The Glastonbury Experience Set To Return To BBC Music
Following the cancellation of this year’s Glastonbury festival, BBC Music will give disappointed festival goers the chance to have The Glastonbury Experience at home. In addition to broadcasting some classic sets from previous festivals, the BBC will also broadcast a special director’s cut of the recent Live At Worthy Farm livestream. “Since the BBC first broadcast footage from Worthy Farm in 1997, Glastonbury and the BBC have enjoyed a brilliant relationship, so I’m thrilled that they’ll be showing highlights of our Live At Worthy Farm special,” festival co-organiser Emily Eavis said in a statement.
Live At Worthy Farm took place on 22 May 2021 and featured performances from Coldplay, Wolf Alice, IDLES and new Radiohead side-project, The Smile, who made their debut live performance during the livestream.
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the livestream, presented by Jo Whiley, will also air as part of The Glastonbury Experience 2021, featuring “the story behind the staging of Glastonbury’s first ever festival without an audience, interviews with the artists, backstage footage and performance highlights from Live At Worthy Farm.”
The Glastonbury Experience 2021 will also include:
A BBC iPlayer Glastonbury pop-up channel. Across the weekend (Friday 25 – Sunday 27 June), the BBC iPlayer channel will stream a mix of classic sets, documentaries and specially curated programmes from Radio 2’s Jo Whiley, Radio 1’s Clara Amfo and 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne. Each day of programming will focus on a different theme at Glastonbury – the 1990s (Friday), the 21st century (Saturday) and Legends (Sunday).
Over 50 full Glastonbury sets from the BBC archives available to watch on BBC iPlayer and over 30 sets to listen to on BBC Sounds from Monday 21 June. This is in addition to individual Live At Worthy Farm performances which will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer from Thursday 24 June. Glassic Glastonbury performances from artists including Radiohead (1997), Kylie (2019) and Fela Kuti (1984) – the latter of which has never been shown on TV in its entirety before – broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Four across the weekend.