PRIMAL SCREAM'S LEGENDARY, INCENDIARY GIG AT GLASTONBURY 2005 (Remembered) ~ 'Well you had your chance to dance...'

ANGRIEST GIG IN THE WORLD - EVER!

 

'We're going to do it again. Do you know why? Because we're a punk rock band right? And you're a bunch of f****** hippies!'  

'Do you want Basement Jaxx? Is that a yes or no? Right. Give me my jacket. Give me my jacket. You know we're going play one last song to f*** you up. It's a song by John Lennon. It's called Gimme Some Truth. I need my jacket, I need my jacket.'

Primal Scream had already baited the Glastonbury organisers on the day of their not-anywhere-near headlining slot by allegedly defacing a charity poster (signed by all the performers on the day) for 'Make Poverty History' with their own political slogans. They had been a last minute replacement as well, rushed in to replace Kylie Minogue - the contrast to the fans you would normally expect at a Primal Scream gig soon apparent.

Singer Bobby Gillespie spent most of the gig swearing at - and mocking - the festival and the audience, and the track Kill All Hippies was the one played most venomously of all. During one song intro he asked who was there 'to see f****** Kylie?' over and over, before mocking the green-valued crowd with the words: 'We flew in by f****** helicopter'.

Mani, their bassist, takes the mic at the start and introduces themselves as 'Primal Scream . . the best f****** band that was' before this bunch of clearly angry (young enough) men launch into a set consisting of the fiercest, least love-spreading tracks that any band could possibly play.

Gillespie, Mani and Kevin Shields, together on stage, pissed off - the rather safe Glastonbury world was about to implode in feedback-incensed, ear-busting, back-bending volume and wild, wide-eyed ranting.

Gillespie at one point gives the crowd a Nazi salute (hugely controversial to this day) and spits at the camera, after telling the cameraman that he's going to do so. It's as if he asks the poor man for permission to do this - subverting and mocking fake rock posturing with an almost threatening, dangerous (for being so different to what you expect - you expect to see spitting, not the promise to staff that it's what you're going to get) kind of taunt.

The cameraman looks like he could curl up and die and doesn't know what to say back. At the end of the set, the band refuse to leave the stage, and Gillespie asks the crowd: 'Do you want to hear some Stone Roses?' - that gets a cheer (Mani used to play bass in the Stone Roses) but then makes a V-sign at the crowd's response. Gillespie tells them: 'Well you should have been here fifteen years ago then you f****** lazy bastards'.

Eventually the band gets escorted off stage by security after a few minutes of attitude-seething chat about what they should play to keep the set going into the runtime of next act, Basement Jaxx - they come up with nothing, obviously deliberately so, until the moment where they do decide on a track to play and the power is instantly cut. The microphone stand and mic get thrown into the audience. They came back to Glastonbury this year, older, maybe less angry, but no less brilliant.

For Robert 'Throb' Young

words: mark gordon palmer