Travis Capture Glastonbury Magic With ‘Slide Show’

It was recorded during their famed '99 set...

It goes without saying that Glastonbury has some indefinable magic about it.

Worthy Fame has a habit of throwing out epochal performances at quite random times, with fate – and the elements – interweaving in strange ways.

Take Travis. The Scottish band took their album 'The Man Who' to Glastonbury in 1999, following years of hard graft at even harder venues.

Somehow, everything – audience, band, songs… even the weather – worked for them, producing a set that has gone down in Glastonbury folklore.

Smiling at the crowd as he sang, Travis' frontman Fran Healy watched in wonder as the heavens opened during their song 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me?' and a legend was born.

The performance is captured on 'Live At Glastonbury '99', and 20 years on it still sends shivers down the spine, essentially watching a band's performance change their lives.

We've nabbed a clip of 'Slide Show' and it's a real curio – wonderful songwriting, introduced by a group who scarcely knew what they had created.

Fran Healy told Clash…

"20 years ago, we walked onto a stage in Somerset to perform a 45 minute set. It felt like any other show apart from the fact that it was the Glastonbury festival and the BBC would be recording it so there were a few butterflies."

"Had we known how pivotal the next 45 minutes would prove to be, we may have frozen to the spot. But we didn’t. We played a belter and had that lovely loose tightness you only get after playing 400 shitholes…"

Tune in now.

'Glastonbury '99' is out now.

Photo Credit: Nora Kryst

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