The Strange Secret Behind Why David Bowie Played Glastonbury By ‘Accident’
It’s hard to imagine a musician as legendary as David Bowie ever struggling to sell concert tickets. However, according to his publicist Alan Edwards, there was a period in the 1990′s where he apparently “could not give away” tickets to his shows.
Wild.
That’s because, at the time, Bowie was experimenting with rock band Tin Machine and they just weren’t grabbing audiences in the way that his music typically did.
However, although the Starman singer’s popularity was at a bit of a lull, he still somehow wound up closing the show at Glastonbury in the year 2000, with a performance that was so iconic, it was later released as a live album.
How did David Bowie get his Glastonbury 2000 slot?
Speaking with the Rockenteurs podcast in a new episode released over the weekend, Edwardsrevealed that, in a desperate bid for Bowie to return to his former glory, he leaked a story that the singer “might” play Glastonbury Festival, to get a gauge on how the public would respond.
Thankfully, his gamble paid off. The rumour – which was first reported by The Sunday Times – led to the festival being so inundated that Bowie was confirmed to play the very next day.
According to Edwards, Bowie called him and the team “naughty boys” for their stunt but thanked them for getting him a highly-coveted on the the line-up.
The crowd at Glastonbury that year was estimated at a quarter of a million people and Bowie paid homage to his Ziggy Stardust years by asking pianist Mike Garson to “warm up the audience” before the show started on his own, like he had done before Ziggy Stardust’s retirement show nearly 30 years earlier.
Speaking on the performance almost 20 years later in 2018, Glastonbury co-organiser Emily Eavis told David Bowie’s official website: “I often get asked what the best set I’ve seen here at Glastonbury is, and Bowie’s 2000 performance is always one which I think of first. It was spellbinding; he had an absolutely enormous crowd transfixed.
“I think Bowie had a very deep relationship with Worthy Farm and he told some wonderful stories about his first time at the Festival in 1971, when he stayed at the farmhouse and performed at 6am as the sun was rising. And he just played the perfect headline set. It really was a very special and emotional show.”
Garson said that after playing 1,000 shows with Bowie, this one remains his favourite.
Then David walked out. The crowd went crazy. We played for 2 hours. After playing with David more than 1,000 times, that night in Glastonbury was my favorite. Photo by Toby Melville pic.twitter.com/6EtsUTJ7al
— Mike Garson (@mikegarson) June 25, 2021
