Glastonbury we miss you!

The Bootlegs have a long association with Worthy Farm and its famous Festival. This year was to be Glastonbury’s fiftieth anniversary, and incredibly it would have been the Bootleg’s twelfth performance at the Shepton Mallet site. This weekend we’ll be taking a look back at a few highlights… BB’s at Glastonbury Part 1: 1994/5 Into the real world… It’s hard to imagine how wary the Bootlegs (Mk II) were that afternoon they tentatively pulled up to play the Acoustic Tent for the first time on 26 June 1994. This was the world of contemporary music, of the NME, the sacred realm of bands that make records. “We’ll get bottled off,” predicted Bootleg Bassman, Paul Cooper. BBC Radio were broadcasting the performance live and after Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze finished his solo set the crowd not only stayed but grew. For us? To say the set ‘stormed it’ was an understatement – it couldn’t have gone better. It was a major turning point in the history of The Bootleg Beatles. Unbeknownst to the band, grooving in the audience that night were the newly crowned kings of Britpop – Oasis, Blur, Cast and the rest. The following year the BBs were chosen to open the Festival’s final, sun-drenched day on the Main Stage. Broadcast live by Channel 4, amazing scenes of the amassed thousands singing along to Hey Jude were seen on TV sets across the nation. Backstage, soon after the Bootlegs spot, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page (due to play later on in the afternoon) were overheard talking: ‘The Bootleg Beatles went down really well – we’ll have to be at our best…’ Unbelievable…and true!