The Housemartins frontman also recalls the secret to building a relationship with fans, and the newer artists he’d put on his dream festival line-up Paul Heaton has looked back on his first-ever festival experience, and described what it was like to perform at Glastonbury before The Housemartins had their huge breakthrough with 1986 single ‘Happy Hour’. The frontman spoke to The Glastonbury Free Press following the gates opening for the 2024 edition yesterday (June 26). In the interview, he reflected on what it was like to perform at the Worthy Park site at the start of his career, and named the newer artists he would enlist for his dream festival line-up.
“The Housemartins did Glastonbury back in 1986. Even though I’d read about it, I had no idea how massive it was until I got there,” he explained, recalling how his first experience of a festival was playing at the site nearly four decades ago. “We were about to have our first hit with ‘Happy Hour’, so the only people who knew about us were people who had heard us on John Peel and Janice Long’s shows.
We played around midday I think. “You could see people waking up and coming down the hill towards the stage while we were on. It was dead exciting,” he added.
“It went from 500 to a few thousand [which was] quite mind-blowing”. In the interview, Heaton also recalled the close rapport that he has gathered with his fans over the past 30 years, and explained that he puts the bond down to not taking hims.