Michael Eavis has said that it was the arrival of the Smiths at Glastonbury in 1984 that marked the start of the evolution of the festival from a muddy field crawling with hippies, to a muddy field crawling with slightly more chi-chi hippies, and a bunch of students.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Eavis said of the appearance by Messrs Moz and marr, "We’d been having hippy stuff up ’til then, and suddenly we had the Smiths, who were very cool, and very fashionable. And it just changed the whole event. It suddenly became a big pop festival then."
Eavis also said that Glastonbury would have ended in 2000 were it not for the death of his wife Jean in 1999. "We’d agreed we were going to retire. And unfortunately Jean never made it," Eavis told the programme. "So I was more determined to carry it on because I didn’t have a girlfriend or anything. And of course all the kids were very keen on it. So it was like my new lady friend in a way, the festival."
On the programme, Eavis selected Q-tastic music from The Smiths, Dylan, Marc Bolan, The Grateful Dead, Stone Roses, Coldplay and Elvis doing ‘How Great Thou Art’. Find out more about the show at the BBC website.
