Glastonbury 2024 woke up gradually over the course of a baking hot Wednesday and cooler Thursday, as hundreds of thousands of people slowly fed into the site. And come Thursday evening, the view across the site from up above the Park was as glorious as ever.
Guardian photographer David Levene was at the Crow’s Nest as night fell on the eve of the first day…
By Thursday evening, in the absence of any stage-performing action, the bars all across the site were full to bursting. Arcadia was tuning up with its new dragonfly, which has replaced the ageing fire-breathing Spider.
On Friday, the lunchtime slot at Woodsies was Lambrini Girls.
David Levene got up close to the K-pop phenomenon that is Seventeen, with exclusive backstage access to the band.
…and their fans at the Pyramid stage.
David Levene had backstage access to Marina Abramović’s art piece on the Pyramid stage, where she dressed as a giant CND sign and managed to get the audience to be almost entirely silent for seven minutes.
Jonny Weeks found people taking photos of Stormzy taking photos at D-Block Europe’s show on the Other stage..
Alecsandra Raluca Drăgoi took in the view from the Crow’s Nest on her way to catch the Scandi folk-metallers Heilung as they played West Holts.
Laura Snapes said, “The stage is laden with spindly trees and hanging drums presumably made from a beast they killed earlier. One male singer looks like Iggy Pop if he’d been left to forage in the wild for some months and really taken to it. There are shields and spears being pounded into the stage, lots of elemental drones and what sounds like growled frog ribbits, and a very impressive if very severe sense of theatrics. It couldn’t be more opposite to LCD Soundsystem over on the main stage – more BCE Paganism.”
David Levene was in the pit for Dua Lipa, to catch the first headline act of the festival – while Johnny Weeks was in the crowd to get in among the fans. “This was peak Dua,” said Ben Beaumont-Thomas. “Glamorous but not stiff or queenly, just relaxed in the beat and strutting through it to whatever impossibly fabulous party you wish you were at.”