Neil Young fell victim to Charli XCX during his old-school, belligerent Glastonbury set ...Middle East

Were it not for Kneecap, Neil Young may well have been the most debated act at Glastonbury this year. Before he’d even been announced as headliner, the ever-cantankerous songwriting legend wrote a statement on his website in January to say he was pulling out of the festival due to the BBC’s involvement.

“It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way I remember it being,” Young wrote, seemingly unaware that the BBC was very much involved when he last headlined in 2009. He relented three days later, but bad feeling endures: recalling his recent two-year Joe Rogan-inspired Spotify boycott, he refused to let the channel broadcast tonight’s Pyramid Stage set up until the very last minute. “How you doing?” he asked two songs in. “What about you people with your TVs in your bedroom?” he said pointedly, with no little disdain, Even at 79, age shows no signs of lessening his obtuse streak.

Even without the bizarre episode, that Young was here at all is a surprise in itself. Last year, he abruptly cut short an American reunion tour with his decades-long on-off backing band Crazy Horse, later citing exhaustion. Yet, armed with a new band, the much-younger Chrome Hearts (aside from legendary 82-year-old organist Spooner Oldham), and a new album Talkin to the Trees (ignored tonight), he came in usual belligerent form.

Yet he was somewhat a victim of Glastonbury’s changing demographic: his set was sparsely attended beyond the sound desk, something that could have been predicted by anyone who around 9pm battled the stampede of people – mainly young and excitable – marching in the direction of Other Stage headliner Charli XCX, and Scissor Sisters, whose Woodsies headline slot was so popular it was shut down to people 45 minutes before stage time.

It’s probably not much of a surprise: it was bracing just how old-school and earthy Young felt among the diverse and eclectic nature of the rest if the bill. Young’s stock in trade is a certain type of rock that to some will feel as ancient as the Glastonbury ley lines. The start was about as anti-Glastonbury headliner as you could get: forget bells and whistles, Young shambled on in understated fashion in grey cap and lumberjack shirt to sing “Sugar Mountain”, a song about adolescence written on his 19th birthday, a slight creak in his otherwise well-maintained sweet croon to be expected at his age.

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'I'm a free man!': Kneecap drew in the masses for an incendiary Glastonbury set

There then followed an opening barrage of noise that was archetypically Young: nobody can quite make that raw and ragged racket that he does when in full flow. In a stage that was deliberately made smaller and tighter, Young, guitarist Micah Nelson and bassist Corey McCormick turned on the audience and played to themselves, Young hunching and leaning as “Be The Rain” and “Cinnamon Girl” became immersive explorations of sound, all crunching riffs, unwieldy solos and deafening drums.

After the initial onslaught, Young sat to play an emotive “Needle and the Damage Done” before the band joined him for a beautiful, swooning “Harvest Moon.” Young proudly told everyone he was playing Hank William’s old guitar for 1999 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young track “Looking Forward.”

This was his first UK show since 2019, a time that has seen the return of Donald Trump to the White House, and his song choices, invariably a reflection of where he’s at, can certainly be interpreted as a comment of Trump’s America: he sang the eco-anthem “Be the Rain”; “Love and Only Love” (“love and only love will endure/hate is everything you think it is”) and 2003’s 10-minute “Sun Green” (“there’s corruption on the highest floor”), which dragged on too long, one of a couple of odd set choices beyond the hits that occasionally stalled momentum.

But by the end Young was in his element: a rousing “Like A Hurricane”, the folk-rock closer of the singalong “Old Man”, which takes on an added poignancy in his advanced years, and an encore of “Rockin’ in the Free World”, a song that sounds both crunching and soaring, was a colossal finish. Or it would have been had Young not decided to play 1995’s “Throw Your Hatred Down” for the first time this tour (“throw your weapons down”), a finale that knowingly took him past curfew. Neil Young, uncompromising to the last.

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