Scroll to the bottom to buy Pete Paphides’ road-to-Glasto playlist
She said it last year; she says it every year: “Don’t stress the packing. It’s just tickets, phone and bank card. Everything else you can pick up there if you have to.” But if it was true, we wouldn’t have aborted one journey to Glastonbury some ten miles in, having remembered that I’d left the CD changer in the hallway. “Is it really necessary?” she’d asked. “Can’t we just do what normal people do and listen to Radio 1?” Whatever the virtues of Pixie Lott might be on any other day, our human cargo — my wife and a rented motorhome of fellow revellers — realised something very quickly: a six-hour journey into what festival literature at the time referred to as “a quest for different knowledge into ancient rites, perennial codes and mind technology” would not be adequately served by Lott and her craven, faux-Winehouse Nuts-pop.
Chris Moyles’s next selection vindicated our decision to turn back. It was the undulating Somerset landscape beneath Glastonbury Tor to which Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought his young nephew Jesus. If he’d had to do so while listening to the ringtone soul of JLS’s Beat Again, there’s every chance he wouldn’t have bothered.
Needless to say it’s the same deal with us this year. The CD-Rs have been preloaded into the vehicle. I haven’t compiled them from scratch, you understand. The Glastonbury playlist is made in much the same way that sourdough bread is made. You keep a piece from the last batch to make the next one. Like the festival that lies in wait at the end of it, it’s a self-replenishing thing. Within that blueprint, certain rules apply. There is, of course, the opening song. Mirror, signal, manoeuvre and press play: your first song will be the opening credits to a road movie that you — as the driver — are directing.
It has to sum up the reasons that you are all gathered together and allude, if possible, to your shared objective. Glastonbury Revisited, by the sometime Alan McGee protégés Cosmic Rough Riders, will do all of those things for you. Ripe three-part harmonies and jangle-tastic folk-rock guitars propel this paean to the festival as a rite of passage. “Glastonbury evening sun/From where have all the angels come.” Even those who favour the “Hot Spicey [SIC]Cider” bus over the tiny pieces of lysergic cardboard mentioned in the song can empathise with those sentiments.
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While in the zone of sun-kissed, 12-string Rickenbacker pop, follow it with the Byrds (Artificial Energy) and some early Primal Scream (Imperial), but let’s not get too carried away. If you live in the city, getting as far as the motorway is half the battle. No point shooting your bolt with propulsive cruising tunes when you’re wedged between Norbert Dentressangle and Eddie Stobart lorries on the Westway. After a timely airing of Lovin’ Spoonful’s Summer in the City, it’s far better to time the first of two Blur songs here. Cue up For Tomorrow, Damon Albarn’s bittersweet lovesong to the city, and follow it with Belle & Sebastian’s Legal Man, with its delirious exhortations to “get out of the city and into the sunshine”.
Feel-good invocations to the sun god are also welcome on your Glastonbury compilation. The segue from the Beatles’ Sun King into Harry Nilsson’s beamingly benign Rainmaker has always worked for me; and if you have Julian Cope’s Sunspots on hand to make it a trilogy, then all the better.
Once on the brief blissful stretch of motorway westwards, velocity is what you need. Jet by Wings, the Prodigy’s Invaders Must Die and Status Quo’s Caroline all fit the bill in different ways. If the AA issued safety advice that was really relevant to the needs of people driving to festivals, they would urge drivers to slow down to 60mph before the intro to Music: Response by Chemical Brothers, as it’s scientifically impossible not to add 20mph to your speed when the almost subsonic acceleration of bass beats begins the song in earnest.
You’ll need to have plenty in reserve for the A303 as it stretches from the M3 into the heart of Wiltshire. Spirits in need of rousing will find succour in the rapt blues-wailing of Terry Reid on Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace. As Stonehenge looms to your right, you will be needing to cue Blur’s Wassailing Song, as used in the bit of their 1994 tour film Starshaped, when Graham Coxon remarked: “It’s a bit like meeting Morrissey — not as big as you’d thought.”
Last year, of course, we had no reason to include Michael Jackson on our compilation. We might have almost died, braking suddenly as traffic fed into a single lane for the 17th time, but Jacko was very much alive at that point. Passengers wondering if they’ll get to the festival by dusk will be momentarily transported as they sing along to the bizarre “You’re a vegetable! And they hate you!” breakdown in Wanna Be Starting Something.
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As the traffic starts to seize up between Shepton Mallet and Pilton, such simple sources of amusement will no longer work, so turn to Flight of the Conchords to leaven the mood. Boom and Business Time will do the trick.
Now it’s the descent through Pilton, and the first view of the festival in all its immensity. (Roamin’ Through the Gloamin’ With) 40,000 Headmen by Traffic will be tootling through the speakers, a portent of good times ahead. Shortly after, on the Waterboys’ The Whole of the Moon, Mike Scott sings, “I saw the rain dirty valley/You saw Brigadoon”. With night descending, that’s what Glastonbury looks like: a moonlit countercultural Brigadoon which gives every impression of never having been away.
Click here to buy Pete Paphides’ ultimate road-to-Glasto playlist on iTunes