Festivals Britannia

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This programme contains some strong language.

There are more music festivals these days than you can shake a pair of designer wellies at.

One in ten British adults attended a festival this year.

It's a billion-pound industry.

The latest craze of the media age beamed directly into your homes.

From anarchy and freedom in the '60s, to the mobile phones and cash points of today,

the British festival has been an ever-evolving battleground for society's hopes and ideals.

This is the story of Britain's love affair with the festival.

And how a handful of mavericks, dreamers and drop-outs

felt the calling of the music of rebellion and the wild.

How different generations have sought an alternative

way of life through festivals and how that has changed the British cultural landscape forever.

Ah, the British summer.

Cricket on the village green.

An ice-cream at the pier.

A day at the races and...

MUSIC:
"Song 2" by Blur

The music festival has become part and parcel of our summer months.

It's a yearly pilgrimage into the countryside to wallow in mud, music and mayhem.

A youthful rite of passage.

A place where people go to lose themselves and discover each other.

When you arrive at the festival, it's as if your life has now been cut

from the life that you lived.

I think it is freedom.

People are looking for freedom,

even if they're not quite sure what it is.

They are looking for the idea to go into a field

with a group of other people and have a bit of a fire

and dance around to some music and escape the walls.

It's that feeling that you're not alone. It's really important.

And that you're part of a group.

I think it's some sort of spiritual need, maybe,

for people to go and get together and enjoy each other's company

and let a bit of steam off, really.

For many, a festival is about the call of the countryside and getting back to basics.

It's got its own magic. I mean, it's all about being alive.

Back to those memories when you're looking up at the stars

for the first time.

And I think it's as simple as that.

The idea of actually going out into the country and sitting on green fields,

with a lovely sunset, stars in the sky, the moon at night, and all that kind of thing.

There's certain smells like the camp-fire-at-dusk smell.

There's a sort of excitement which comes with it because

it's turning into darkness

and it feels like it could go in any direction at that point.

# Out here in the fields... #

For others, it's about the unifying force of the music.

There is something magical about coming together and having that

sort of transcendent moment where your band that you love

plays a song that you love when you're in the environment

that you love with all these people that suddenly you love,

cos they all love this moment too.

CROWD SINGS:
# Na na na-na-na na

# Na-na-na na, hey Jude

# Yeah, yeah, yeah... #

You feel the emotion, in the middle of a song, I mean,

you feel the emotion and you go, "What did I do?"

It's just all over the whole place a mile back.

And you start to feel it like a wave go with you.

But these fundamental forces that draw us to festivals every year are nothing new.

What has seemingly turned into a corporate juggernaut has older, more humble roots.

The two voluntary sufferers of Chipping Campbell

had thoroughly entered into the spirit of festival week.

The idea of a festival goes back into antiquity.

The great cosmic moments, if you like, which occur every year, which are the longest and shortest days,

were always anciently celebrated

up and down the shires and the rest of it,

in fairs, events, gatherings and music and merry-making.

This seems to be as old as man.

There was dancing on the village green.

I feel there's a certain element in the British cultural DNA that

really kind of lends itself to rural gatherings. They are traditional.

They go back almost before time.

Sheep fairs and horse fairs and Michaelmas.

The festival itself has become huge.

The Jazz Festivals, I think,

were definitely among the first, if not the first.

The actual breeding ground of pop festival

would have to be jazz festival, because at jazz festival you have

the complete freedom of alternative culture, and jazz, of course,

has been the sound of bohemia since 1920.

A young generation was emerging from the austerity of post-war Britain,

desperate to let its hair down and get its knees up.

In search of an identity and a cause,

jazz would be their rallying call as thousands of teenagers gathered

whilst a bewildered establishment looked suspiciously on.

The raucous, gay, sad music of a generation more closely scrutinised than young people have ever been.

This is a cross section of the young - students, office workers,

shop girls, apprentices enwrapped by rhythms that separate them from the old.

Or are they so separate, so different from the way young people have always been?

Certainly, they mature earlier physically, which creates problems.

You go into a jazz festival, you can jump up and down as much as you like,

and you can drink as much as you like without getting arrested.

All you do is fall on the floor, fall on the grass!

Freedom.

Freedom for the individual.

And...

there wasn't much about after the war.

When the first festivals started happening,

rationing was still in place - food rationing, petrol rationing.

You tend to forget this.

You know, the young people that had grown up during the war

had had a pretty frightening time.

This new generation in search of a taste of freedom

initially gathered in the nation's dance halls.

But their hunger for an escape from convention

led them out into the country in search of something different,

even a young Rod Stewart.

You couldn't have a rave-up in a dance hall.

You had to walk across the floor and ask a girl to have a waltz or something.

But if you were in a field,

you felt free.

The lawns of Palace House were given over to the sixth Beaulieu Jazz Festival.

It's the event at which the fans forget the conventional life, let themselves go and dress like crazy.

In 1956, an aristocrat by the name of Lord Montague

began to put on a yearly jazz festival at his home in Hampshire.

He had the facility of doing what he wanted to do at his own estate -

no neighbours with their innocence and so on.

And he fancied having a jazz do,

and he would have the ability of doing it.

And it was just a larger jazz concert.

They were a bit like the art-school dance taken to the country,

and people would dress weird.

It was the Chelsea arts ball decanted into a meadow.

It kind of shocked the locals and upset the sheep.

It became very, very successful.

And, sadly, sort of petered out

because of the inability of certain people to behave themselves

when they got a few pints into them.

In 1960, a mixture of youthful overenthusiasm, tribalism and cider

caused what would become known as the Battle of Beaulieu.

Britain was about to catch its first glimpse

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