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.”
