To outlive the others? June 26, 2007

Taken from The Observer newspaper on the eve of Glastonbury 2005

Athelstan Joseph Michael Eavis was born in 1935 and educated at the Wells Cathedral School, but left at 15 to join the Union Castle Shipping Line as a trainee midshipman, spending four years plying the routes between Britain, Kenya and South Africa. He was 19 when his father, a Methodist preacher, died of cancer and he reluctantly agreed to inherit 150 acres of land, 60 cows and an overdraft; he eventually came to love it. Even during the festival’s rapid expansion, he worked seven-day weeks, rising at 5.30 to milk the cows. The farm still produces 10,000 litres of milk a day.

At around the time of his father’s death, he married his first wife, Ruth, and they had three children before divorcing in 1964. He was with a new love, Jean Hayball, when he underwent that epiphany listening to Led Zeppelin. He recalled: “Something flashes down and you suddenly change. Bit like St Paul; do you know what I mean? There’s a change of attitude, a change of purpose.”
Marriage to Jean produced more children, one of which was the Glastonbury Festival. When she died from cancer in 1999, the festival ceremonially burned a winged wicker sculpture in her honour and lit fireworks.
Eavis now has a third wife, Liz, around two decades his junior, whom he met at a medieval fancy-dress party in 2000. He was dressed as a cardinal and she asked if he had delusions of grandeur. He said no, it was all they had left in the fancy-dress shop. Yet for all the sense of fun, and his preternatural gift for tuning in to the tastes of Generations X, Y and Z, Eavis has an austere streak a mile wide.
One of his five children, Patrick, 37, a GP in Bath and master of festival T-shirts, recalls going on just one family holiday when he was growing up. “We were going to Scoraig, a little peninsula a long way north of Inverness. We got on trains as far as you could possibly go. We thought we’d get in a taxi but when we got off the train, the whole place was deserted and there was nothing for miles. That was the only holiday we went on.
“We were always pretty poor, really, and always had very old, rusty cars. Most of the fun was based on the farm. We used to have a yearly race up the hill, Glastonbury Tor, which he always used to win. He’s incredibly competitive; he always has to win whatever you do: table tennis, tennis, chess. It would drive him crazy if he ever lost at anything. Even now, if I go down to see him, he’s immediately got the table tennis bats out and challenges me to a game.”
Patrick adds: “I think he believes in Christian moral values which he thinks everyone should live by. He’s anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-drugs. For as long as I can remember, there were huge no smoking signs in our house. When I was growing up, he didn’t used to drink at all. When he walked down Bath High Street and there were lots of people sitting around drinking, his reaction was: why aren’t they out there trying to make a living?
“He believes in a work ethic and I don’t think he likes the idea of people sitting around smoking dope. People just do not believe it; he’s got this huge festival, where a certain number of people do these sorts of things. He would say it’s only a tiny percentage of people who come along to the festival.”
Eavis said yesterday: “I’m a bit of a Puritan, but I do enjoy myself immensely. I have a hell of a good time. I’ve got the best life anyone could possibly have. I’m not moaning. This whole festival thing is better than alcohol, better than drugs. It’s marvellous.”
He goes to Methodist chapel every Sunday with his wife and 93-year-old mother, Sheila, who plays the organ, as she always has. He added: “I don’t think I really believe in life after death. Methodism is more about social responsibility than it is about life after death. The chapel is quite social. We sing fantastic Wesley hymns, which must have something to do with my appreciation of pop music, I think. They’re very close.”

Eavis, who got stomach cancer in 1994 and insisted the show go on during his recovery, still lives frugally and is content to drive a yellow Mini and Land Rover. Next year will be a “fallow” one with no festival, allowing the land to recover, but then he will return for at least four years, helped as usual by daughter, Emily. “I think you should live fast and live long,” he once said, a doctrine perhaps for what he hopes will be another fun – but sensible – summer orgy of music, mud and myth-making.