She wasn’t supposed to be here today. Back in the summer of 2007, as a fledgeling 19-year-old songstress without a record to her name, Adele – who suffers from stage fright and anxiety attacks – played in front of a handful of people at Glastonbury tucked away inside the confines of the Guardian tent, an experience she’d sooner forget than remember.
But the following January she hit big with the release of her debut album 19, before a couple of years later the singles ‘Rolling in the Deep’ and ‘Someone like You’ made her an international superstar. Feelings of anxiety never give way completely, but the Adele who took to the Pyramid Stage on Saturday is an accomplished performer, full of warmth, sharp of tongue, and exuding moisture.
Flash flooding had beset Worthy Farm near Pilton, Somerset in the run-up to this year’s festival, and as the combination of warm weather and torrential downpours threatened to turn Glastonbury into a mud bath, it was only fitting that some members of the crowd soiled themselves before Adele even took to the stage, in scenes of visceral anticipation and intestinal unrestraint.
By the time she appeared the skies had cleared up, but as her fans cloistered together in what for many was akin to a religious experience, their lank hair swept across each other’s faces and their Wellington boots still squelched. And from the first flawless pitches which pattered like snowflakes, like raindrops, like posies, like kittens and traybakes from the indelible moistness of her lips, the crowd wept with tears of rapture at the sights and sounds unfolding in front of them.
She literally was like everybody’s best friend. Adele regaled the audience with bawdy stories about loves lost and never quite loved at all, and joked on several occasions about the ‘filthy hamburger’ she’d scoffed down backstage. But food hygiene aside, this was an experience we will never forget.
Adele gave us everything and we took with open arms, and somehow from the depths of her benevolent bosom Adele gave us still more. ‘I have never been so moved by anything in my life’, she said, ‘This is, by far, the best moment of my life so far’. And as her fans and even the celebrities in attendance surely whispered to themselves, ‘So say all of us’.
