Woodstock (August 1969)
The mother of all festivals. Peace and love and Janis Joplin.
Altamont (December 1969)
The ‘largest free rock concert in the history of the western United States’ is also the most violent. Four festival goers die, including one knifed by a member of the Hells Angels, who had unwisely been asked to provide security around the stage.
Forty years after the Rolling Stones’ infamous concert at Altamont, Guardian photographer Eamonn McCabe unveiled his previously unseen footage.
Hyde Park (July 1969)
Mick Jagger wears white and reads a Shelley poem to remember Brian Jones, who had just died, while thousands of butterflies are released. Ed Vulliamy recalls this legendary day.
Isle of Wight (August 1970)
The water supply is checked for possible contamination by LSD after complaints that tea and coffee are causing numbness at the back of the mouth. Jimi Hendrix is the star of the festival which includes among others Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues, The Who, The Doors and Miles Davis.
Glastonbury (June 1971)
The very first festival takes place in 1970 and is called the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival. It is organised by Michael Eavis, stars T Rex and tickets cost £1. The following year, Glastonbury Fair is born and the famous pyramid stage makes its first appearance.
After a disastrous first Glastonbury in 1984, aged 19, Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones returned this year and found the festival ‘a work of art’. The cleanup, though, is something else.
Burning Man (September 1998)
Anarchy rules at Burning Man, the wildest party on earth. The annual event started on a San Francisco beach in 1986 and moved to the Nevada desert in 1990. In 2003, a UK journalist spent a week reporting from Burning Man. The Guardian’s survival guide is here.
Coachella (April 2008)
Prince and Portishead are two of the acts appearing at America’s premier music festival, which was founded in the Colorado desert, California in 1999. Mark Davis used an infrared lens to photograph Coachella in 2014.
The cost of the world’s biggest festivals (April 2015)
Music festivals have become big business and are not cheap.
Lovebox (July 2015)
London’s favourite festival, founded in 2002 by DJs Groove Armada in the East End’s Victoria Park and best described by Time Out magazine as an ‘urban-based-yet-rural-feeling, multi-dimensional festival – without the camping or the endless tramping about.’
