Friday, June 21, 1985

Rats at Glastonbury CND Festival

The Boomtown Rats played the Glastonbury Festival along with Aswad,Clannad, The Colour Field, Ian Dury, King, The Pogues, Midnight Oil, Thompson Twins, Misty In Roots and Maria Muldaur. The Boomtown Rats were pelted with mud by an unappreciative audience! Worthy farm was considered too small to accommodate the Festival so the neighbouring Cockmill farm land was purchased to enlarge the site by a further 100 acres. The sheer size of the newly enlarged site meant that communications were stretched to the limit - the ultimate test for any organisation. With tractors the only possible means of towing people off the site in seriously bad weather. Michael Eavis was pleased that, “we have had the mud bath and proved we can still cope with the conditions”. £100,000 was raised for CND and local charities. Attendance: 40,000.Tickets: £16. Programme: 90p.

http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/aboutus/index.asp?id=38

3 day tickets for just £16!!

Set List included

  • Charmed Lives
  • Neon Heart
  • Wind Chill Factor
  • Dave
  • I Don't Like Mondays
  • Talking In Code #
  • Hurt Hurts
  • Rat Trap
  • Drag Me Down
  • Looking After Number 1

Just a comment / observation. I was at Glastonbury in 1985 (in the mud!) when the Boomtown Rats played. (Saturday afternoon, I think!) - the second time I'd seen them, the first being at the White Rock, Hastings, about 1982. Glastonbury was one month before Live Aid and they performed 'Mondays' JUST like they did at Wembley - the big pause. That pause blew my socks off then, without the power of the message that came across at Live Aid. I've often said that Bob was rehearsing it when he did it at Glastonbury; we'll never know, but it was a blinding song when I was 14 at school - and still makes my hairs stand on end now!- Gary, Saffron Walden, England

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=698

A BBC Transcription of this does exist. (I don't have it before you ask!)

Record Label:
BBC TS
Catalogue No:
CN4658/S
Country of Origin:
UK