It is so hot in Somerset that it has been a struggle to do anything other than sit very still in whatever tiny patch of shade you can find and use a rolled-up copy of the Glastonbury Free Press to fan yourself, occasionally saying “it’s hot”, apologising for being “so hot”, and brushing off the scorched grass from where it has stuck to your sweaty skin.
Anyway, we’ve had a few hours’ sleep, chugged a big green juice, had a calming sit-down in the Healing Fields and we’re all having a lovely time.
Tonight’s Pyramid Stage headliners are the controversial Guns N’ Roses. What crowd will they draw? Their set clashes with Lana Del Rey on the Other Stage – which almost everyone we know is opting for – but also with Christine and the Queens at Woodsies, Fatboy Slim at the Park, Melanie C at Avalon and Paul Carrack at the Acoustic Stage. We’ve never known such divisions on Saturday night!
Max Richter, Park Stage
Lying in the sun listening to composer/producer Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks was a beautiful start to a sweltering Saturday. The Blue Notebooks was written as a protest album as the 2003 invasion of Iraq loomed so Park Stage was the ideal setting for its quiet power.
Richter was accompanied by a string quartet and Tilda Swinton dressed all in powder blue and looking more like an imaginary creature than ever. It felt like being told a bedtime story by a beloved yet mysterious aunt – particularly soothing if you turned your brain off, ignored the actual words and just let the whole thing wash over you.
There were not, I suspect, many brain cells firing in the crowd at 11am. Even a naked protestor could not disrupt proceedings. Not sure what he was protesting – the burning, boiling power of the sun perhaps? Because I’m with him there.
Kate Solomon
Rick Astley, Pyramid Stage
Rick Astley knew that most of the thousands who came to watch the day’s first set on the Pyramid Stage were here for one song.
“Put your hand up if you came at 12 only to hear ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’? Great, that’s only 99 per cent of you.” When he did that 1987 track – the song that became a meme before the term existed – it felt far more than just a silly internet joke and a genuinely joyous giant crowd karaoke.
Astley’s Pyramid set was more than just a big “rickroll”. He sang new songs – joking that he wouldn’t waste this giant audience and the chance to promote fresh material – invited more singalongs with covers of Harry Styles’s “As It Was” and AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”, but a highlight was the nostalgic “Together Forever”, as he head-banged his way up and down the stage.
Astley manages to balance the sincere and the self-effacing and was totally endearing on stage. “One of my dreams has come true today,” he said – in fact, it came true twice, as he later played a secret set of Smiths songs with the band Blossoms at Woodsies, which might be one of the unexpected highlights of the weekend (he does a cracking Morrissey impression).
Cheesy? Not at Glastonbury. This might have been full of throwbacks but it was exactly what we needed first thing in the blazing heat: happy, light, and really good fun.
Sarah Carson
Lana Del Rey, Other Stage
A highly conceptual, largely slow and knowingly coy set isn’t traditionally the best thing to see on a Saturday night at Glastonbury, but Lana Del Rey’s Other Stage headline slot was often entrancing and occasionally amazing – as well as a bit slow and sometimes, dare I suggest it, a little dull.
It began with a long wait for Lana to even arrive. When she did emerge half an hour late, there was something entirely mesmerising about her. The core of the festival crowd was kept absolutely rapt despite there being little opportunity for a big singalong and absolutely no clapping along.
Her voice is so uniquely hers and her songs so brimming with melodrama that it’s hard to look away. “Pretty When You Cry”, which began with Del Rey lying on the floor on a pile of dancers, was particularly good: the wailing at the end of the song, the whip crack of the drum rolls, her eyes shut and her voice controlled, and that was all while she was having a lie down.
Despite the long slog of so many similar songs in a row, it felt like it was all building to something – but the sound was cut at midnight, leaving everything to end in general confusion. Clearly, Lana had not finished her set. Dancers ran around the stage, Lana fell to her knees to beg for more time and the crowd made a good-natured attempt at singing “Video Games” themselves, but ultimately it was a frustrating and anticlimactic close.
Kate Solomon
Jockstrap, Park Stage
Sheltering in a rare centimetre of shade with no view of the stage is not the best way to experience any show, but Jockstrap still managed to shake my ribcage with their stunning blend of bass-heavy dubstep and haunting, angelic vocals.
I’ve seen this exact set two or three times now but every time I am impressed anew by its pulsing, odd-couple energy and shy romanticism. There is so much going on in every Jockstrap song that you could see them a hundred times and still something new would catch your ear. Even sitting down, everyone around me was bobbing and shimmying and trying to keep up with the ever changing tempo.
“Concrete Over Water” was an absolute highlight, as ever, with its bratty, severe production. The sun was punishing and the heat almost unbearable but for a fleeting few minutes it almost felt like I was alive again.
Kate Solomon
Guns N’ Roses, Pyramid Stage
When the 61-year-old Axl Rose stuck his middle finger up at the audience during the very first song on the Pyramid Stage, it was clear we’d be in for three hours of that kind of childish hyper-masculine rock’n’roll posturing for which Guns N’ Roses are known – and which is best left in their 80s heyday.
Guns N’ Roses are unapologetically old-fashioned, and can be offputtingly butch – but they’re more corny than they are aggressive. As a band they are past their best but assured, tight, and slick. Their energy is still so relentless you wonder how it can have waned since their youth.
But the pacing of this show wasn’t right. The front was loaded up with samey, screamy, heavy rock songs with melodies that got lost; the hits and moments of tenderness reserved for the end, when too many of the crowd had started filtering off. For “Paradise City”, they brought out a friend to join them, “because there’s no such thing as too many guitars”. Dave Grohl helped them deliver a frenetic final act in a set that delivered exactly what they’ve always promised: unapologetic, testosterone-fuelled rock music.
I’m just not sure they were playing the right festival. The guitars are good. But you really can have too many men and guitars.
Sarah Carson
Lizzo, Pyramid Stage
While Lizzo might not have been the headline act, she performed very much as though she was. The moment she got on stage, in a bright-pink corset, the Detroit-born singer and rapper began with “Cuz I Love You,” a slow, powerful ode to inner strength, which the instantly giddy crowd sang back at her.
From there, she launched into the hit “Juice”, giving the crowd what they wanted, and getting them dancing around. There was no messing around with Lizzo, no leaving the fans wanting more. She was straight into the fun, twerking and leaping around with her seriously impressive dancers helping her make the crowd go wild.
Lizzo kept giving hit after hit, knowing exactly what the Saturday evening crowd wanted to hear. Nobody was able to stand still. At one point, people began chanting her name, and she then told the crowd how in 2018 she’d played at Glastonbury in a big tent to no people. Thinking, then, about how far she’d come, she got emotional, surveying her 2023 crowd.
What made Lizzo so much fun wasn’t only her hit songs that are easy to jump around to, it was also the sense of humour she brought to the stage. She read out a couple of signs she spotted in the crowd. “That one says ‘you’re lush’,” she noted, and then attempting a faux British accent, added: “Thanks luv!”
Kasia Delgado
