How lunch with Glastonbury bigwigs led to my little band playing at the Abbey festival

Former Metro editor CHRIS COWLEY tells how he got his big break at Glastonbury — and the fan in a pink bikini, green wellies and fairy wings who put him off his song.

Glastonbury 2005: Coldplay, The White Stripes, Razorlight … and Storm Pilot.

Who? What? Yes, this little band from Bristol that nobody has ever heard of played the world’s biggest music festival – and little old me was playing guitar.

I had made the big time, well sort of.

It all started over lunch with the festival organisers. I was deputy editor of the Western Daily Press at the time and editor Terry Manners had sent me to sort out our media sponsorship of the Glastonbury Extravaganza.

This is the festival running over three days held in the Glastonbury Abbey grounds, a more sedate affair for locals who turn up for each evening with their picnics to enjoy a diverse programme of music ranging from Joss Stone to the London Philharmonic.

Terry and I had many lunches with Glastonbury chief Michael Eavis over the year and were very much in with the Glastonbury set.

Around this time, a report was out revealing how you can tell if your man was having a mid-life crisis. No.1: he takes up playing electric guitar. This was a source of much amusement in the newsroom as I had just taken up learning to play. But I maintained to everyone, including Terry, that I was not having a mid-life crisis, I was just still a big kid at heart.

As the conversation over my sponsorship lunch revolved around the Somerset festivals, I asked Eavis officials what it took to put a band on at Glasto. Robert Richards, who was in charge of the festival’s marketing, explained it all, then hit me with a bombshell proposal: “If you want a slot for your band, we’ll put you on!”

“I don’t have a band,” I said. And he replied: “Well get one and we’ll get you a slot.”

We were on! I called my old journalist mate Anthony Longden, who had played bass alongside the likes of PP Arnold and Psychic TV, and had festival experience. I told him the plan. His response: “You’ve gotta be f****** joking!” Using my persuasive powers… he was in.

My guitar tutor – a young lad in his early 20s by the name of Matt Wood – was up for it and I managed to find drummer Paul Cubie through a friend of the WDP’s chief sub, Dave Edler.

To cut a long story short, we wrote some original songs, rehearsed a couple of covers and put a demo recording together to convince Glasto we were up for the gig.

We’d never played a live before but we were offered the Sunday lunchtime slot at the Jazz Lounge – even though we were not jazz.

I had also sought advice from another mate, Sil Willcox, manager of The Stranglers and The Wurzels, who played for Terry and I when we staged big events . He asked if we had played any gigs? No. “And you’re going to play Glastonbury with no gig experience? I’ll get you a gig,” he said.

I put it to the band but we agreed if we could play Glasto and get away with it, that would be enough. If we did a pre-Glasto gig and bombed, our confidence would be shot. So when Sil said he had found us an opening slot for a band at The Fleece in Bristol, I turned him down.

I met Sil a couple of months later and he said: “You know that gig I got you at The Fleece, well it was to open for The Kaiser Chiefs!” They weren’t very well known at the time but they suddenly took off that year.

With the gig fast approaching, there was some mild excitement in the WDP newsroom and at the Friday morning editorial conference, I turned up to find the entire team wearing Storm Pilot T-shirts!

That Glasto weekend was a classic rain-filled festival. At one point the Jazz Lounge had a flood running through it. But that Sunday, the weather was gloriously hot. It was basically a tent. And we had told a few friends where we were and that it was hard to find. So we didn’t expect a big crowd to turn up.

Then just before we went on, I was told that Chris Moyles and his Radio 1 team were turning up. His fellow presenters Dominic Byrne and Dave Vitty – known on the breakfast show as Folk Face – were going to do a slot before us. Word had got round and so, instead of playing to just a few bystanders and friends, the place was packed out.

And there was a bar, so people were getting their lunchtime drinks and sticking around. Folk Face must have been on for all of 10 minutes and then it was us. I was thinking at this point I had made a huge mistake.

But we went on, did our 30 minutes and it was all over… in a blur. 

We actually went down quite well and got away with it. I did mess up once, though, when a festival goer started jigging around in front of me, wearing her pink bikini, green wellies and sporting a pair of fairy wings! Was it any wonder that I forgot my lines?

As for the name Storm Pilot? It comes from Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir lyric: “The pilot of the storm that leaves no trace.” And that’s how it has been for 20 years… we had weathered a storm and left no trace.

24 May 2025