Scott Williams, 1992

1992 was our second year at Glastonbury Festival, we’d been first in 1990 travelling there by coach and walking from the town itself to the Festival site in Pilton, there were loads of walking along the road, music playing from cars in the queues - beers and smokes being passed around and by the time we’d arrived on site we opted to plonk our ridge tent in front of the Pyramid. That year my girlfriend (now wife) and I had hardly moved from the tent, except to get food and use the facilities. We’d woken up on the Monday after the end of the Festival to the sound of shouting and we could hear the trouble between the Travellers and the security kicking off. We were terrified and after the trouble the Festival had a year off, this time we took the train to Taunton and then the Badger Bus to Glastonbury, we spent the day wandering around the town before hitching a lift into the site.

We were dropped off near Pedestrian Gate C and walked down the ‘hill of death’ and into the Glebeland, camping areas were almost full so we kept walking, crossing the railway line and eventually settling in a quiet field called Pennards with a view of the Other Stage. We put the tent up, and sat in the long grass, relaxing with a smoke and a bottle of Mezcal Tequila, which attracted our new neighbours round, We chatted and gave out ‘Lunatics have taken over the asylum’ badges.

We didn’t spend much time at the tent and we were there for the Levellers, Back To The Planet, The Shamen, and The Saw Doctors. However we were to discover The Ozric Tentacles, who played repeatedly across the site, I loved watching them in the various tents in Green Futures. Each gig they announced where they were going to be playing next. We followed them about, catching Radical Dance Faction, and Nik Turner (we were both fans of Hawkwind), one of many Gong incarnations possibly Magick Brothers, and Attila and Otway for the first time.

First day and there was a magic ceremony on the opening night in the healing fields, I think it was the marriage of the god and goddess, and Undle Ground had a fire show. We chilled watching Skinning The Cat perform and in the dark I left my tobacco tin in the grass, losing our stash! We were near what became Glade trying to decide who to see next, having scored a tiny amount of squidgy from a bloke with a machete, who the Mrs refused to pay the full amount for such a rubbish deal.

The last of the light was draining away from behind Glastonbury Tor and a woman shoved a large newspaper wrapped bundle in my chest, saying: “A gift for you!” I turned and she was gone, i opened the bundle expecting it to be food from Manic Organic or something. It was chock full of buds! From then on all I remember is sound and colours augmented by the scent of sensi.

We danced to Senser, Bates Motel (one of my favourite bands at the time), Jah Wobble, and The Orb, watched Lush, Curve and Blur. Our world music odyssey started that year too with Youssou n’Dour, and Hugh Masekela topping a world music line-up on the new Jazzworld Stage.

We spent our nights in the Traveller Field in pitch blackness, getting directions to more Ozric appearances from the denizens on the roofs of the many vans. Enjoying tiny collaborations and playing the bongos badly around campfires. Watching strings of pretty people meander around tents to stop for 10 minutes for a smoke or a sip and a chat before dancing off into the night. Before stumbling back to our tent in the early light before dawn, through a quiet world of remnants of chaos, lazily smouldering fires, random giggling, and the occasional crash of a toilet door breaking the peaceful silence. We finished the Festival with Cheapsuit Oroonies and Kangaroo Moon.

It was an amazing year, probably my Glastonbury highlight, and was rounded off with bumping in to Ozric’s Jon on the way out of the Festival and us walking to Pilton together - he signed our programme. I think I may even have given him the rest of the newspaper bundle before we made our way home via Glastonbury Town, the Tor, the Abbey, the Sacred Well Gardens, and spent our time outside Pendragons and Star Child.