With the image of MUSE’s headline set ingrained into most people’s minds, every band is up against it the following morning. On the Other Stage, THE HOLD STEADY fail to project themselves beyond the front rows of hardcore fans. Still there are enough great lyrical moments that resonate, particularly the affecting Joe Strummer reference in Constructive Summer.
If the odds weren’t stacked high enough we then witness England getting hammered by the Germans in the specially created Football Field. While missing GRIZZLY BEAR and RAY DAVIES may seem like a mistake, watching Frank Lampard’s strike cross the line in a field of at least 40,000 people and the absolute hysteria that followed was one of the most beautifully transcendent moments at Glastonbury. It’s just a shame it lasted a mere five seconds before reality hit home.
WE ARE SCIENTISTS’ brand of spikey melodic punk leaves little impression afterwards: although their exquisitely comedic onstage banter does lift everyone’s spirits. Similarly the end of MGMT’s set appears strangely aloof. The electro pop hooks of their big singles are impossible to deny, but the performance veers dangerously close to self sabotage with the off-handed way it’s delivered to the predictably massive crowd.
STROKES’ lead singer JULIAN CASABLANCAS however is shockingly incredible in the John Peel Tent later: it’s a lesson in nonchalant brilliance. Looking unbelievably cool yet simultaneously ridiculous in a red puffer jacket, shades and a new garish hair style (a massive black wave of hair with a flamboyantly bleached splash on one side), he has taken his “don’t give a fuck” New York attitude to fantastical extremes. He spends most of the set either scaling lighting rigs or in the front rows; looking like he’s having the time of his life in this relatively intimate setting. Strokes’ songs Hard To Explain and The Modern Age are belted out like hymns to the enamoured crowd and he finishes with his Christmas song, simply because it’s one of the catchiest things he’s ever written. Genius.
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Finally STEVIE WONDER closes the festival on the Pyramid Stage with what surely must be one of the greatest sets the festival has ever witnessed. It’s an almost indescribably positive atmosphere that refracts over the huge crowd when he takes to the stage. He encapsulates the absolute scope and universal nature of Glastonbury immediately with a perfect performance of equally realised warm and massive moments. When people are setting off fireworks and chanting “there’s only one Stevie Wonder” three songs in you realise you’re observing something special.
By the time he plays Uptight, For Once In My Life, Fingertips and Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours in a row, this is undeniably one of those images that will flash before your eyes as you pass on: it’s that good. He invites Michael Eavis onstage to join him in singing a closing Happy Birthday dedicated to the festival’s 40th anniversary. It’s startlingly off key but so what, he’s a farmer who lets us party in his fields once a year; we love him unconditionally. Although you do worry how the televised coverage of this incident might look in retrospect, it’s just another one of those “I guess you had to be there” moments that makes Glastonbury so special.
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