A Glastonbury Veteran On How to Do the Festival Like a Pro

Joe Goddard has spent the last decade or so making smart people dance more. As a member of Hot Chip he’s been finding ways to make pop music sound ravey and weird music sound like pop. Now he’s focusing on solo material, his sound has got sparser, deeper and more vibey.

Goddard is something of a Glastonbury veteran, yet unlike some others who are still attending the festival in their late thirties, he hasn’t given up on partying. If anything, he’s now perfected the perfect weekend: just as intense, but without any of the party fouls of getting too fucked up too early, or going to bed at the first sign of daylight.

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We spoke to him about how to do Glastonbury like the pros.

VICE: Joe, you’re a little bit older, a little bit wiser when it comes to Glastonbury. How do you think you handle it compared to some of the young pill-swilling kids who peak too early and spend the rest of the weekend recovering?
Joe Goddard: I don’t deal with it very well. I basically haven’t slept. I did like five DJ gigs yesterday. I keep telling myself that I would like to calm down and just walk around the cabaret field, go to the circus fields, go to the comedy areas. I just know that there’s a hundred other amazing things I could be doing. It’s crazy. It’s really crazy. I haven’t learned to calm down and do it like that yet. I still run around and do all of these different DJ gigs, but it’s because the vibe at a lot of these gigs is fucking awesome. So, as a DJ, you have these great experiences; people are really open, fucked up, having fun – you know, just in a good place where they’re really kind of ready to have fun.

Do you find that you party differently now with a slightly older generation of fans, compared to ten years ago when you were doing Hot Chip stuff? Or is it all the same?
This is worrying for me to say, but I actually party harder than I ever did before.

What’s the secret to that?
I dunno; I seem to have developed as the years have gone on. In my twenties I used to have this terrible fear of staying up all night. I used to have this cut-off point at five in the morning where I was like, ‘I have to go to bed now.’ I don’t like to see the dawn. It just felt weird to me. It felt guilty and weird. But that’s kind of gone as I’ve got older. Now I’m just like: straight through crew – come on! That’s not healthy. I probably shouldn’t do that too much. I still love it. I don’t stay up all the time at some shit chin-stroking boring techno event. I pay for it afterwards, obviously, being 37, but I dunno, I just – I’m into it.

That sleep-deprivation is part of what makes people so open.
Yes, I’ve been through those situations with Hot Chip or whatever, and you’ve been straight through and had an amazing experience the next day. There’s something about the fact that it’s a weekend and you kind of party the whole time that, by the end of it, you’re so open and so ready. That’s why I think the Sunday afternoon slot – where I’ve seen, like, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen – that can be the ultimate moment because everyone is so into it at that point. A bit tired, still a bit high, but those moments can be the best because it’s kind of a long slow build-up to that, in a way.

I saw a couple of people just openly weeping at Jeremy Corbyn today. I think people are expecting someone to come with a rallying message of hope, and so it just really set them off.
People really need that right now. I was really pleased that he was booked. Theresa May was never gonna get fucking asked to Glastonbury, no one would’ve come. She could do The Crows Nest and there would be nobody there.

You’re probably in the upper echelons of Glastonbury veterans. In terms of times attended it probably goes something like: Michael Eavis, Billy Bragg, Fatboy Slim, then you. When did you first come to the festival?
I don’t exactly remember the year. It was probably about 2000. I came as a punter a couple of times, and then for the last ten years been coming to play. Maybe more, maybe longer, but yeah, it’s just something that I can’t really miss.

How different was it coming as a punter?
One of the best early ones was when there was this legal loop where you could buy fresh magic mushrooms at festivals. It was because they were fresh it was legal, but when they’re dried it’s illegal, something to do with that. I just had an incredible time with that. The White Stripes were playing on the main stage and I was just in awe of the whole spectacle of it, really giggling and having fun and just being amazed by how two people were on this stage making this incredible noise. It was just blowing my mind – you know, in the way that those good drug experiences do. It will stay with me forever.

Wasn’t that the year it properly flooded?
Yeah, I think I phoned my dad at one point in the evening and kind of had a really fuming rant at him about how God was punishing us by raining on us. Since then, I’ve just had tons of experiences. It’s a cliche, but I just like walking around, really, seeing humanity getting along.

I know – you sound like the worst hippy saying it, but it is a weirdly empowering thing.
It feels very free and it feels very sociable, like a community. Obviously people say that it’s like a kind of middle-class hellhole now, and it’s not the same as it was in the 80s when there were loads of Scousers tunnelling in and all this. I take that onboard and, you know, there was one year where if you were staying in a tipi you could get sushi delivered to it; maybe that’s going a bit too far. But, at it’s heart, it’s like nothing else, and it really, really makes me hopeful and happy about humanity. It’s some weird kind of ecosystem that has been developing slowly for the whole history of the festival, and there are people who have been coming and setting up a little bar or a stall for like 30 years, and it’s kind of evolved in this lovely natural way. No one is actually in control fully, you know.

I was talking to the Block 9 guys last night and they were saying, “Michael thinks it’s really ugly having a bunch of tower blocks in the middle of the site, but he just gives us total freedom to do whatever we want.” I thought that was amazing. That there’s so much autonomy – no one is really in charge.
Exactly. I’ve done a lot of festivals around the world, and there are incredible festivals in a lot of different countries – ones that I don’t want to take anything away from – but this is like nothing else. I mean, you could try and create this now, but it would take 40 years for it to develop into this.

You’ve just come off stage. This is a very cliched thing to say, but there really was an incredible atmosphere during the set, people really got into it. Were you nervous before?
I was. With Hot Chip we’ve been doing it for such a long time that I don’t often get nervous. It feels very natural and like we’re well drilled, but with this show we really haven’t done it that many times, so we’re still working it out. Also, I purposefully designed it so I’m on the stage, and I can fuck up quite easily.

I was gonna say, because there must be a temptation to just be like, “Fuck, I’ll just get most of this on track and have a beer.”
Yeah, and this is a way a lot of people do it with an electronic show. But I make sure there are things that can go wrong – like the drum machines and everything can go out of sync. I just have to be quite focused and on it, and I had a big night last night and I wasn’t really sure if my brain was together, and also I just really really wanted this show to be good.

And so it was. Thanks Joe! Go get fucked up!