If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that Glastonbury has changed quite a bit. Change is no bad thing, and the festival opening its arms to pop, hip hop, R&B and any other more mainstream sounds means that there’s always plenty of flavours to choose from at any time. Variety, of course, is the spice of life after all.
But, it does leave some of the old school, rock totems of the festival at a weird kind of impasse. This evening the choice for Glasto goers was Pop Brat Charli XCX, Grammy winning rapper Doechii, 2000’s disco divas Scissor Sisters, 90’s dance legends Leftfield, or, with the most prestigious slot at the festival, Neil Young headlining the Pyramid Stage. From that crop, Young stands out like a sore thumb. For so many years accepted as a legend, the ‘Godfather of Grunge’ is genuinely alternative once again.
The incredibly sparse crowd gathered mere moments before he takes to the stage further highlights that, in the eyes of the majority of attendees, he’s the odd man out. It’s a pretty bizarre situation for an artist of such importance and gravitas.
When Young nonchalantly wanders on, acoustic guitar in hand, and sits on a stool under a single white light, a cap obscuring his eyes, and plays a rather ramshackle version of Sugar Mountain, it is pretty underwhelming. With the lasers, explosions, backing dancers and expensive stage sets we’ve become accustomed to all weekend, you can’t just have a 79-year-old man strumming a guitar as your headliner can you?
Well, let this be a lesson to any aspiring artists out there, because it turns out that, if the songs are good enough, actually you can. Because, this evening, Neil Young is unfussy, understated, but truly captivating.
As soon as his backing band The Chrome Hearts join him and we get the first chord of that iconic, crushing guitar tone, striking up Be the Rain, this set of no frills, unrefined folk and rock feels like an antidote to the excesses of modern music. So much of Young set feels like discovering precious antique relics from a bygone era. They may not shine and sparkle like whatever flavour of the months does, but the charm, the heart and the allure of Cinnamon Girl, Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black), Harvest Moon, Old Man or Like a Hurricane cannot be understated. These are classics, wonderful, influential, beautifully crafted songs. You might think you’re cooler if you were raving to Von Dutch on the Other Stage, but Neil Young’s work has long since passed the test of time, and will doubtless still be there way after Charli XCX’s crowd are settling into middle age. When he stands alone and delivers a spine tingling The Needle and the Damage Done, it’s so refreshing to experience music so pure.
Of course, at his age, Young isn’t as spritely as he once was, and that marmite voice was never his strongest weapon even in his pomp. Still, with a top class band behind him, a guitar sound that the likes of Dinosaur Jnr’s J Mascis and Melvins’ Buzz Osbourne have spent a career trying to recreate, and a back catalogue of such immense quality, you’d imagine none of the dedicated fans here regret their choice for the evening.
He should probably have called it a day at the end of a predictably raucous and rapturously received Rocking in the Free World, rather than stay in for one more and close with a slightly underwhelming Throw Your Hatred Down. But we’ll let that slide, because overall this is a fantastic celebration of a legendary artist surely playing his last Glastonbury.
This festival is changing, but its hoary old rock and roll past certainly isn’t going quietly.
