Glastonbury - A festival needs a future

Veterans are top of the bill, but Glastonbury should still be a place for bands on the up, says Nick Hasted

Veterans are top of the bill, but Glastonbury should still be a place for bands on the up

When Bruce Springsteen steps onto Saturday's Pyramid Stage at this year's Glastonbury, the 59-year-old will effectively headline the whole festival. With Neil Young on Friday and a Sunday bill including Blur, Madness, Nick Cave, Tom Jones and Tony Christie, last year's complaint of frightening festival-goers with the hip-hop sounds of Jay-Z has been replaced by jibes at decrepit old-timers. The charge would for once seem to hold some merit. You could go the whole weekend without seeing any creativity that had been sparked this century.

With tried and tested stars also dominating other festivals (the allegedly hipper Latitude offers Grace Jones, the Pet Shop Boys and Cave, again) you may wonder just how Glastonbury, which brings a small city of rock fans together for communally affirming moments, will survive in a future where such universal stars are becoming rarer (Radiohead were perhaps the last).

But such worries fail to comprehend the nature of Glastonbury, and rock stardom. Even with Springsteen making his first ever UK festival appearance and Young showing up on the same bill, these veterans will see it as simply one more stop on yet another tour. For festival-goers too, their days of pop vitality are long gone, making them curiosities more than a reason to attend. Their presence acts as a security blanket, a reassurance that you will hear "Like a Hurricane" even if, as Glastonbury weather makes likely, one blows through the site. There are precedents for such old reliables, some (a Beatles-favouring McCartney in 2004) more successful than others (a confused Rod Stewart in 2002). But the festival would survive without any.

Glastonbury, after all, is about crowning bands, not confirming their power. It is remembered for the moments when summits were reached. Pulp's replacement for the Stone Roses as Saturday headliners in 1995 saw Jarvis Cocker's apotheosis as a fiercely intelligent pop star when he sang, during "Sorted for E's and Whizz": "Is this the way they say the future's meant to feel; or just 20,000 people standing in a field?" Radiohead, in 1997, playing with no monitors and unbeatable passion as OK Computer began its passage towards global success, are still considered by Michael Eavis as his greatest festival moment, one so thrilling it confirmed his desire to continue.

Such nights are now so legendary that headlining Glastonbury has become a rite of passage, the final proof that bands have arrived, although the sparks don't always fly with such fervor. Travis and Coldplay passed their tests with rather bland ease in 2000 and 2005 respectively. The Arctic Monkeys survived an uninspired and weirdly quiet Friday set in 2007. The general decline from Britpop's rabble-rousing heyday towards politely affirmative anthems and Saturday-night sing-alongs offering little else, is more of a threat to Glastonbury's musical health than the supply line of Bruces and Neils.

It's clear that Glastonbury meets the Super Furry Animals singer Gruff Rhys's definition of a great festival given in a recent interview in The Independent. A good event, he said, is one "where the atmosphere is so great you soak in the spirit of the music without actually seeing the band." Mud so deep there have been cases of trench-foot, drug excess and personal duress can dominate your weekend. And though the Pyramid Stage generally tends towards the conservative, look further down this year's line-up and you'll see Fleet Foxes, Lily Allen and Regina Spektor warming up for Neil Young, and Dizzee Rascal and Kasabian bracketing Crosby, Stills and Nash, pre-Bruce. Wander the other stages, and everyone from Emmy the Great and Little Boots to Doves and Ray Davies will be waiting for you. The year's musical pulse is there to be felt, as always.

Glastonbury can be largely defined by the nights which bring tens of thousands together, and age never really enters the equation. Last year, Leonard Cohen provoked a reverent afternoon hush, and the Verve and Amy Winehouse offered rivetting pandemonium. International icons such as Young aren't needed for these thrills. There will always be newer names to seize the moment in their place.

Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs seem to be faltering as such long-term prospects, more weighed down by early hits than Springsteen, even. If Winehouse ever regathers herself, she has the talent to bring a crowd together, and disrupt it with musical drama.

Next year's perfect Saturday headliner, though, would surely be Elbow. Like Pulp, they waited for more than a decade to reach the top. They have carried humane, kindly wisdom with them, and are a band who can hit heightened musical states. "Grounds for Divorce" would be an unlikely serenade to send festival-goers back to their tents. That would prove that pop is an ever-moving parade. Springsteen and Young are living landmarks from an age when it reliably united whole generations. But bands such as Elbow retain the power to stir the spirit of everyone who hears them. And for Glastonbury, that'll do.