Can Glastonbury survive the hype?

by Ian Youngs BBC News Online entertainment staff

Fans have begun arriving at this year's Glastonbury Festival, which sold out in an unprecedented 18 hours.

This year's Glastonbury Festival will be dominated by two types of people.

First there are the incredibly organised ones, who bought tickets as soon as they went on sale three months ago - 112,000 passes sold out in record time.

And although organisers have pledged to crack down on touts, there are also likely to be many who had enough money to pay up to £600 on the black market through internet auction sites.

Naked protesters: The spirit of Glastonbury past or just freaks?

For a festival that has built its reputation on a "hippy" atmosphere far from the modern consumer society, this year's event could have little in common with the event's core principles - everyone is welcome and anything goes.

Some say this year's rush for tickets proved the festival's message of "no ticket, no show" has sunk in, and fans were persuaded to plan ahead rather than leaving it until the last minute or trying to jump the fence.

But others have taken it as evidence that Michael Eavis' Somerset farmland has become absorbed into mainstream popular culture, with all the hype that goes with it - and so risks losing the magic that made it special.

The demand for tickets was "a problem" because it meant people who had been every year would be shut out, Mr Eavis said.

"I don't want to alienate those people because they are the audience that we've been looking after all these years," he said.

But whether by accident or design, Glastonbury has become a full-blown British summer event, like Wimbledon or the FA Cup Final.

Gatecrashing has been stamped out by increased security

It attracts international media attention and, unlike 10 years ago, people want to go just because it is Glastonbury, a rite of passage for those who don't mind mud.

As most forms of alternative culture have become manufactured and marketed, the media bandwagon has helped sell the "Glastonbury experience" as one of the last places to turn on, tune in and drop out.

"It's a kind of utopia, really, something outside of the normal world we all live in," Mr Eavis said a few years ago, and that remains one of his festival's main attractions.

The festival, which began in 1970 with a 1,000-strong crowd and free milk for everyone, has been getting more popular every year.

In the past, the average music fan has been able to spend weeks debating with friends about whether to fork out the ticket price - now more than £100 - before laying down the required wad to make the pilgrimage to British music's holiest site.

The festival has had mod cons like cash machines for several years

And even if they did not, they could go down anyway, pass a tenner to a security guard and bunk over the fence.

But after up to 100,000 gatecrashers got over or under the fence in 2000, authorities insisted on tighter security and a much-vaunted but little-vaulted £1m "super-fence" was put up.

Two years later, fans were told in no uncertain terms that they would not get in without a ticket.

Festival goers can still get lost in sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll if they want to - or they can just chill out with their friends for a few days, with some good music to boot.

With its tent city, bonfires and sound of bongos drifting across the valley, Glastonbury can feel like an alternative reality where the worries of home easily go up in a puff of smoke.

But in truth, the hippies stopped coming a long time ago and most travellers - who inherited their counter-culture mantle - have not been allowed in for several years, meaning it is now less alternative than we would like to believe.

Crime down

Aside from a few tie-dyed stall-holders who come back year after year, the only reminder of its hippy origins is a man who walks around with a "Protest Naked" placard all weekend. He is now regarded as a curiosity, if not a freak.

Last year's security was watertight and, although some complained of a more controlled atmosphere, crime fell dramatically.

Many festival goers said the increased safety outweighed the loss of freedom.

The fear after this year's ticket stampede is that more people will come in search of a myth that is in danger of being eroded.