The Waterboys

I missed The Waterboys at Cornbury because they couldn’t make it and instead listened to their album playing over the PA and felt disappointed they hadn’t played. So I wasn’t going to miss the chance to see them again. I head for the second stage where most of the ‘real’ festival crowd have congregated and it’s full of the usual suspects once again.

The band are clearly wanting to put on a great show, and they’re tight and in great form. They open with ‘Tumble’ and straight away I know that I’ve made the right decision to see them rather than Billy Idol.

The crowd is filling out rapidly by the second number ‘Killing My Heart’ and the band are really getting it together, the audience are loving it too and by ‘Angel Wings’ the rapport that’s building shows why The Waterboys are such festival favourites.

But if there’s one song to bring a festival crowd together it’s the mighty ‘Glastonbury Song’ and as the lights play over them and us it’s a moment of happy perfection, made all the better by the fact the festival is finally starting to cool down after such a sweltering day.

‘Iona’ and ‘When Will We Be Married’ get even those at the back moving to their rhythms and at the front it’s bedlam. On stage the fiddles and flutes are creating ethereal sound, the keyboard is bouncing along and the mandolins are floaty. Terrific stuff, who’d win in a fight for festival band heroes between them and The Levellers I wonder.

Another crowd favourite their big spine tingling hit ‘Whole Of The Moon’ goes down a storm, as the sun sets and the warm air flutters the illuminated flags before the darkening night sky and talking of which ‘You In The Sky’ follows.

‘Red Army Blues’ seems a little out of place to me but is well delivered on the night and again the frenetic fiddles bring out comparisons to The Levellers and is a powerful tale of Russian soldiers who return home from fighting alongside the Americans in Berlin only to be killed for Stalin fears they have been too westernised.

They finish with ‘Fisherman's Blues’ a glorious track anyway made all the more perfect by being played live. Obviously we appeal for an encore and Billy Idol must have finished as the numbers swell for the final song ‘Pan Within’ an epic song and a fantastic highlight to end on, played with pace and gusto!

A truly grand performance by worthy headliners, it seems the popular vote is for the main stage but it’s the second stage which had the festival favourites on.

Latest Updates