Michael Eavis: Glastonbury God

(CNN) -- Now in its 37th year, the Glastonbury festival has built a reputation as the mother of all music festivals, with the biggest names in rock music gladly accepting invitations to play the Pyramid stage year after year. Yet for all their combined wealth and fame, it is festival's organizer who remains the true star of Glastonbury.

Michael Eavis is the one of the most un-rock and roll people you are ever likely to meet. By his own admission he is "a bit of a Puritan". He worships, with his 95 year-old mum, Sheila, at the local Methodist chapel every Sunday, and abhors drink and drugs and smoking. Yet his twin passions for music and people inspired him to start what would grow into Britain's foremost music festival.

Born in 1935, Eavis was educated at Wells Cathedral School in Somerset. He left school when he was just 15 years old to join the Union Castle Shipping Line as a trainee midshipman. He spent four happy years plying the trade routes between Britain, South Africa and Kenya before, at the age of 19, his father -- a farmer and Methodist preacher died of cancer.

It was initially with some reluctance that Eavis accepted his inheritance of 150 acres, 60 cows and an overdraft, and returned from his life at sea to run Worthy Farm. At the same time he embarked upon his first marriage to Ruth, which produced three children before they divorced in 1964.

The idea to stage a festival took seed in 1970 when Eavis and Jean Hayball (his future wife) snuck into the Bath Blues Festival and saw Led Zeppelin perform their set. Eavis has often described that moment as an epiphany. "Something flashes down and you suddenly change," he said.

Later that year, on September 19th Eavis organized a Pop, Folk and Blues Festival at Worthy Farm charging £1 and offering free milk to festival goers. Marc Bolan -- who arrived in a velvet covered Buick car - topped the bill after The Kinks had pulled out at the last minute and although the festival made a loss of £1500 -- Eavis had hoped it would pay off his mortgage and allow him to farm ecologically -- it was deemed a success.

The following year the festival was renamed the "Glastonbury Fayre" with an attendance of 12,000 and the famous Pyramid stage was erected for the first time.

After the "impromptu" festival in 1978, where 500 travelers arrived unannounced from Stonehenge, the festival began to regain momentum.

By 1981, it was officially called the "Glastonbury Festival" and began its attachments with political and charitable causes. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament benefited to the tune of £20,000 and by the end of the decade Greenpeace, Oxfam and local charities were all benefiting from donations.

But by now, Eavis was facing annual opposition from local residents and the district council who threatened to revoke the festival's entertainment license. Matters came to a head in 1990 when travelers, who were looting the site clashed with security guards resulting in 235 arrests and £50,000 of damage to property.

The rest of the decade proved more peaceful and crowds soared to over 100,000, but the millennium would close on a tragic note for Eavis when his wife and mother of the festival, Jean, died of cancer in 1999. A wicker sculpture was ceremoniously burned in her honor and fireworks illuminated the sky.

In 2002 the festival underwent the biggest overhaul since it's conception. Steel fencing ringed the site and music event's organizer Mean Fiddler took over the running of ticketing and security, successfully stopping troublemakers and ticketless fans from entering the site.

Some people accused Glastonbury of selling out and caving in to consumerism, but without such measures it would never gain it's license. Far from denting its popularity, the festival has gone from strength to strength with a record 180,000 people attending in 2007.

Eavis will raise £2m for charity this year with Greenpeace, WaterAid, Oxfam, I Count and a range of local charities all benefiting from the festival.

The 2007 finished as usual, with people shouting their thanks to Eavis. Covered in mud, they all joyfully tell him what a fantastic time they have had. Eavis receives the praise graciously. He signed off his post-festival message on the Glastonbury Web site saying: "If I ever needed encouragement to carry on, you have all given me loads of it. Thank you again for everything."

For now, it's time for Eavis to go back to farming and look forward to 2008.