Latest news with #DavidLevene
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I genuinely love this place so much!' Fatboy Slim's 100th Glastonbury set
Irreverent, bouncy and as suitable at 4am in a club as it is at 4pm in a field, the music of Fatboy Slim dovetails perfectly with Glastonbury. And the man himself, Norman Cook, seems to know it. This year's festival marked a big milestone: Cook has now played 100 Glasto sets – or thereabouts – over the years, popping up everywhere from vast stages to tiny tents. To document the occasion, Guardian photographer David Levene bedded in with the DJ for the weekend, while Cook explained why it holds such a special significance for him. Cook tries to find his daughter for Burning Spear at the Pyramid Stage Bumping into Chris Moyles, and right, having his photo taken with Charley and her son Remi, 7 months, from Somerset Cook checks out the scenes outside Lonely Hearts Club stage in Silver Hayes, where he's due to play that evening at 10.30pm Feeling it at his son Woody's DJ set at Scissors Bar Cook's dressing room at Lonely Hearts 'We're not doing a kind of 100th show extravaganza on the grounds that we don't actually really know which would be the 100th. It's not an exact science, it's a guesstimate. Thing is, I play so many shows, and so many of them are just like impromptu that we really don't know. So I think it'd be a bit much to really get the bells and whistles out. We think it's the Block9 show in the afternoon tomorrow – we think! But no candles, sadly. 'I'm very, very proud of my relationship with Glastonbury and my history with it and I'm lucky, because as a DJ, you can play multiple sets. Obviously, there's probably people who've been to more Glastonburys, but they've only played one show per festival – that's not going to get you into big high figures.' Fire it up! Fatboy Slim at Lonely Hearts Club 'My first Glasto show was on the Pyramid stage in 1986 with the Housemartins, and we didn't know anything really about Glastonbury or festivals. We'd never played in daylight before – we only ever played in clubs – and also we thought that Glastonbury was full of bearded hippies who would probably throw mud and bottles of piss out at us. So we went on quite nervous and quite agitated, but that was quite good in the Housemartins, channelling that aggression – we had the nice tunes, but there was a lot of aggression. We made an awful lot of friends, and it changed our view about Glastonbury. The only weird thing was me and Paul [Heaton] have both had fairly successful careers, but neither of us had managed to get back on the Pyramid stage for 38 years. Last year, Paul played the Pyramid stage and he phoned me up and said, 'Will you come on and do a song with us, just to celebrate?'' Fatboy Slim prepares before performing at Lonely Hearts Club stage Dropping bangers at Lonely Hearts Club, with Stella McCartney backstage 'My favourite Glastonbury moment was playing for [Rob da Bank's label] Sunday Best. I was four days in at that point, my mind had been expanded, altered and distorted, as was everybody's around me. So I decided if I played a record backwards, would people dance backwards? And it was a good theory. Obviously with CDJs, you can press reverse, but with the record, you have to physically rewind it. So I played Block Rockin' Beats, by the Chemical Brothers, pretty much at the right speed but backwards. And it worked. Everybody got the joke. It was just after Twin Peaks too, so everybody was like, dancing backwards to the music. What I forgot was that Ed from the Chemical Brothers was in the DJ booth with me, and he went, 'What are you doing?' I'm like, 'I want to see if they can dance backwards.' He's like, 'Oh, great!' That's probably the most out there I've ever been.' Fatboy Slim performs at Lonely Hearts Club stage at Silver Hayes 'I loved the Rabbit Hole. It was never the same [after it closed]. Absolutely anything could happen, and sometimes it did. I much prefer the smaller stages to the big ones, but having said that, when we did the Park the other year, that felt pretty much like the perfect gig. We brought Rita Ora on – I don't normally do showbiz-y things like that. It's probably my favourite set.' Another set, this time at the Genosys stage Tweaking the faders at Genosys 'My son Woody is playing here this year, and it's just fabulous. My daughter's here, my ex wife [Zoe Ball] is here. We're all hanging out. It's beautiful. Woody came to Glastonbury when he was about eight, and it didn't go well for him or for me and Zoe. But when he started coming under his own steam, it's weird, because we didn't teach him anything, he just assimilated himself into the fabric of it and made all these friends the first year he went. He was built for Glastonbury: he's just got that energy, he wants to talk to everybody, he wants to change the world. Everybody keeps telling me how cool my son is or how mental my son is, sometimes both.' The crowd at Genosys, Block9 'As a festival, Glastonbury never sold out to the man. The Eavis family have kept it independent, which means they're in charge of the way it feels and the way it looks, and people respect that. There's nothing corporate that interferes and dictates, you know, and it's not about making money. The music business, especially when money comes in, it distorts your creative ideas and the feel of it and it becomes a money-making machine. But the Eavis family never sold out. They don't do it for money. They do it because they love watching this going on on their farm every year.' Next up: Shangri-La Having his stage wristband put on before performing at Shangri-La, by his video director Bob 'I genuinely love this place so much. I feel proud if I'm promoting the Glastonbury brand, or just being part of the furniture or just wandering around saying hello to everyone. Michael Eavis can't get around so much any more, but I was always so impressed about the fact that he would just spend the whole festival wandering, saying hello to everyone.' Cook bids farewell to the festival for another year at Shangri-La
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I genuinely love this place so much!' Fatboy Slim's 100th Glastonbury set
Irreverent, bouncy and as suitable at 4am in a club as it is at 4pm in a field, the music of Fatboy Slim dovetails perfectly with Glastonbury. And the man himself, Norman Cook, seems to know it. This year's festival marked a big milestone: Cook has now played 100 Glasto sets – or thereabouts – over the years, popping up everywhere from vast stages to tiny tents. To document the occasion, Guardian photographer David Levene bedded in with the DJ for the weekend, while Cook explained why it holds such a special significance for him. Cook tries to find his daughter for Burning Spear at the Pyramid Stage Bumping into Chris Moyles, and right, having his photo taken with Charley and her son Remi, 7 months, from Somerset Cook checks out the scenes outside Lonely Hearts Club stage in Silver Hayes, where he's due to play that evening at 10.30pm Feeling it at his son Woody's DJ set at Scissors Bar Cook's dressing room at Lonely Hearts 'We're not doing a kind of 100th show extravaganza on the grounds that we don't actually really know which would be the 100th. It's not an exact science, it's a guesstimate. Thing is, I play so many shows, and so many of them are just like impromptu that we really don't know. So I think it'd be a bit much to really get the bells and whistles out. We think it's the Block9 show in the afternoon tomorrow – we think! But no candles, sadly. 'I'm very, very proud of my relationship with Glastonbury and my history with it and I'm lucky, because as a DJ, you can play multiple sets. Obviously, there's probably people who've been to more Glastonburys, but they've only played one show per festival – that's not going to get you into big high figures.' Fire it up! Fatboy Slim at Lonely Hearts Club 'My first Glasto show was on the Pyramid stage in 1986 with the Housemartins, and we didn't know anything really about Glastonbury or festivals. We'd never played in daylight before – we only ever played in clubs – and also we thought that Glastonbury was full of bearded hippies who would probably throw mud and bottles of piss out at us. So we went on quite nervous and quite agitated, but that was quite good in the Housemartins, channelling that aggression – we had the nice tunes, but there was a lot of aggression. We made an awful lot of friends, and it changed our view about Glastonbury. The only weird thing was me and Paul [Heaton] have both had fairly successful careers, but neither of us had managed to get back on the Pyramid stage for 38 years. Last year, Paul played the Pyramid stage and he phoned me up and said, 'Will you come on and do a song with us, just to celebrate?'' Fatboy Slim prepares before performing at Lonely Hearts Club stage Dropping bangers at Lonely Hearts Club, with Stella McCartney backstage 'My favourite Glastonbury moment was playing for [Rob da Bank's label] Sunday Best. I was four days in at that point, my mind had been expanded, altered and distorted, as was everybody's around me. So I decided if I played a record backwards, would people dance backwards? And it was a good theory. Obviously with CDJs, you can press reverse, but with the record, you have to physically rewind it. So I played Block Rockin' Beats, by the Chemical Brothers, pretty much at the right speed but backwards. And it worked. Everybody got the joke. It was just after Twin Peaks too, so everybody was like, dancing backwards to the music. What I forgot was that Ed from the Chemical Brothers was in the DJ booth with me, and he went, 'What are you doing?' I'm like, 'I want to see if they can dance backwards.' He's like, 'Oh, great!' That's probably the most out there I've ever been.' Fatboy Slim performs at Lonely Hearts Club stage at Silver Hayes 'I loved the Rabbit Hole. It was never the same [after it closed]. Absolutely anything could happen, and sometimes it did. I much prefer the smaller stages to the big ones, but having said that, when we did the Park the other year, that felt pretty much like the perfect gig. We brought Rita Ora on – I don't normally do showbiz-y things like that. It's probably my favourite set.' Another set, this time at the Genosys stage Tweaking the faders at Genosys 'My son Woody is playing here this year, and it's just fabulous. My daughter's here, my ex wife [Zoe Ball] is here. We're all hanging out. It's beautiful. Woody came to Glastonbury when he was about eight, and it didn't go well for him or for me and Zoe. But when he started coming under his own steam, it's weird, because we didn't teach him anything, he just assimilated himself into the fabric of it and made all these friends the first year he went. He was built for Glastonbury: he's just got that energy, he wants to talk to everybody, he wants to change the world. Everybody keeps telling me how cool my son is or how mental my son is, sometimes both.' The crowd at Genosys, Block9 'As a festival, Glastonbury never sold out to the man. The Eavis family have kept it independent, which means they're in charge of the way it feels and the way it looks, and people respect that. There's nothing corporate that interferes and dictates, you know, and it's not about making money. The music business, especially when money comes in, it distorts your creative ideas and the feel of it and it becomes a money-making machine. But the Eavis family never sold out. They don't do it for money. They do it because they love watching this going on on their farm every year.' Next up: Shangri-La Having his stage wristband put on before performing at Shangri-La, by his video engineer Bob 'I genuinely love this place so much. I feel proud if I'm promoting the Glastonbury brand, or just being part of the furniture or just wandering around saying hello to everyone. Michael Eavis can't get around so much any more, but I was always so impressed about the fact that he would just spend the whole festival wandering, saying hello to everyone.' Cook bids farewell to the festival for another year at Shangri-La
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Get high at Glastonbury: the Guardian's aerial shots of the festival
It can be difficult to get an elevated view at Glastonbury. There are various high-up platforms around the site, and of course there are the hills that give a view down into the valley where the festival nestles. But for much of the weekend you are in a crowd, looking up. Guardian photographer David Levene therefore used an eight metre-high 'monopod' – a sort of highly stable pole with his camera stuck on top – to create elevation and give us a better sense of the scale of the crowds. I wanted to get a slightly different viewpoint of the things that have become very familiar to our readersDavid Levene The crowds pack in tightly during the big stage events, such as Rod Stewart on Sunday afternoon, which was many festivalgoers' main event of the weekend – even if the Guardian gave it a mixed review. The various routes through the festival remain busy at all hours, and can be disorienting as people follow the crowds or a map. An old railway track forms the main pedestrian artery running through the site. Finding 'clean' shots can be a real challenge at Glastonbury. Visually, so much is thrown at you wherever you look, and photographically, pretty much everything is an assault on the sensors! One way around this problem can be to get up high, in order to achieve more depth, balance and spacing As the sun set on Sunday evening, we got perhaps the best 'golden hour' of the weekend. Glastonbury-on-Sea is an area by the Park stage with a fairground feel, complete with a pier jutting out from the hillside. The giant bug at Arcadia – made from an old Royal Navy helicopter – is surrounded by dancers who look almost ant-like from this viewpoint. These two images were taken from the same point with the camera turned around. Shangri-La is a busy, wildly creative area in the south-east corner of the festival, full of sound systems where people party until the early hours. The Prodigy closed the the Other stage with an energetic show, and Olivia Rodrigo finished the festival on a five-star high. David was there to catch an elevated view of the firework display at the end. Towers and platforms are few and far between and become well used by anyone with a smartphone or camera in their hands. Drones are a big no-no for site authorities, so the monopod solves the problem. It's a beast even when collapsed, but well worth the bother so I can choose virtually any spot on the site to shoot a raised picture
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Telly-shrubbies', morris dancers and living graffiti: Glastonbury's Shangri-La gets a revamp
Tucked away in the south east corner of the Glastonbury festival site, Shangri-La has been long known for its mixture of hedonism and political satire. But this year the area has received a striking eco-conscious update Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian For Shangri-La's new theme, The Wilding, the area's billboards savaging late-era capitalism have been replaced by greener, more sustainable decoration Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian A 'Telly-shrubby' prepares for a performance in the revamped Shangri-La Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian One of Shangri-La's hidden areas, Sonic Bloom is an oasis away from the noise of the festival site that allows you to listen to music created by the natural world Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian Performers and revellers take part in a daily immersive procession throughout the festival site, led by a renegade Morris dancing side (or group) Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian A 40-year memorial to the Battle of the Beanfield, when 1,300 police officers prevented a convoy of new age travellers from attending the Stonehenge Free Festival. Dozens of travellers were injured in the incident Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian Political slogans accompany plant life in the revamped Shangri-La Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian Giant 'living canvasses' will have an AV show projected on to them as part of the programme Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian This allotment, tended by the Anarchist Gardeners Club collective, is one of 12 on site in Shangri-La Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian Performers on the daily Wilding procession Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian One of the artworks at Shangri-La, a living piece of graffiti by textile artist India Rafiqi. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian A reveller struts his stuff during the daily procession at Shangri-La on Thursday Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
The Herald Scotland
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Beamish, The Living Museum Of The North wins Museum Of The Year award
The £120,000 prize was presented to Rhiannon Hiles, chief executive of Beamish, by comedian and prize judge Phil Wang, at a ceremony held at the Museum Of Liverpool. Beamish offers immersive exhibits (David Levene/Art Fund/PA) Wang, 35, said: 'Beamish is a worthy winner of this year's Art Fund Museum of the Year award. Our visit was one of the most fun days I've had in years. 'An unbelievable level of commitment from staff, and a jaw-dropping amount of detail ran through everything. They had to drag me kicking and screaming out of there!' Jenny Waldman, director of Art Fund and chairwoman of the judges for Art Fund Museum Of The Year, added: 'Beamish is a museum brought to life by people – a joyous, immersive and unique place shaped by the stories and experiences of its community. 'The judges were blown away by the remarkable attention to detail of its exhibits across a 350-acre site and by the passion of its staff and volunteers.' In the past year Beamish has completed its Remaking Beamish project, which has seen the recreation of a 1950s town and 1950s farm. Beamish, The Living Museum Of The North, is an open-air museum in County Durham (David Levene/Art Fund/PA) In 2024 they opened a 1950s cinema, toy shop and electrical shop, as well as a Georgian tavern. The museum, which celebrates its 55th anniversary this year, was in a list of finalists that comprised Chapter in Cardiff, Compton Verney in Warwickshire, Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast and Perth Museum in Perth and Kinross. Art Fund annually shortlists five outstanding museums for the prize and the 2025 edition recognises activities that took place from autumn 2023 to winter 2024. The judges were tasked with identifying impactful projects and looking at the overall achievements of the organisations.
