Sex, Mud and Rock 'N' Roll; from Woodstock to T in the Park, Open-Air Music Festivals Horrify and Delight in Equal Measure. Here One Veteran Celebrates the Myriad Joys (and Pitfalls) of Al Fresco Pop

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Byline: TIM LUCKHURST

SURVIVORS of the 1971 Glastonbury Festival swear they saw it. The free-floating bioluminescent life form known to posterity as the 'Glastonbury Angel' is alleged to have appeared at the edge of the main stage. It floated around 'digging' the music until a lacklustre performance by the chanteuse Melanie drove it away.

That is mild compared with the more extreme delusions recounted by damaged veterans of Woodstock. Some insist that if you stand by a certain tree near where the stage was, in the early hours of an August morning, you can still hear Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster wailing to the canopy of stars above.

Strange things happen when the human brain is subjected to the hallucinations brought on by LSD, especially when the drug is potent and dangerously impure.

Today they like to talk about life-changing experiences, but many of the young women who paraded naked at those early festivals of peace, love and understanding were stoned to the brink of no return on 'bad acid'. If that did not persuade them to shed their clothes and frolic in muddy pools, it was probably the double-strength hashcookies which predatory men in striped loon pants told them were baked by pixies on a brazier of glowing karma crystals.

So, as 120,000 young revellers descend on Balado, Kinross, for this weekend's 11th annual T in the Park festival, can we expect more strange tales of weird wildness?.

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