Neil Young live at Glastonbury: A headline show on his own terms

The road to Neil Young‘s second ever crack at headlining Glastonbury has given organisers, you sense, the kind of logistical headache that could only be cured by taking a metric tonne of ibuprofen. It began back in January when he announced the slot on his own website, before making a U-turn days later and stating he was pulling out due to the “corporate control” of the BBC. In another twist, he then went back on that withdrawal and said he would be playing after all. All this, of course, before the man himself requested last week that the show couldn’t be broadcast on the BBC. You’ve probably guessed what happens next. Yep, another u-turn.

It’s to no one’s surprise, then, that Young’s Pyramid headline show is delivered entirely on his own terms. He arrives on stage in a battered flannel shirt before going straight into ‘Sugar Mountain’ – a neat reminder of Young’s formative days in the early 60s. But it’s performed to a notably small crowd. There’s no doubt that Charli XCX feels like tonight’s real headliner for most on site, and that is reflected by one of the weekend’s sparsest crowds. We arrive just as Young starts and get to the very front in a matter of minutes, a relatively rare feat for Glastonbury headline crowds.

For those in attendance though, there’s plenty of Glastonbury Moments™ that make it worth their while. The swooning romance of ‘Harvest Moon’ sees the whole crowd swaying as one and ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’ is met like an old friend. The furious ‘Like a Hurricane’ sees Young’s excellent new band The Chrome Hearts turn the song into an absolute monster, while his keyboardist thrashes the life out of a winged piano that has arrived from the rafters.

Young keeps crowd interaction to a minimum but, in fairness, sounds brilliant for a man approaching 80 during a 90-minute set. It’s just a shame that we didn’t get to hear it on ‘Heart of Gold’ – which would have finally been the moment that this set of deep cuts and sporadic hits could have found take off.

It never truly reaches that point, but you sense that die-hard fans of the curmudgeonly legend will have no complaints. Nor too, it seems, do those at the Pyramid Stage who scream back every single word of ‘Rockin in the Free World’ as he wraps up his set. This, they will tell you, is Neil being Neil. A headline show delivered, for better or worse, entirely on his own terms.

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