Glastonbury potentiates rumour. In the pre-internet era, that was because the site felt weirdly cut off from the rest of the country. In the absence of news from the outside world, myths stepped in to fill the gap. So it was that in the mid 1990s, every Glastonbury was beset by the story that Cliff Richard had passed on: quite why the Peter Pan of pop was singled out for an annual exaggerated report of his death remains a mystery. The proliferation of mobile phones and internet access has at least put a stop to people telling you Cliff's snuffed it, but it's made the situation different, rather than better. No sooner have the mysterious words "special guest" appeared on the bill than half the festival takes to Twitter and the message boards to speculate wildly. By mid-afternoon today, the site was awash with increasingly demented suggestions as to who might fill the blank 8:30pm slot on the Park stage. Paul McCartney was going to play. So were Biffy Clyro. And Coldplay. Actually, Paul McCartney and Biffy Clyro and Coldplay are going to have a jam, possibly with Pearl Jam. It's going to be a Pearl Jam jam. And so it went on.
By 8:30pm, there were still people staring at the Park stage in eager anticipation, without actually knowing what they were going to see, a state of affairs not much helped by Michael Eavis's introduction: "Two superstars are here! And I don't need to introduce them because you can see them!" Unless you're at the front, you can't see them, but it turns out to be Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, performing a stripped-down set.
If you can't see them, you miss one of the more remarkable sights that Glastonbury 2010 has to offer: Thom Yorke of Radiohead, playing a slap bass solo while wearing a headband. Admittedly, he's playing a slap bass solo while wearing a headband and performing Harrowdown Hill, his spectacularly upsetting song about the suicide of Dr David Kelly, but nevertheless, it's a sight that would once have seemed as incongruous as Yorke flying around the stage on wires and playing a saxophone while the rest of Radiohead did the Madness "nutty" dance to Exit Music (For a Film).
Once the surprise that two members of Radiohead are playing unannounced – and one of them apparently doing it dressed as Mark Knopfler – dissipates, there's the faintest sense of anticlimax. The first handful of songs come from Yorke's solo album, The Eraser: Balc Swan and Cymbal Rush sound lovely, but with the best will in the world, it's a pretty morose record even by the standards of a back catalogue hardly noted for its ROFLs. Things shift with the arrival of a stripped-down, delicately lovely version of Arpeggio and the peerless Pyramid Song. Street Spirit and Karma Police provoke a singalong. On Karma Police, it continues long after the song itself ends: as he did on the Pyramid stage in 2003, Yorke eventually relents and joins in. It feels like one of those much-vaunted Glastonbury moments: even the most vociferous Radiohead refusenik would be forced to admit that, as conclusions to Glasto rumours go, it's a vast improvement on discovering that Cliff Richard isn't actually dead.
