Glastonbury 2017: Sunday daytime with Chic, Barry Gibb and the Killers – as it happened

We’re still coming to terms with that onslaught of positive vibes: Barry Gibb and Chic bringing disco anthems, the Killers generating the loudest crowd of the festival, and Haim and Rag’n’Bone Man commanding more people than ever at the Other stage. The sun is out as well, which turns Glastonbury into a big dopey love-fest. I want to just start tapping out happy-face emojis and leave words behind.

And the night is young – on our evening liveblog we’ll have reviews of Haim, Chic, Sampha, Biffy Clyro, Kano, Justice, Boy Better Know and of course the ginger prince of millennial pop, Ed Sheeran. Head over here for that. Thanks for reading!

As Nile Rodgers points out from the stage, the last time he played Glastonbury was four years ago, on the West Holts stage – touring with a new version of the Chic Organisation was one of his responses to being diagnosed with an particularly aggressive form of cancer. Their shtick was exceptionally slick back then: four years on, with Rodgers cancer-free and fresh from volunteering at Grenfell Tower, it’s slicker still.

Rodgers has a back catalogue preposterously over-stuffed with sublime music: the latterday Chic’s skill is presenting it as a kind relentless, mind-boggling barrage, without slipping into wedding disco cheesiness. There are obviously omissions – there’s no room for Dance Dance Dance, My Forbiden Lover or Sister Sledge’s Lost in Music and Thinking of You, although they unexpectedly play My Feet Keep Dancing from 1979’s Risqué – but it seems fairly churlish to quibble in the face of a set that steamrollers the Pyramid stage crowd: We Are Family, Le Freak, Good Times, Get Lucky, Upside Down, I’m Coming Out, Let’s Dance. The crowd’s response is pretty delirious, but that seems only fitting.

From time to time Glastonbury throws up a piece of scheduling so peculiar that it makes you do a double take: Kiefer Sutherland, performing on the Avalon stage is certainly one of those. What will he be doing there? Torturing baddies in the manner of his most famous character, Agent Jack Bauer? No, in actuality Sutherland will be playing with his country band, though the torturing bit wasn’t too far off.

Arriving on stage decked in a comically sized stetson and clutching a glass of whisky, Sutherland does at least look the part, and he’s an engaging enough performer, bouncing around the stage and performing the odd knee slide. The problem is his musical output, a series of stultifyingly conventional country and western songs riddled with lyrical cliches and predictable melodies. Things only pick up when he attempts a cover of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, and even then it’s at best little more than a faithful backroom bar version. “This is the longest day of my life,” Bauer’s 24 tagline used to go. This was certainly one of the longest hours of mine.

The sun is finally out, a rave klaxon goes off, and Mr Lover Lover, backed by a full band, struts on stage in a shiny shirt, waggling his crotch and yelling “Glastonbury! Ladies!” His pop-reggae was apparently made for this festival: an enormous crowd has assembled, and Mr Boombastic with its mega squelchy bass has everyone skanking immediately.

Of course, it’s cheesy as hell. On Oh Carolina, he is reminiscent of Tom Jones, and there is an interlude where he works the crowd like an aerobics instructor, yelling at everyone to get “turnt up” as his DJ plays a chart hip-hop megamix.

The show loses some momentum when it become clear that he is singing over the top of his own voice coming from a speaker. But perhaps he was saving his energy for infidelity banger It Wasn’t Me, where his Jamaican patois rolls at double-time, like the excellent MC he always was. No doubt Glasto has never had a huge field sing “banging on the bathroom floor” before. After the popularity of this performance, it may well do again.

Another in our ongoing People of Glastonbury portraits series, with Jordan Hopkins, 23, Tom Pearson-Comer, 24, and Georgia Meek, 23, all from Manchester.

What do you love about Glastonbury?

JH: Everyone is the friendliest person I’ve ever met … I could bump into someone and ask them how their day has been and they’d actually answer it, whereas if you did that in Manchester or out on the street you’d look a bit of a weirdo.

GM: I think that as well. Because you can randomly talk to another person. You’ll never meet them again but you’ll always have that memory in your head. That makes it fun.

TPC: I think the variety. You can come with mates who are all into different things, and because there’s so many options everyone can get about doing their own thing and then meet up of a night.

GM: My favourite moment was when we were tequila dancing. We were learning Cuban dancing at Glasto Latino and us three got right into it. It was really fun.

Are you strong and stable?

GM: No we are not. When I’m with my boyfriend...

TPC: I never feel strong and stable.

JH: Yes, but via recreational drugs.

Grohl or grime?

JH: Grohl all day. No chance of grime, I hate it. All my mates love it but I hate it.

GM: It’s all about grime.

TPC: Grime. Foo Fighters are not my cup of tea.

Harriet Gibsone is deep in the pit for The Killers. She says:

“And we’re off! Brandon looks extraordinarily slick – a touch of Elvis, a hint of vampire. They’re kicking off with When We Were Young. Everyone has gone wild. I’m sweating profusely.

“’What’s up Glastonbury! It’s good to be here,’ begins Brandon. ‘They say you play the John Peel stage twice in your career: once on your way up and once on your way down. It’s good to be back!’

“On the big screen behind them is footage of the solar system – it’s as if we are zooming through space and the John Peel tent is our spaceship. Lift off! I’ve been at Glastonbury for too long!”

The Sunday afternoon heritage slot is invariably as close to a guaranteed success as Glastonbury gets, but there’s a certain visible emotional charge behind Barry Gibb’s appearance. It’s not so much that he’s performing without any of his brothers – although an image of Barry with the late Maurice, Robin and Andy Gibb flashes onscreen during his performance of Nights on Broadway – but more what you might describe as the way the Bee Gees’ music has waxed and waned critically.

Gibb is possessed of one of the greatest songwriting catalogues in pop history, but for a long time, it was either reviled or treated as a joke. Not so today: Gibb seems genuinely startled by the reaction his songs get from a crowd you suspect are substantially younger than those at his own gigs.

The set never puts a foot wrong – it’s literally wall-to-wall classics, from the late 60s balladry of I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You to relentless disco pulse of You Should Be Dancing, to Islands in the Stream. You can hear an echo of the years the Bee Gees were mocked in the note of apology with which he introduces Stayin’ Alive – “we have to do songs from that film” – but by the end of the set, with the crowd chanting his name, the security guards at the front of the stage performing synchronised John Travolta dance moves and Gibb wearing a gold jacket passed to him from a group of audience members dressed as him in his 70s pomp, the note of apology is gone. Leaving the stage, he understandably describes it as “one of the greatest experiences of my life”; it’s certainly one of the greatest sets that slot on the Pyramid stage has seen.

The award for glammest festival performance must surely go to Oumou Sangaré and her band. The Malian musician – and businesswoman, who even manufactured her own car make, the Ou Sang – wears a traditional white headdress and a fishtail red leather maxi dress, glitter and blue lipstick; her lead guitarist in a purple and gold tunic, her backing singers adorned in jewellery as they harmonise and coordinate dance moves.

Today they take the West Holts – consistently the best programmed stage of the festival in this reviewer’s eyes – locking the crowd into their hypnotic folk-funk (including, hipster DJ klaxon, Jamie xx). The combination of the harp-like kora and subtle electronics has a psychedelic effect, with wavy rhythms and calling vocals floating serenely into each other and coiling around your consciousness.

Her music is inspired by traditional sounds and dances of her home region, Wassoulou, but they incorporate subtle electronics, as on Kamelemba, a shuffling housey track that sounds as contemporary as anything you’d hear in the Beat Hotel. It hypes into an almighty jam where all musicians line up at the front, electric guitar solos fizzing and dancing arms flailing. Funkiest of all is Fadjamou, another song from recently released album Moyoga, with its hints of Marshall Jefferson’s Move Your Body. And it’s one that, she says in French, is about the pre-colonialism names that African families would have, to trace their heritage back through the generations.

They end on Yala, which positively whomps, Sly & The Family Stone-rivalling guitar and trilling organ underpinned by a damn funky bassist, who Sangaré brings to the front and announces “I love this woman, because I love strong women!”. And it’s clear the crowd loves them all too.

John McDonnell has been to Glastonbury a few times but he was particularly disappointed about having to cancel his trip to Worthy Farm last year, he said in an exclusive interview at the festival.

“We were supposed to be here but a coup occurred,” the shadow chancellor, dressed down in jeans, a polo shirt and a blazer, recalled backstage at the Left Field tent. “People started resigning. I felt like phoning up Hilary Benn and saying, ‘Could you not put off the coup for a week?’ The timing was dreadful.”

But a lot can change in a year, and not only has Jeremy Corbyn fought off a second leadership challenge in as many months, he smashed the Conservatives’ Commons majority in the general election and this weekend drew tens of thousands of people to the main Pyramid stage of Glastonbury to deliver a speech.

“The response to Jeremy was fantastic,” McDonnell said. “We weren’t expecting that. I spoke at the Pyramid stage about 12 years ago, and within 10 seconds I cleared the field.

“Paul McCartney was here that year, I’m an old Beatles fan. We were knee-deep in mud. As I spoke on stage, my son, who must have been 8 or 9 then, was sat at the side being looked after by the Scissor Sisters and Black Eyed Peas, who were excellent child minders.”

McDonnell and Corbyn have repeatedly spoken about how Labour’s politics of hope has beaten the politics of fear. How then, I ask him, do you plan on keeping young people who support you engaged, without disappointing or disenfranchising them because you don’t have the power to put your policies in place?

“We keep on campaigning the way that we’re doing,” he said. “The general election campaign consisted of Jeremy touring all around the country, doing meeting after meeting, we’re now rolling that out to the whole of the shadow cabinet, right the way through the summer and into the winter, expecting a general election at any time.

“We’ll try and ensure there’s mechanisms for people to engage with us in the discussion about their community – what the issues are, how we tackle them. The manifesto wasn’t a completed work, it was for the election itself, so now we broaden and deepen that. In some ways the election interrupted our work, but we’ll continue to talk to people about their lives and policies that they need and then draw that into practical and pragmatic conclusions. It’s just really exciting.”

If you look at the demographic of the support Labour had attracted, McDonnell added, it was people below the age of 45. This included new voters, those in their 30s and early 40s who may have given up on politics, as well as older people who were dismayed by the Tory manifesto.
And the popularity isn’t just limited to Glastonbury, he said. “I kept saying to people, once we’ve got balanced broadcast coverage in the election campaign people would see what he’s about: an honest, decent, principled person. People are attracted to him as a result of that.”

When I mention the front pages of the tabloids in the run-up to polling day McDonnell laughs and shakes his head. “That sort of continuous attack by the Mail and Sun and the rightwing press does have its effect, there’s no doubt about it, but in this general election it was so far over the top in terms of criticisms, it was so exaggerated and unfair, that people turned off completely.”

So does he ever get the Jeremy Corbyn song stuck in his head? “Yes. We keep bursting out with it. It’s extraordinary.” Before bed? “That’s not part of the renaissance.”

McDonnell’s music taste is broad, and he was looking forward to seeing Laura Marling. Stormzy, he added, was “fantastic last night”, and Alison Moyet was “unbelievable, she held the audience, it was just an incredible set”.

He was also spotted at Craig David, I point out. “I was waiting for Jeremy to come on! Actually, he was alright. He’s sort of relaunched hasn’t he, there was quite a warm feeling for him where it was very critical before, he’s been through it, poor bloke.”

Despite the time-intensive process of smashing through neoliberalism, McDonnell tries to make time for interests outside of work.

“My ambition is to learn to play the trombone,” he said. “My wife pulls my leg about it. I’ll find time, my neighbours might not appreciate it but I’m going to try.

“Jeremy’s big thing is all the kids should learn a musical instrument. My musical career ended at primary school when I stood next to the strongest boy in class and he straightened my triangle.”

Hadley Freeman met up with Craig David just after he got off stage yesterday and his earnestness levels are off the charts, in a completely charming way. Just try to tear your eyes away from his masterful, seemingly laser-etched hairline too.

Sunshine occasionally teases its way through an overcast sky during Julia Jacklin’s Park stage performance, offering, as her music also does, small rays of light against darkness. The Australian singer-songwriter is playing tracks from her sucker-punch of a debut album, Don’t Let the Kids Win, which is all about mid-twenties existential crises and the beauty in among all of the uncertainty, and plays out like a wonderful cross between Courtney Barnett’s dry Aussie wit and the alt-rock balladry of Angel Olsen or Big Thief.

“This song’s about watching too much television and getting unrealistic expectations about life,” she says – you imagine slightly sardonically – before launching into Small Talk, a song in which she considers the strong resemblance between her dad and actor Zach Braff. Continuing the theme is the delicate, dream-like Eastwick, inspired by her love affair with reality show Dancing With the Stars, while Coming of Age sees Jacklin’s voice filled with emotion as she considers the challenges of leaving childhood behind. In a word, stunning.

The John Peel stage is packed to bursting for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which means one of two things: either Glasto is a hotbed of warlock-themed psych-rock fans, or lots of people have heard the rumours about a massive name playing on the stage’s surprise slot later this afternoon and are taking preemptive action. Whatever the reason (and let’s be honest, it’s definitely the second one), it’s a cheering sight to see this most singular of bands play to an enormous audience.

King Giz certainly have no intention of toning down their act for this mass crowd. All the usual elements are present and correct: 10-minute jazz wig-outs; manic, screeching vocals; visuals that resemble a lava lamp having a fight with an episode of In the Night Garden. It all contributes to a sense of wild abandon, of one last party before everything falls apart – which seems apt on the festival’s final day.

Dressed in a silk floor-length dress, with the stage and instrument stands adorned with ivy garlands and flowers, Laura Marling sets the tone for her lunchtime set by opening with Soothing. It’s the standout track from her latest album Semper Femina and starts as she means to go on; her blend of pastoral folk, country rock and hazy soul is just the tonic for those feeling the Sunday struggle. It’s mellow, bohemian and romantic, but never contrived. There’s no mistaking Marling’s steely self assurance, barely once furrowing her brow when she thrums her guitar, and singing deadpan lyrics like wolves in sheep’s clothing.

As ever the influence of Joni Mitchell looms large but there are echoes of Fleetwood Mac and Dolly Parton on Sophia, and Karen Carpenter on Once – all beautifully lit by harmonies from the two sisters on backing vocals. On the tracks from Semper Femina, meanwhile, a more elusive and mystical Marling than the one who used to wear her heart on her sleeve emerges, and underlines just what a master craftswoman she is. The Valley feels especially poignant – as she sings “Innocence reminds us to cover our drooling gaze”, the captivated Glasto crowd surely knows how she feels.

Our portrait series continues with friendly crustacean Sam Preston, from Taunton.

What do you love about Glastonbury?

Freedom, mate. Being able to do exactly what you want for a weekend, spend it with people you really enjoy, around cool music.

Are you strong and stable?

Yes, I would say so. It’s my fourth year, so it’s easier to navigate around and maintain a good level of speed. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Beat Hotel, because I like a lot of funk and soul and they have some really wicked DJs in there. I also like the lighting, cos there’s a big canvas thing over your head. It gives you, like, an orange hue. It’s wicked.

Grohl or grime?

I don’t mind grime but, yeah, it’d have to be Grohl.

The soothing sound of an acoustic guitar, sarangi and double bass is drifting across the depleted crowds over on the West Holts stage, just the sedate and spiritually nourishing tonic that Sunday at Glastonbury deserves.

This is a supergroup of sorts (but not Natasha Khan and Tracey Thorne as one passer by hopes before they start). The Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist James Yorkston, double bass player Jon Thorne and Suhail Yusuf Khan – son of world famous musician Ustad Sabri Khan – begin their set with an epic, intense instrumental piece which fills the stagnant air with a sense of mysticism. It takes you away to a more meditative state – something that happens a lot throughout their show. There are moments during Khan’s haunting vocals in particular, where it’s even possible to forget your back feels as if someone spent the night kicking it and that you have only eaten beige food for the past three days.

Described as an “Indian-folk-jazz” group, it’s a set that’s varied and subtle in its composition, mellifluous and a little melancholy. While there’s no massive talking point here they’re certainly the only group on site to cover a song by Scottish poet Ivor Cutler, tell the audience off for litter dropping and whack out a tune on a nyckelharpa.

As the rest of the festival creaks back into action for one last blast, the audience remains modest here, but those who are draped across the grass look either enchanted or so deeply connected to the spiritual realm they are literally asleep.

Wool flat caps, pints of Guinness and shamrock flags are in short supply as Boston celtic-punk veterans Dropkick Murphys take to the Other stage. In fact, only the dedicated swarm of moshers right down the front – barging to every bagpipe-fuelled chorus – seem enthralled by their presence, with their kitsch, gallic-tinged melee only occasionally prompting mass frenzy. Even so, they play a solid set, taking in their burgeoning back catalogue as well as material from their latest album, 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory, released in January. Highlights include the Ring of Fire-esque Blood, from that new record (“If you want blood we’ll give you some!” roars frontman Al Barr, his voice extravagantly hoarse), ye olde anthem Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya and, of course, I’m Shipping Up to Boston, pop culture’s go-to Emerald Isle anthem with its leg-kicking beat. Plus: Until the Next Time, a moving tribute to friend Micky Fitz of the Business that proves they can do sentimental as well as snarling.

Sunday lunchtime at Glastonbury is a time of sore heads and uneasy stomachs. So it’s essential that the music at the festival during this period doesn’t do anything to upset the parlous state of its audience. Quite what the Other stage was thinking in booking shouty Oi Oi boys Slaves at 11am is anyone’s guess, but their neighbours at the John Peel have at least partially made amends by slotting in Real Estate straight after. The Californian band’s dreamy lo-fi jangle acts as a soothing balm here. Crucially though the tracks played here from their new album In Mind contain just enough of a strung-out, psych-y undercurrent to keep things from getting soporific. A lovely shiatsu massage of a performance.

Ahead of the arrival of Shaggy on the West Holts stage this afternoon, it’s the return of It Wasn’t Me, our feature where Glastonbury-goers confess the worst things they’ve done at the festival.

“I lost my virginity at Glastonbury but I rushed into it. It was in a tent.”

“I had sex in our tent last year with muddy boots on. Mud went everywhere.”

“I spent a whole day in the VIP bar and didn’t see a single band.”

For a taste of something a bit more cynical than the rousing rhetoric of Corbs and co, there were the Dead Kennedys spitting pure bile. Caustic at the best of the times, the punk provocateurs, now fronted by Ron Skip Greer after years of legal conflicts with former singer Jello Biafra, seem to have been energised by the political upheaval on their side of the Atlantic. “Donald Trump was not able to join us tonight. But he did send us the words of his next executive order,” Greer snarls before the band launch into a savage rendition of Kill the Poor.

Apposite too is Nazis Punks Fuck Off, which gets its second airing of the weekend after Napalm Death covered it on Thursday. Even the crowd aren’t exempt from their ire. “Each of you is responsible for one murder: of the recording industry,” Greer roars. “When the only thing you get to listen to is Katy Perry brought to you by Coca-Cola, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

If that makes Dead Kennedys sound a bit of a drag, rest assured they’re anything but. While Greer can never truly replace Biafra, he has a similarly manic energy on stage, and is backed up by a rhythm section that never perform at anything less than breakneck pace. As a ferocious moshpit forms during California Über Alles, it’s clear that Glasto’s new foray into heavy music has been a roaring success.

As the velvety night sky sets on the West Holts stage, a retrospective video replete with slowly fading footage of the Jacksons in their prime beams from the big screen. It’s the start of a chintzy and joyful – if a little tawdry – performance from the brothers.

The antithesis of Solange’s understated set on the stage before, the Jacksons’ glitzy show is part Vegas spectacle and part hen party entertainment, the songs so big and the sound so weak in the mix that it turns into a mass karaoke session.

Performing classic Jackson 5 tracks and Michael’s solo material, it’s impossible not to feel the grandeur of hits like Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, Can You Feel It, I Want You Back, I’ll Be There, Shake Your Body ... they are songs so familiar that you feel as if you were born knowing them. It’s not all straightforward smashes either: one bizarre highlight, for surrealist points alone, is Tito’s solo segment, during which he plays a few of his own songs while an image of his album artwork, a photo of his face, flashes on the screen behind him.

Just like the Bootleg Beatles, who opened the Pyramid stage on Saturday, you can’t really knock a show that’s so seeped in nostalgia, comfort and innocence. Even if Jermaine, Tito, Jackie and Marlon’s presence itself is not that much of an extravaganza, and even though they choose to conclude the set with an advert for forthcoming new Jacksons material, you can’t complain with such a catalogue of peerless pop perfection.

All weekend we’ve been doing portraits of people across the Glastonbury site – here’s Fred and Morag Allen, from just outside Bath.

What do you love about Glastonbury?

F: I’m only here for the family. I’m not a music fan.
M: We have two daughters here, aged 31 and 28.
F: They’re now doing their own thing. I bring them here. Set up a tent for them. They require the bank of Dad.
M: I listen to the bands. I’ve seen First Aid Kit, Blossoms, Tom Chaplin; Biffy I want to see.

Are you strong and stable?

F: Not really, no.

Grohl or grime?

M: Grohl, definitely.

It must be tough being a cool band – when people look up to you, they can so easily also feel looked down upon. But Phoenix manage to be both utterly, ridiculously debonair and also human. Coming on stage after a 30-minute wait for some kind of tech to be fixed, some of the fairweather fans have left, leaving a surprisingly ardent and mosh-friendly collection of Tinder-friendly millenials; the band’s stage setup, with a mirror inverted above them reflecting a light-up floor, will have launched a thousand Instas. Every so often they teeter on emptiness as on Ti Amo’s blustering cocaine-headache, but much of it is wonderfully slick – like good dancemoves rather than oil. Lasso is whip-tight and melancholic, J-Boy is all yacht-deck swagger, and Role Model proves to be a strong new ballad. Their boyish singer Thomas Mars launches himself at the front row, singing songs hunched over fans’ upturned faces – an image that shows there’s real warmth in their cool.

Foo Fighters let off fireworks and let their tousled manes fly, but our reviewer – and one-time diehard Foos fan – Kate Hutchinson remained relatively unmoved:

Over on the Park stage meanwhile were moody art-rock crew Warpaint, watched over by Rachel Aroesti:

Just down the road from the metal arachnid-based nightmare that is Arcadia is the Park stage, a hub of niceness flanked by the double whammy of a book store and a tea and cake cafe. Arriving to play up to that sweetness and light for Saturday headlining duties is Warpaint, the LA group with a neat line in pleasantly dissonant post-punk.

Kitted out in predictably hip style – including singer/guitarist Emily Kokal sporting the biggest white shirt known to man – the foursome are the height of sultry sophistication, shrouding disco grooves and punk whininess in a mist of spacey atmospherics. Their determined vibe-building does come at the expense of the massive singalong tunes you might expect from a headliner teeing the crowd up for a wild night out (the closest they have is the dreamy mulch of Love Is to Die), but as they end with the brilliantly PiL-esque funk of Disco/Very, Warpaint become hypnotic enough to make you feel like you’re on another planet.

As Glastonbury’s hordes emerge energised by Jeremy Corbyn and whatever they imbibed last night, we’re back to liveblog the final day. There’s the much-loved “heritage slot” in the afternoon, which this year is a disco odyssey from Barry Gibb then Chic, plus sets by Laura Marling, Haim, and Kiefer Sutherland doing some country. We’ll be reviewing all those and more, plus we’ll catch up with the people of Glastonbury as they enter the “fugue state” portion of the weekend. Join us!