The rain might be lashing down in stair rods over Worthy Farm, but on the Pyramid stage in Glastonbury’s traditional legends slot Mr Blue Sky has broken out. As Jeff Lynne’s ELO launch into the bouncy chords of that inescapable prog pop hit, umbrellas come down and hands go up. You almost expect people to start putting out the beach towels.
In truth the festival needs a bit of sunshine. This has been a tumultuous Glastonbury, for reasons both natural – the worst rain and mud seen at the festival in 46 years, according to Michael Eavis – and man-made. To suggest the EU referendum has cast a pall over the festival is overegging it – certainly the hordes having it large in the Silver Hayes dance village don’t seem that concerned with the implementation of article 50 – but there’s no doubting that it has had an impact: just ask the many people who formed a human procession on the hill overlooking the festival site on Sunday afternoon and held up the 12 stars of the European Union around the Glastonbury sign.
While some sought to make statements, others were happy just to take in a day of music that proved engagingly eclectic. On the Park stage the pretty, multipart harmonies of the Scottish bedroom pop act C Duncan soothed sore heads, while over at West Holts the saxophonist Kamasi Washington drew a huge crowd with a sound that recalled Miles Davis in his bad-ass mid-1970s period. On the Other Stage, Bat for Lashes belted out ballads in a manner that would give Adele a run for her money.
At the other end of their careers to those artists but making their debut are ELO. Or Jeff Lynne’s ELO, to give them their full title. Not that anyone seems interested in semantics as the familiar piano chords for opener Evil Woman play up. Sporting sunglasses rendered entirely redundant by the grey skies above the Pyramid, Lynne is flanked by original member Richard Tandy and an opera house worth of orchestral figures. Given the vast numbers on stage, there might be a danger of things toppling over into excess, but here the symphonic chamber pop of Living Thing and Sweet Talkin’ Woman sounds preposterously tight and polished.
It wouldn’t be unfair to say that Lynne and ELO don’t quite match previous legends slot artists Dolly Parton and Lionel Ritchie in the fame stakes, and the crowd here is significantly smaller than for those sets. Many of those who have turned up seem curious rather than devotional, nodding along politely to songs that by and large they are unfamiliar with. In that sense, ELO often seem like a band airbrushed from history, deemed chronically uncool in the 1980s and largely ignored in the years since. You suspect that in some parallel universe the likes of Turn to Stone, Party All Over the World and the driving boogie of Roll Over Beethoven would prompt mass festival singalongs.
In the event there is only one thing everyone is here for. As Mr Blue Sky makes an appearance, you wonder if the clouds above the Pyramid might take the hint and part, but they stay stubbornly in place. No matter, the communal sing-song that follows is enough to lift anyone’s spirits. “You were fabulous,” Lynne tells the audience. He wasn’t too shabby himself.
