The story

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. Read full article »