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UNITED KINGDOM
 SUMMER PEARLS: London's architectural gems along the banks of the Thames
MUSIC: Europe's best pop and rock gatherings
BAGPIPES: The plaintive sounds of Scotland
SUBMARIUM: Journey to the bottom of the sea
FESTIVALS: Fun in the sun in West Belfast
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FRANCE and SWITZERLAND
VULCANIA: Blow your top at France's volcano park
ART: Berthe Morisot, the unknown Impressionist
FESTIVALS: Aix-en-Provence has it all
ART: The Barbizon School painters come to life
ART: Take a stroll through medieval gardens of delight
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SPAIN, PORTUGAL, ITALY and GREECE
SALAMANCA: The city splashes out on culture
MUSIC: God's rock stars: the singing Greek monks
FOOD: Italy's unusual culinary delights
FILM: Great outdoor viewing in Rome
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GERMANY and BENELUX
HORTICULTURE: The world blossoms at Floriade
BRUGGE: Belgium's second city shines
ART: Berlin's homage to multiculturalism
ART: The best of the world's artists on show at Documenta 11
DANCE: Czech twin ballerinos steal the show in Hamburg
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CENTRAL and EASTERN EUROPE
ART: Yugoslavia's modern art museum is back
ART: A retrospective of Samizdat art and writing from the Communist bloc
GRAZ: Austria's little-known city of culture
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THE NORDIC REGION
DESIGN: Denmark celebrates Arne Jacobsen
MUSEUM: Get a blast from the past at Stalin World
STOCKHOLM: Welcome to the Venice of the North
MUSIC: Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes on tour
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PLUS
LISTINGS: Other things to see and do in each region
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After a year off, Britain’s Glastonbury Festival is back with its famed mix of music and madness
By JEFF CHU and HUGH PORTER
One lament has echoed through the years like a bad variation of a Bowie song: Glastonbury's ch-ch-ch-changing! And since 1970, when a group of 1,500 hippies turned up at Michael and Jean Eavis' Worthy Farm in southwest England, it has. Each time it has been held, the three-day Glastonbury Festival has attracted more fans, more bands, more media coverage — and more worries that the famously laid-back atmosphere is inevitably going to be consigned to the annals of music history.
If anything, though, the changes made for 2002 suggest that the Eavis family is set on preserving Glastonbury and all the qualities — the mood, the music, the unparalleled bonding experience of getting grungy with tens of thousands of others — that distinguish it from other festivals. "I've been running this show for 32 years now," Michael Eavis says. "People know what we do and that's what they like. If we change any of these features, it would go belly-up."
In fact, it was Glastonbury's popularity that nearly caused it to go belly-up. At the last festival in 2000, people without tickets not only cut through the perimeter fences but also tunneled under and climbed over them. Authorities guesstimated that 200,000 people ended up on the farm, twice as many as the site license allowed. The dangers of overcrowding at musicfests became apparent later that summer, when nine fans were trampled to death at Denmark's Roskilde Festival.
Concerned about safety, Eavis canceled Glastonbury 2001. "We had become a bit romantic and a bit slack," he says. "We put on a good show, but the nuts and bolts of it weren't quite together." Enter Mean Fiddler, the management firm that also runs the Carling Weekend (see right). Some purists saw Eavis' pact with Mean Fiddler as a deal with the music-festival equivalent of the devil. Eavis says simply: "We needed a new operational manager." In exchange for a cut of the profits, Mean Fiddler will oversee security and operations. But Eavis and his daughter Emily — whose role has expanded since Jean Eavis died in 1999 — still control everything else, including the entertainment and Glastonbury's well-known ties to charity. Nonprofit groups have received a cut of the earnings ever since the festival first produced any — in 1981. This year, the beneficiaries will be Oxfam, Greenpeace, Water Aid and the Jubilee Coalition for debt relief.
One other minor controversy has erupted this year: Glastonbury's gone luxe. This has nothing to do with Eavis and everything to do with entrepreneurs who spotted an opportunity to cater to cash-rich, time-poor fans. For about €320, Cutting Edge Events will ferry festival-goers by helicopter to and from a neighboring farm. €1450 buys the ride, plus access to a vip marquee with separate (read: clean) bathrooms, bars and even an all-day, all-night barbecue. Eavis says he doesn't mind having the jet set swooping in to join the party. "The last person to live next door took me to court and tried to stop the festival," says Eavis. "As much as I don't like helicopters, I do prefer [this neighbor] to the last one."
It's no surprise that the moneyed crowd should want to be in on one of the best parties in Britain. "There's no other festival where you go just for the vibe," says Stuart Williams of Q, the music magazine. "If I was headlining the Saturday night, it would probably still sell out just because of the atmosphere and the unique mixture of tradition and just people having a good old time." Fortunately, the Eavises managed to find some better-known artists. The lineups won't be announced until several weeks before the event. But reliable rumor says that the stages will be packed with acts such as Dido, No Doubt, Moby, Blur, Rod Stewart, Stereophonics, the Charlatans, Manu Chao and Fatboy Slim — as eclectic and A-list as ever.
Some things, thankfully, haven't changed.
Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Somerset, England • Dates: June 28-30 • Tickets: adults €158, children under 12 free • Phone: +44 (0)115 912 9129 • Website: www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk
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