THE Stone Roses' Second Coming was a good album. Yeah, I said it. 

But it is almost universally disliked by fans and critics alike.

What's that got to do with a five-hour streaming extravaganza from Worthy Farm, home of the Glastonbury Festival?

Well, Second Coming was the Roses' attempt at the impossible - improving upon perfection - their eponymous debut long-player, so prevalent in 'greatest album of all time' lists the world over.

Second Coming took too long, coming out five years after that stunning debut, and was so unbelievably hyped among fans that the band was left in a no-win situation.

If the album was great? That was expected. If it was not, then what have they been doing for five years? What a let-down...

Second Coming is good. But it will never receive the credit it deserves because of what came before.

And so to Live At Worthy Farm...

Let's be clear, this was an ambitious project; to host a series of sets in those hallowed grounds while showcasing a site loved by so many, is a big ask.

This was the follow-up to the greatest festival in the world - the second coming of the Glastonbury Festival.

It was, in many ways, a no-win situation for the festival team, for this could never be the festival. 

It's impossible to recreate being there.

The hype, for weeks, was immense - we were bombarded with glitzy photos from the site, photo essays from the Guardian, 'best sets' listicles and Instagram glimpses of the site we all hold so dear...

The delays getting to see it didn't help. 

If you arrive at Glastonbury after 12 hours in a hot, stuffy car, tired and irritable, your first night can be difficult - you're not in the right frame of mind.

But, as with the real thing, it didn't take long to snap out of it.

The poetic links were simply sublime, the acts rose to the occasion - and the whole thing was extraordinarily well shot. 

Wolf Alice and Michael Kiwanuka set the stage perfectly, those early acts in those fields - no big stage productions for them, so early in the day...

George Ezra's stripped back set at Strummerville was a triumph, encompassing everything Glastonbury is, at its best; honest, earnest, heartwarming, while Idles provided a hard edge when things were in danger of descending into a tear-filled night filled with a longing to return, before Haim took us back into those fields, with an honest set so fitting of the farm.

Then came Coldplay, the return of Glastonbury's prodigal sons, to make everything alright.

You simply cannot fault their production value. Every time they perform at Glastonbury, they deliver, and this was no different, with some amazing lighting giving us all a glimpse of a Pyramid field seemingly full of the light of countless mobile phones, set against the reassuring tones of their festival-friendly favourites.

They truly have become as much a part of Glastonbury as the stones themselves. 

Love them or hate them, they are a sight to behold in those fields. Simply delightful.

From there, Damon Albarn was mysteriously hypnotic and mystifying, aloof yet personable, all at once (has anyone made a Damon AlBarnet joke yet?).

Yet there, it ended, for me at least, because there is no more to my stream... 

But if that is where my 2021 Glastonbury experience ends - Sunday night cut short by circumstances beyond my control - then that is somewhat fitting in itself.


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So, back to the Stone Roses...

Second Coming was inevitably set up to disappoint. 

Battling an enormous wave of long-established hype, the record was always going to struggle to hold back the tide, eventually getting swept away in the overpowering, unreasonably-high water levels of expectation.

This ambitious project by Emily and Michael Eavis and the team could so easily have gone the same way.

I don't know what we all expected, but it was probably too much.

The PR hype was so effective, our need for Glastonbury so strong, that even if Michael Eavis had pulled up outside my house in his red Land Rover and whisked me off to Worthy for a pint with Chris Martin, a piano duet with Paul McCartney and some karaoke with Florence and The Machine, I would still have felt a tinge of disappointment - because it wasn't the Glastonbury Festival I so love.

But it never could be. You can't follow-up that festival.

But they had a darn good go. And it was as close as anyone will get. 

What the Worthy team achieved was immense - and in time it will be seen as a classic, groundbreaking piece of work, I'm sure. 

It was a stunning piece of film making, featuring some stunning performances, and will hopefully help secure the future of the event we hold so dear.

So the ambition has to be applauded, and the achievement respected, because you can't achieve the impossible - but this is about as close as you will ever get.

When the mud is washed off and the tent packed away, we will look back at this Glastonbury and file it firmly in the 'good years' file.

PAUL JONES