That's it for the daytime liveblog
Thanks for following our tour through the day’s events: Lionel and Patti smashing it, Kim K’s Instagram bombing and the Dalai Lama getting a lovely birthday cake. You can now tune in to our evening live blog, guided by Michael Hann.
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Here’s what we thought of Lionel
“We’ve got a lot of songs tonight,” says Lionel Richie, the cartoonishly consummate showman and conductor of a field full of bleary eyed beings at the Pyramid stage. “Welcome to the party!”
While Dolly Parton’s heritage slot at 2014’s festival brought rhinestone encrusted majesty and kitsch country to a claggy Somerset field, Richie, in spite of some shoddy sound issues, offers a succession of watertight soul, funk and tender sex jams, not to mention a backing band member who is capable of playing a one-armed sax solo while simultaneously simulating the missionary position atop his instrument.
As promised, the 66 year old’s pristine, Vegas-styled show is a party, of sorts – perhaps more like the kind of party which starts with champagne in the jacuzzi and ends up on a shag pile. It’s exactly the type of smooth sentimentality and silliness that a Sunday afternoon audience at Glastonbury deserves: from the gloriously gooey Penny Lover, to the chintzy You are my Destiny and the funk triumph of Brick House, Richie, dressed in a black blazer adorned with a glittered trim, packs every single second of the show with unbridled pop theatrics.
Most vital to the Alabama-born singer’s Glastonbury debut is his knowing relationship with his audience, many of whom are wearing masks and T-shirts emblazoned with drawings of his face. Well aware of his camp charisma, he wins support from the crowd immediately, complimenting their ability to remember his lyrics, whipping them into a yobbish singalong for Three Times a Lady, and triggering some bolshie dance moves during Dancing on the Ceiling. The opening to the Commodores’ Easy even prompts a sigh of joy from the crowd. In contrast to Kanye’s cold, brutalist headline set the night before, Richie provides a reassuring hour of tender, tacky hits; mud melts into milk chocolate, the grey clouds are silky silver pillows, joy is restored.
Before capping off his set with All Night Long, he necks a glass of what looks like vodka cranberry, and thousands of fans and converts cheer and laugh. Lionel Richie: party starter, people pleaser, a Glastonbury highlight.
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Paloma Faith: Glastonbury’s queen of Instagram
We’ve launched our set of the best Instagrams of the weekend, but special mention should go here to Paloma Faith, whose tropical palette and maximalist attitude to filtering gives her the prize of top Instagrammer.
Fat White Family after hours: crotch-grabbing, crowdsurfing insanity
Ben McLeavy, who has been keeping our technology running throughout the fest and we heart him, went to see the set with the most grot potential of the weekend: Fat White Family at 4 in the morning. What went down?
Three songs in and a rabbit is bellowing into Saul’s mic: “Ladies and gentleman be more appreciative. It’s The Fat White Family. At Glastonbury”. The bunny-headed compere’s sentiment rings true: the crowd roar their approval and it’s truly rousing.
It’s 4am in Shangri-Hell and with songs that clang pleasingly like blunt knives being dropped onto a human skull staircase, Fat White Family become an instant early hours miracle. Honest.
Singer Lias is stripped to the waist and raised on a pedestal, a stance that could be considered regal were it not for the one hand permanently lodged in his trousers. It suits him: he’s a real deal dish for the terminally strung out.
The crowdsurfing begins during Cream of the Young. Touch the Leather, all trash-can drums and real horror-show clatter, causes the crowd to spasm and, for the next couple of songs, it threatens to spill over into something more tangibly nasty. But the wave parts, the band finishes and Mark Ronson appears with a wink and an approving nod.
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Mark Ronson’s Glastonbury photo diary
Mark Ronson wowed with a show featuring Boy George, Grandmaster Flash and others – we gave it five stars. He returned the favour by sharing his festival snaps with us, all viewable over here.
The early Lionel reviews are in...
Here’s Bob Mortimer’s take. Ours coming shortly.
WOW!!! ... Lionel Richie just took Glastonbury in his hands and booted it to the moon
— bob mortimer (@RealBobMortimer) June 28, 2015
ALSO...
I stole Jonathan Jones’s hotel room
When the offer of a night in a bed came up yesterday I knew I’d be a fool not to take it up. I mean, I’m a fool, but not that much of one. And when I learned that said bed had actually belonged to Jonathan Jones (our art critic, who’s been having too much fun on site to need a bed) , I could not contain my excitement.
It turns out though that this was no ordinary bed situation, because JJ’s room was in what’s called ‘Snoozebox’, a massive jumble of shipping containers that becomes a pop up hotel when arranged properly and was sat in the middle of a field about 15 minutes off site. Inside are many rooms, all about 10’ by 6’ in size, which still manage to each contain three beds, a toilet, a shower, air con and a towel or two. It’s a feat of design and absolutely not for claustrophobics. It’s also coming to a major entertainment event near you soon. Shipping containers will rule the world, soon enough.
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Glastonbury 2015: how it looked on TV
While we’ve been sustaining mild muscular spasms from slogging through mud trying to find that Dalai Lama grindcore set that’s been rumoured, everyone else has been sat at home, tea in hand, watching it on telly. SQUARES! Stuart Heritage is our man carving out a bum groove watching it all:
By experiencing Glastonbury on the iPlayer, you were only ever an overpriced tartiflette away from really being there. Hands down, it was the best use of the platform since the Olympics... perhaps there should have been a fixed rig in the hospitality bar, allowing everyone the chance to watch dozens of utterly insignificant television personalities furtively casting around to make sure they’re still the most famous person within a 10-foot radius. In my experience, that’s the spirit of Glastonbury incarnate.
Lionel Richie stealing the show
Hold the phone: Lionel Richie might be stealing the weekend
There is a seriously massive crowd for Lionel, and some equally massive gestures from the man himself. Check him out as his set continues:
We’ll have a review up soon after he ends. Meanwhile Rachel Aroesti continues her quest to document everything she’s eating all weekend, with a nice mid-Lionel yoghurt:
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Lionel Richie takes the stage – see the Cribs mould him from clay!
Lionel Richie’s on right now, generating some of the biggest singalongs of the weekend. While everyone croons, you can hear from Tim Jonze about what happened when the Cribs came to mould a clay head into Lionel’s features.
I’m amazed at their attention to detail; it’s all “that lip is too big” and “that is a real square jaw.” They’ve really looked at every aspect of his face rather than just slapping on a random Plasticine moustache and legging it to the bar. “Well, a lot of people do underestimate us,” grins Gary.
Read the piece here, and take a look at the video below.
Also Lionel, stop tweeting while you’re on stage and get back to work!
— Lionel Richie (@LionelRichie) June 28, 2015
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‘I love your outfit!’
Look at all these people who are cooler and more gorgeous than you are, you welly-wearing accidental-normcore frump you. It’s our Glasto style special! Let Saskia above talk you through her outfit, and click on the link to see all the others:
I’ve just come back from New York where I bought these shorts in a secondhand shop in Brooklyn. The top was originally a dress that I bought from Sunrise festival when I was 14, but I cut it in half, and the jacket is from a charity shop in Bradford on Avon. The whole look probably cost about £20; it’s 70s-inspired – my mum is an artist and my granny interned at Vogue, so they’ve taught me a few things. I come from a Hare Krishna background, so this and the bindis is how I’ve dressed all my life.
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Patti Smith: a five-star, Dalai Lama-guesting knockout
Read our news story about Patti Smith’s set over here, in which the Dalai Lama turned up and had a birthday cake. And here’s Mark Beaumont’s astonished take:
The Dalai Lama, bless him, milks the chakras out of it. He’s already had a birthday poem and a cake from Patti Smith, and two rousing verses of Happy Birthday Dalai Lama from the crowd, and made an adorable speech about friendship, trust and nurturing compassion and “warm feelings”, which is all very sweet and moving. Then he hangs about for ages stroking the guitarist’s hair, making gestures at the crowd to get some proper sleep and generally getting his ring kissed. Look Dalai, mate, the Glastonbury ethos is do the hits then get off the stage – you’re interrupting Patti Smith resoundingly stealing the weekend.
“I fell on my ass at Glastonbury because I’m a fucking animal!” Smith roars as she sets about pulling strings off a guitar one by one during her Who homage My Generation, a rampaging end to a staggering set. “I promise you that I will give you the last bit of voice that I have,” she growls through red-raw vocal chords, and the New York art punk icon definitely gives this career-spanning set her all, and more.
Whether prowling and spitting her way around the stage through the dubby Ain’t It Strange, crying “feel your freedom!” at the end of a battle-ready beneath The Southern Cross, dedicating Pissing In a River to Wikileaks, or bringing the Johnny from her song Land out of the hallway where he’s spent 40 years “seeing what a fucked-up world we live in” to Glastonbury “because he wants to party”, she’s utterly captivating, and raging defiantly against the dying of her generation’s spluttering light. “We had dreams and we’re still fucking dreaming!” she bawls, magnificently young. “We’re gonna change the fucking world!” Like the Lama man said, “The physical action looks very beautiful … I should be more active like you.”
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Space blankets, giant trolleys and a blow-up dinosaur – Glastonbury’s best ‘tent hacks’
Our parish’s Richard Vine has been out and about gathering up Glasto-goers’ best tent hacks – from collapsible washboards to space blankets. Great pics of our beautiful fellow campers too. Check it out here.
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Celebrity Instagrammers taking pictures and being famous
Glastonbury’s talent have been sharing their pics over the last couple of days – here’s a selection. Particular shout out to Big Narstie for his lol-worthy Instagram – and while we’re here, his excellent freestyling over Toddla’s set at Stonebridge last night. At one point he ascended into listing different types of commercially available gas: “Calor Gas! Autogas! Gas! Gas!” It was great.
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Patti Smith insta-review
We’ve got a review for Patti Smith coming up in a sec, but here’s an insta-review from the Guardian’s Pamela Hutchinson who just walked into our cabin and said “I cried. 10 stars”. 10 stars it is!
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Dalai Lama endorses Pope’s climate change message, calls for more pressure on international governments
The Dalai Lama today endorsed the Pope’s radical message on climate change and said fellow religious leaders had a duty to “speak out about current affairs which affect the future of mankind.”
The spiritual Buddhist leader was speaking at Glastonbury festival on a panel discussing issues of global warming alongside Guardian editor Katherine Viner and Guardian columnist George Monbiot.
He praised Pope Francis’s recent encyclical on climate change, which warned of the unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, adding that it was the duty of people to “say more. We have to make more of an effort, including demonstrations.”
The Dalai Lama, 80, called for more pressure to be put on international governments to stop the burning of fossil fuels and mass deforestation and invest more in green energy sources.
“The concept of war is outdated but we do need to fight,” he said. “Countries think about their own national interest rather than global interests and that needs to change because the environment is a global issue.”
He added: “It is not sufficient to just express views, we must set a timetable for change in the next two to four years.”
However, he said individuals also had their own responsibility towards the planet. Speaking about his own efforts, he said he always turned the lights off when leaving rooms and took showers instead of baths- though admitted that he did have two showers a day.
The Tibetan leader also called for countries such as Russia and the United States to scrap their nuclear weapons and criticised Putin for his recent threat to increase Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
Monbiot took the opportunity to appeal to Glastonbury to go further with their efforts to be ecologically friendly. “Why aren’t we calling for Glastonbury to be meat free and fish free?” he asked.
Slaves’s secret set at BBC Introducing
Not quite as exciting as Florence’s turn last night (see 13.01), but those punk urchins Slaves are currently playing a secret set at BBC Introducing. Will the Dalai Lama be there? Don’t bet against it.
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The Dalai Lama is on stage with Patti Smith!
He’s currently on stage with Patti Smith cutting a birthday cake!
This is so beautiful and surreal. The Dalai Lama cutting his birthday cake onstage with Patti Smith pic.twitter.com/E0vfs6dEZr
— Joshua Dixon (@JoshDixonTweets) June 28, 2015
Patti Smith wishes the Dalai Lama a happy Birthday - along with 100,000 people https://t.co/YVLNAsauAW
— Alice Vincent (@alice_emily) June 28, 2015
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Hozier: bluesy goth-pop to wake up the Pyramid
Glasto virgin (and eater of preposterously large halloumi cones) Ben Beaumont-Thomas went to see Hozier, and this is what he observed:
Now pan-Atlantically famous enough to play at Victoria’s Secret shows, Hozier has had quite a journey since Glasto last year, and gets the everyman Pyramid audience primed for their Sunday. Backed with a generously proportioned band featuring lots of gospel backing vocals and cello, his style is romantic blues-pop with a dash of gothic red: he mostly seems like a softie, but sings of howling outside his ex-lover’s house, and the closing Take Me to Church is almost hysterical in its drama. Jackie and Wilson sees him riff on Van Morrison’s vocal style of ruminative, round-the-houses melodies paired with sturdy rhythm and blues, and To Be Alone has a Mumfordian wordless chorus that still retains a bluesy wriggle. Someone New shows off his pop smarts with a pretty chorus that turns into the whole song, and it gets even cornier for an improbable mash-up cover of Ariana Grande’s Problem and Warren G’s Regulate – but he pulls it off in his sweetly rumpled way.
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Kim Kardashian’s Glastonbury photobook
The question on everyone’s lips before Glastonbury was of course: what would Kim wear? And would it be mud-resistant? Well, worry no more, as she tweeted that she definitely had some wellies – even while wearing a floaty number that would surely soak up ditchwater like high-grade kitchen paper. Here’s that getup and the rest of Kim’s snaps from her debut Glastonbury.
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Emily Eavis hails 2015 festival as ‘magical’, promises ‘tweaks’ for next year
The Dalai Lama’s Sunday morning address meant that there was no press conference for Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis to make his ritual declaration that the festival had been the best ever.
It was left to his daughter, Emily, to hail 2015 as a “phenomenal” year for Glastonbury. “Really magical,” she told the festival’s in-house newspaper The Glastonbury Free Press. The atmosphere when people arrived on Wednesday was actually quite moving.
“I was up by the tipi field that night, and it was just lovely seeing all those people so happy to be here. It really makes you feel that all the effort is worthwhile.”
She said there was a “long list of tweaks and changes” for next year’s festival – but declined to reveal who might be in the running to headline the famous Pyramid stage in 2016.
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Pussy Riot on Putin, forming a People’s Republic and the Glasto bogs
Pussy Riot brought a little rebellious spirit to the festival on Friday, and our Will Dean managed to grab them for a chat. Here are a few of the highlights:
What would Vladimir Putin make of Glastonbury?
Maria: He will not have this opportunity. I think it’s not for him.
You said during your speech on the Park stage that you wanted people to start the day with a riot. Where do we start?
Maria: It’s the decision of every person, and some of the riots can be inside riots, inside you, rather than going and attacking people.
So, the Glastonbury’s People’s Republic, eh? How do we sign up?
Pyotr: Well, you buy your own military vehicles, you recruit men who will fearlessly fight to separate the republic from the United Kingdom and then install nice conservative values here, not the bullshit you have going on down in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. People in Donetsk [the Ukrainian city held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014] and other parts of the Russian world are really having a nice time these days, so we just need people down in Glastonbury to really feel their power.
OK, time for the really important question. How do the Glastonbury toilets compare with the ones in a Russian penal colony?
Nadezhda: Yes, I visited the toilets. But they’re better than the penal colony.
Maria: What’s wrong with the toilets?
No, not these nice ones backstage. The ones out in the campsite.
Nadezhda: It’s cool. I’ve seen some pictures. It’s not so bad. At least they have doors. In penal colonies they don’t have doors. So it’s OK for me to pee in public.
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Ibibio Sound Machine serve up a lunchtime rump-shake
You cannot stop Mark Beaumont. The man is like some sort of terrifying reviewing automaton. Here’s what he thought of Ibibio Sound Machine:
Sounding like they’ve been left behind by George Clinton’s Mothership and are hastily constructing the electronic apparatus necessary to phone home, Ibibio Sound Machine tack together 70s funk, Ghanaian highlife, gospel and electronic beats into an intriguingly progressive stew, on record at least. At West Holts, they lean on traditional world funk and heavy-handed brass, largely drowning out the sporadic sound of boundaries cracking – there seems little innovation about them, beyond the odd wormhole synth blast and singer Eno Williams’s peacock dance and voluminous pink jodhpurs. Williams’s Nigerian folk stories, sung in the Ibibio language, add a certain mysticism to low-slung psychedelic trips like The Prodigal Son, though, and Glastonbury never needs much of an excuse for a gentle lunchtime rump-shake.
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Mint tea with Björk collaborator Shlomo
It isn’t all hedonistic excess at Glastonbury. Sometimes, you’ve just got to sit down with a nice cup of steaming, sweet mint tea. Our own Carmen Fishwick did just that on Friday, with beatboxer Shlomo:
I think beatboxers who’ve really taken it somewhere are those that use it as a tool, rather than the people who want to use it to get famous. I do play to the whole style of beatboxing – I grew up with the Prodigy, I love electronic music. But if it’s just a million snares per minute, that’s impressive, but it wears off quite quickly.
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Jonathan Jones on Glasto’s artistic side
The Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones last went to Glastonbury in 1984 and had a torrid time. But he’s returned this year, and things seem to have gone a little better:
By sunset – a glowing, nearly cloudless sunset – that first evening I was in a sweating, swaying, swarming crowd at Glastonbury’s Unfairground, loomed over by giant, grotesque dolls with evil baby faces. Its attractions included Bez’s Acid House – yes, that Bez – among a parodic, over-the-top variety of fairground Americana. You could try the test-your-strength machine or shoot at sea monsters for prizes. What looked like a hall of mirrors turned out to be a shaking, surrealistic dance tent where metallic-faced, male go-go dancers robotically got the crowd going. Soon my body started jerking about in a unexpected and unfamilar way. Shit, I was dancing.
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Field fashion: Inspired by Dexys, mums and Hare Krishnas
Nosheen Iqbal and Leah Harper have been traipsing across the Glastonbury site to stop the sartorially charmed for a chat about their style. Some samples below, and for the full post, click on this.
Ghislaine Mutombo, 27, Cape Town, model and fashion designer
“This is my first time in England, it’s my third day in the country. I’d say my mum is the inspiration for my look, she’s incredibly stylish. Red is a staple in Africa, and I bought this top from Green Market in Cape Town and I found these sunglasses on the floor. I love Paloma Faith – and Florence Welch looked angelic last night.”
Saskia Hopping, 18, Bristol, full-time traveller
“I’ve just come back from New York where I bought these shorts in a secondhand shop in Brooklyn. The top was originally a dress that I bought from Sunrise festival when I was 14, but I cut it in half, and the jacket is from a charity shop in Bradford on Avon. I come from a Hare Krishna background so this and the bindis is how I’ve dressed all my life.”
Theo Watt, 22, Bristol, journalist
“This is a fancy dress outfit really, inspired by Dexys Midnight Runners. The dungarees are from Rokit in London and it just looks better without a shirt. The hat and scarf? I don’t know, but the sunglasses are my girlfriend’s. Julian Cope would be my style icon.”
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Dalai Lama joins Guardian climate change debate
At the Guardian climate change panel debate at William’s Green, a surprise guest joined from the start: his holiness the Dalai Lama. He’s discussing how to save the planet with Guardian editor-in-chief Kath Viner, columnist George Monbiot, and May Boeve of 350.org. So far, the biggest cheer from the audience was when Monbiot demanded that the festival become a meat- and fish-free zone.
Here’s what some of those attending the event are saying:
Dalai Lama at Guardian climate session "World peace comes through study, thought and action."
— Richard Lawson (@DocRichard) June 28, 2015
But some aren’t managing to keep pace:
Just had a lecture off the Dalai Lama about world peace, far too heavy for a Sunday
— Max Brookes (@maxwbrookes) June 28, 2015
And he’s off – lightly photo-bombed by our own Caspar Llewellyn Smith:
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The final word on Kanye
BBC subtitling department have had enough #glastonbury #Kanye pic.twitter.com/eh2HHZRnmE
— BC (@Ox_Bex) June 27, 2015
Florence minus her machine at NYC Downlow
Before the action picks up (although it says here that we’re missing the Burtle Silver Band on the Pyramid right now), a report on a surprise Florence Welch appearance at NYC Downlow at Block9 in the festival’s south-east “naughty corner” last night. Tshepo Mokoena was there ...
Well, she was never going to go quietly, was she? The night after headlining the Pyramid, Florence showed up unannounced at NYC Downlow, introduced by one of the resident drag queens and casually skipping on stage to general hysteria, the crowd a mix of festival goers now sporting the venue’s de rigueur stick-on moustaches and the more flamboyant regulars. Also in attendance? That 79-year-old Michael Eavis. Florence blazed through Spectrum (Say My Name) and disappeared, leaving the sweaty audience of a couple of hundred panting for more.
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Glastonbelly: pulled pork, crisps and more
Here are the latest dispatches from Rachel Aroesti’s weekend-long food odyssey:
I can confirm that Seth Troxler’s pulled pork is thoroughly lush. (Twixes aren’t bad either).
The Glastonbury virgin takes on the final challenge
This is my first Glastonbury, and we did a callout for readers’ suggestions for essential rites of passage that I should do. I’ve been taken to all four corners of the site, had an osteopath session, got covered in mud – but this final suggestion just had to be done.
@ben_bt go to stone circle for sun rise. Climb up on one of the rocks and give a rousing speech about peace, love and getting high.
— End the War on Drugs (@mypocketpants) June 24, 2015
I duly went to the stone circle to do this slightly cruel dare, and was instantly sweaty with fear on turning into the field around 6am – there were hundreds of people to orate to. But orate I did.
Channelling Kanye West a little bit perhaps. Thanks to my audience for not jeering at me. And thanks to all the readers who posted suggestions – it’s been an amazing debut, Glastonbury.
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Songhoy Blues take the Africa Express to the Pyramid
Mark Beaumont’s a busy chap today. Here’s his report on Malian Afro-blues pioneers Songhoy Blues:
Hopping off the Africa Express, Mali’s Songhoy Blues have left behind the unrest that drove them from their hometown of Gao and inspired them to take refuge in a band built around their love of Ali Farka Touré, Hendrix, hip-hop and their Songhoy heritage. These days, they collaborate with Yeah Yeah Yeahs’s Nick Zinner, call Transgressive Records home and ecstatically strut, clap and chicken-dance their way around the Pyramid stage at noon. Theirs is an itchy, almost Foals-like breed of Afro blues that neatly knocks the ball back at such Afrobeat pilferers, and undoubtedly the sort of global hug that the Sunday afternoon Pyramid stage was built for. Judging by his convulsive manner of dancing like a TV audience of millions isn’t watching, in singer Aliou Touré we may have discovered the Malian Tim Booth.
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Mud, mud, glorious mud (minus the glorious bit)
Afternoon. Gwilym here. I can confirm that Glastonbury has returned to its formerly muddy state, as I’ve just gone base over apex halfway down a boggy hill. Here’s some pictorial evidence courtesy of Tshepo:
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Glastonbury traffic update: it’s not good news
Travel warning for those people attempting to leave the Glastonbury site today: expect long queues, as the A361 has been closed in both directions after a serious collision between a pedestrian and a lorry. The road will be closed for at least the next few hours, but the festival site can still be accessed via Shepton Mallet.
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Sunday morning with the papers at Glastonbury
Sore head? Tired legs? Take some time out to relax with our Observer Glastonbury special – available at any of the Guardian stalls on site, or for those of you in the comfort of your own warm, dry homes, at your local newsagent. Then you can start dancing again.
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The Sunday Assembly at Left Field: Church minus religion plus pop songs
Regular worshipper at the temple of rock’n’roll Mark Beaumont was at Left Field this morning to experience a different kind of religious experience:
For us militant fundamentalist atheists, the big sticking point with church bands is the whole flashback-to-childhood-religious-conditioning thing. So thank the deity of your choice (or not, totally up to you) for the Sunday Assembly, a bunch of loosely dressed musicians, poets, speakers and standup comedians who gather every Sunday at what bouncing compere Sanderson Jones calls “the atheist church” at Conway Hall to enjoy “all the best bits of church without religion and with awesome pop songs”.
“If you had a great pair of shoes with a stone in it, you wouldn’t throw away the shoes,” Jones’s first parable explains, and the Sunday Assembly’s ethos of coming together simply to “celebrate being alive” has spawned offshoots from Berlin to Ohio. The Glastonbury sect is handed hymn sheets for enthused sing-alongs to authentically amateur covers of the Killers’s Mr Brightside, Emeli Sandé’s Wonder and Irene Cara’s Flashdance (What a Feeling), complete with jumping breaks.
In between, there’s impassioned fringe-bound relationship poetry from Sara Hirsch, inspirational sermons on the wonders of water and Saint Anthony, a song-poem from Mike Gary about the death of Tony Wilson. They may be out to destroy the major benefit of being nonreligious – the guilt-free lie-in – but they’re jubilantly bereft of the spirit of the Lord.
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Kanye: bad or brilliant?
In case you missed it last night, Kanye West’s “bizarrely disjointed” set received a rather defeated three stars from the Guardian’s chief critic Alexis Petridis:
Before he performs All Falls Down, he tells the crowd that they’re watching “the greatest living rock star on the planet”, which is the kind of thing that Kanye West is famous for saying. It’s a claim that’s not entirely borne out by the show he’s put on, which offers bright flickers of greatness rather than a blaze of glory.
Now that everyone’s had a good sleep, however, has popular opinion changed? Here’s what’s happening on Twitter:
And no Twitter roundup would be complete without this gem from Gazza. Unrelated to Kanye, but undoubtedly worth a mention:
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Circus mayhem, cows, a giant spider and Wolf Alice
Throughout the weekend, our photographers have been roving around the site meeting people and experiencing the festival through their eyes. On the third day, we bring you the view from the Worthy Farm byre, aliens in Arcadia, and cabaret in Area 51. Plus, you can see what it’s like to play Glastonbury as we trail Wolf Alice from their tent to the Park Stage.
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Glastonbury confessions: festivalgoers’ dirty secrets
Glastonbury is a place where you can let go of your inhibitions, but also a place where you can cleanse your soul and experience a spiritual rebirth. We did our best to assist this process by setting up a video confession booth in a sunny spot and inviting the crowd to make a clean breast of it …
Dalai Lama: violence in Middle East is ‘unthinkable’
Our reporter Josh Halliday was at the Stone Circle this morning to see the festival’s most famous guest talk about “love and tolerance and fairness”.
The Dalai Lama has used a historic appearance at Glastonbury festival to describe the Islamic State violence in Syria and Iraq as “unthinkable”.
In a speech before hundreds of rain-soaked campers on Sunday morning, the Tibetan spiritual leader stressed the importance of the “oneness” of the planet’s 7 billion people – and made a rare comment on the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
The Dalai Lama, 80, did not explicitly refer to Islamic State, but told an audience of hundreds: “In Syria and Iraq and some other places, they’re killing other human beings. Unthinkable. The worst thing [about] the conflict is the killing of others in the name of faith. Unthinkable.”
He said all major religions carry a message of “love and tolerance and fairness”, but said those values were now being used by some to create division.
The spiritual leader addressed Glastonbury goers from a modest wooden stage emblazoned with the Tibetan flag in the festival’s Stone Circle.
He was introduced on stage by BBC executive Alan Yentob and greeted by the crowd singing Happy Birthday.
You can read Josh’s full report here.
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Praise the dawning
Bringing the schadenfreude (you try saying that in a comedy Somerset accent after scant sleep) to anyone reading this in the comfort of home: festival goers at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts woke up in their tents to the sound of persistent drizzle this morning.
Undeterred, we’re now on to the fifth day of this almost never-ending liveblog, brought to you from a hut in the interstage area, and looking forward cheerily to a day that promises: the presence of the Dalai Lama, no less; performances from Patti Smith, Lionel Richie, Jamie T, the Chemical Brothers, FKA Twigs, the Who; and some breakfast shortly, I hope.
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