that its as much fun as it ever was, and in fact keeps getting better and better, but we try to maintain the core values that it had when it began 37 years ago. We have an amazing, huge and varied team of workers in every area that have incredible imaginations and make each field have something special to offer - something for everyone! The Price of tickets has gone up over the years but the amount you get for that ticket price is pretty phenomenal compared to any other one off concert ticket.
For Glastonbury virgins, what are your top tips for getting the most out of their time?
Don't get stuck to a timetable of all the bands you want to see, because it will probably just get stressful, be pretty hard to stick to and you'll miss an awful lot of great stuff that you wander through, you wouldn't have ever known was there! Move round the whole site, there's so much more to see than just the music, there's circus, theatre, green fields with healing and alternative therapies, the lost vagueness area with ballroom dancing and gourmet dining, speed dating in the Greenpeace field, I mean just lots to check out. Read the daily paper on site every morning for some top tips!
Are there plans for cloud-dispersing cannons or other anti-rain measures this year...? Or stalls handing out emergency wellies?
Always plenty of stalls with wellies! To be honest, apart from our brand new drainage system filtering the rainfall off the site, which is pretty great, the weather is one thing we can't plan, and just have to pray that its dry. But even if it rains, it's amazing how little it puts people off, they still seem to have a great time.
Will you get much chance to enjoy things over the weekend, or do you have to work all the time?
I don't have to work all the time, but I am busier and busier every year. Having just taken on this new area it's bound to have a few hitches that'll have to be ironed out over the weekend, but I'm really looking forward to it.
What stage are you at with preparations? Frantic, nervous, looking forward to it?
Looking forward to it, with a bit of frantic mixed in! My dad always has this nightmare a couple of weeks before that no-one will turn up! I mean it's incredibly busy now but it's all good, I'm down in Somerset full time during the week, so yes, its hands on now for the next 6 weeks.
Finally, you’re inviting all these hundreds of thousands of people over to your place – what should they bring, and are there any house rules you’d like them to observe?
Please don't pee in the streams! We always have announcements about it on the stages, but people still do it, it really affects the wildlife in the area, and with more portaloos than ever, being emptied more than ever before there's no real excuse!
Other than that I'd just urge people to have a brilliant time, bring your waterproofs and wellies just in case…oh, and an inflatable lilo is a good move!
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