Glastonbury festival is woven into the fabric of our band, Elbow. The first time we played there, in 2002, I was looking at the crowd at the end of the set, with everyone in such good spirits, and I thought: “It’d be great to get them all to sing something.”



But our first record had no great sing-along anthems. So I got them to sing “We still believe in love, so fuck you.” A recording of that eventually made it on to our second album, Cast of Thousands, on a song called Grace Under Pressure. We credited 4,500 people in the crowd on the sleeve of the album.



Straightaway, that Glastonbury experience started steering the way we make our music, and every time we’ve returned we’ve just had the most incredible experience. When we played One Day Like This on the Other stage in 2008, it went very, very well. It seemed to pop open that song and people’s awareness of the band, and we’ve never really looked back.



So, when we found out in January that we were playing this year’s Glastonbury our first reaction was to be dead chuffed. We had the twilight slot on the Pyramid stage, right before the headliner, Arcade Fire. We played the same slot in 2011, before Coldplay, and that was an unbelievable moment for us.





The next thing we did was discuss our setlist. With six records under our belts, there are a lot of songs to choose from. Deciding what we’ll play is the only argument we still have. Even though everybody keeps their tempers in check, deep down I think that choosing the setlist really makes us each seethe – it always ends up getting a bit personal. To be honest, we argue about the setlist for all our shows, but Glastonbury is the big one; it’s the one you want to be as good as it possibly can be.



After a long, tortuous debate over several months, we finally decided our set five days before the festival. There was lots of bartering along the lines of, “Well, if you get rid of this one, I’ll agree not to play that one.” But we finally got there, and everyone was more or less happy.



As soon as I saw that first fork of lightning a couple of hours before we were due on the Pyramid on the Friday evening, I was like, “Oh God, no.” I was in the middle of an interview with Jo Whiley, and all the lights suddenly went off. I was told they’d powered down pretty much the whole festival, including the main stages, because lightning had touched down a few miles away. Soon, the stages had been closed for 20 minutes, then 40 minutes. And all of this, of course, was cutting into our time to play.



We’d put so much preparation into the whole set, not only the songs we’d be playing, but also the introduction music, some special bits the horn section were going to play and so on. As the delay went on, we could see it all ebbing away. To be honest, it felt like our little world was collapsing.



Eventually, the power came back on, and Lily Allen was the first one back on the Pyramid stage. I think she had cut to a couple of songs, but the stage was still running behind schedule, and we had our changeover to do. That’s where Lily’s crew get their equipment off the stage and our lot get ours on to it. Then our crew have to get the everything plugged in, tested and ready. And it began to look like we might lose half of our set. It’s fair to say we were feeling pretty glum.



Then our tour manager, Tom [Piper], said our crew were going to try to do the changeover in a fraction of the usual time. He told us to be ready, behind the screen, to go onstage as soon as they’d finished.





We were all standing there, wearing our in-ear monitors, ready to go. Which meant we could hear the speed they were working at. It was literally someone shouting, “Bass.” Twang.

“Check!”

“Guitar!” Twang.



“Check!”

We couldn’t believe the way they were rattling through it. The band were behind the curtain, looking at each other with a mix of bewilderment and fear. If one thing had gone slightly wrong, or hadn’t been prepped properly, or had been damaged by the rain, the whole show would've been an absolute disaster. Still, every second they were taking to do the changeover was the clock ticking down and us losing songs from the set.



Suddenly I could hear Tom saying: “All right guys we’re going on in five, hi-hat check, four. Snare check, three, two …” They were still checking stuff right up until one. And then on we went.



As it turned out, everything was perfect: the sun came out, the crowd was unbelievable, there was the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen, and it was another wonderful Glastonbury moment for us. I loved every minute of it. In the end, we only had to drop one song, but it was one I wasn’t arsed about.



We got so much love for the set – from the crowd and from the press and from the TV audience of almost a million people – and afterwards, it struck me that a huge part of it was our crew’s triumph. That’s what prompted me to do this piece.



You get the traditional picture of the roadie – the guys in dirty T-shirts, getting off with groupies – but it couldn’t be more different with ours. Most of them are family types with children. And they’re all wonderful people who just give us so much expertise, energy, passion and dedication.



We’re always dead proud of our crew. A lot of them have been with us from the very early days, through so many ups and downs. But we’ve never been prouder of them than at this year’s Glastonbury. They saved the day.

• Guy Garvey was speaking to Chris Salmon

• Elbow at Glastonbury 2014 review – Garvey sings the soundtrack to sunset