Twenty-five years ago this weekend, R.E.M. played a brilliant set at Glastonbury festival. It was Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills’ first visit to Worthy Farm but it very nearly didn’t happen, thanks to an over-eager security guard who wouldn’t let Stipe onto the site.
As reported by The Guardian back in 2000, Stipe was travelling to the festival by helicopter, with the chopper carrying him landing in a neighbouring farmer’s field and festival worker and local Robert Kearle handed the task of going to pick the megastar singer up. “They asked me to do it because of my local knowledge,” Kearle told The Guardian. “He was the biggest star of the festival so I didn’t want to mess up.”
Kearle, of course, wasn’t banking on a jobsworth security guard almost scuppering R.E.M.’s headline set. Picking Stipe up and heading back to Worthy Farm, Kearle must have had the air of mission accomplished en route with the R.E.M. man in a talkative mood. “We had a really good chat on the way,” he said. “He was great to talk to, very friendly and interested in what was happening at the festival.”
Enter Mr If You’re Name’s Not Down You’re Not Coming In, telling the pair when they arrived at the gate that if they didn’t have tickets, they weren’t coming in. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I said, ‘I’ve got Michael Stipe here, Mr Eavis sent me specially to fetch him.” But the overzealous security guard was not budging. “No ticket, no entry,” they were told. “Michael Stipe? Never heard of him.”
This is where, Kearle recalled, Stipe took matters into his own hands. Stepping out of the vehicle, he said, “I’m playing on the Pyramid Stage in a few hours. If you don’t let me in now, I’m off. You’ll have a lot of disappointed people on your hands.”
And so our antagonist relented, Michael Stipe was allowed onto the festival site, and R.E.M. performed one of the best headline slots in Glastonbury’s prestigious history…
