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Glastonbury 2010: Sunday - Pyramid Round-up

Local brass opened the day then Slash and Ray Davies provided rock and pop gold-dust ahead of Jack Johnson...

The Yeovil Town Band returned to open the Pyramid Stage on Sunday morning after a five-year hiatus. The brass band excelled with a surprisingly stirring cover of Who Wants To Live Forever, hinting that the final day of the Pyramid Stage was to be one packed full of the unexpected.

Quirky songstress Paloma Faith wowed the crowd with her dazzling stage get-up, complete with harness and giant white balloons, and with her breathtaking cover of The Korgis' Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime, providing a perfect sedative in the dizzying midday heat. Paloma's polished performance, coupled with her ferocious imagination, assures her a place in pop's future.

Norah Jones' whiskey-soaked vocals came softly whispered across the breeze like a lullaby. This debut Glastonbury appearance was liberally scattered with cuts from her latest record, The Fall, with a cover of Johnny Cash's Cry, Cry, Cry thrown in for good measure. The Texan singer shone brightest at her piano, though, on crowd-pleasing hits Don't Know Why and Come Away With Me.

Heavy rock being a rarity at Glastonbury, Slash is almost as risky a booking as Jay-Z, yet those who ignored the football were rewarded with a coruscating dose of rock'n'fuckin'roll. His band enter to the Psycho soundtrack and are straight into Ghost. Singer Myles Kennedy makes a dynamic frontman, but he knows not to be the focal point. That's reserved for Slash, naturally, who pirouettes, duckwalks, bounces and plays like a man demented. The new stuff is good, but it's Sweet Child O' Mine and a monumental Paradise City that blow this crowd away. Muthafuckin' magnificent. And the guitarist humbly leaves the stage only after instructing us to: "Give some love to Ray Davies."

That's Ray Davies of The Kinks, of course, the band that was supposed to headline in 1970. Better late than never, even if today's gig has become a wake for bassist Pete Quaife, who died on Wednesday. That might have been a tear Davies struggled to fight back during Days, but this was golden hour of hits - Sunny Afternoon, Victoria, Lola... they were all there. The well-medicated followers of fashion in the crowd sang along to every word.

Jack Johnson's Sunday evening set was a failsafe bit of programming: who better to ease the soul of a crestfallen crowd heartbroken from another trouncing at the hands of the Germans than Hawaiian surf dude Johnson, who soothes with chin-up tracks like recent single You And Your Heart. And as he shares much of Glastonbury's ecological ethos, you can bet he arrived here in a chip oil-fuelled van.

After Johnson's endless summer vibes, Faithless took us into the night, the Glastonbury stalwarts ever-reliable to get the party started with their epic, towering house anthems. The inevitable Insomnia provided a unifying moment, but new single Not Going Home proving there's still fire in their bellies.

There could be no better way to see out Glastonbury's 40th anniversary than in the company of soul legend Stevie Wonder, a man so universally loved that to say you're not a fan is like saying you're not big on breathing. His winning set, packed with career-spanning hits and bursting with warm personality, brought the festival to a singalong climax, and a rendition of Happy Birthday (with Michael Eavis) sung especially for Glasto helped us blow out the candles in style. Wasn't it lovely?

Photos: Stevie Wonder at Glastonbury 2010.

All of Qs Glastonbury 2010 coverage and the latest at Qthemusic.com/Glastonbury, or follow us on twitter @QMagazine or Facebook.

Words: TG, DH, NG.

10:44 PM | 27/06/2010