If a gig happens and no-one is there to film it, did it really happen?
This is the question we face in this Day and Age, so the older folk may witheringly say, but it’s an interesting question nonetheless. Neil Young banned the BBC from televising his headline performance on the Pyramid Stage on Saturday night, for reasons which remain unclear but seems to be something to do with the perceived ‘corporate’ issues that led Young to drop out of Glastonbury earlier this year, only then to change his mind.
But for a great many people, if it’s not on the iPlayer then it’s of no consequence. If no-one is plastering it on social media either, then it’s not really ‘real’.
What was very real on Worthy Farm was Charli xcx on the Other stage, who surely was ready for the Pyramid Stage but didn’t quite make it. Doechii on West Holts was another serious superstar draw. These modern stars know the value in image, in film, in social, in going viral, and the vast majority of people on site want a piece of that too. Getting to the front of Neil Young was no problem with five minutes to stage time.
His opening track was almost a deliberately anti-xcx moment. Just him, alone, acoustic guitar and harmonica, playing Sugar Mountain with a voice so fragile it was almost a whisper. It was beautiful but also didn’t exactly strike a note of the Pyramid Stage being the place to be on a Saturday night.
And yet, there was something heroic about this performance. As one of the last true believers in rock ‘n’ roll, Young came across as part of a dying breed, who doesn’t care about fame or money or sponsorship or social, he only cares about the music and what music can do.
That this is now a throwback attitude is alarming in itself, but it’s true. There was a time when such earnest belief was a mark of greatness, or at least a path towards it. Not so now. But there he was, at 79 years old, still up there delivering the message - and still shredding hard.
“How you doing out there?” he says to the crowd, and then with a grin, “And how about you people watching TV at home in your bedroom?”
And this was the point. You’re either at the gig, or you’re not. Sorry, no catching up later, you’re in or you’re out; this was a return to the shared moment of a rock show where nothing else matters.
And as he launched in Cinnamon Girl, one of his very greatest tunes, it was clear why it matters: it’s loud, it’s heavy, it demands something from you physically, but it’s also about love and what that means and how it feels.
He plays My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue), with its famous line ‘rock n roll is here to stay, it’s better to burn out than fade away,’ the latter half of which was quoted by Kurt Cobain on his suicide note. Cobain sprang to mind again as Young stripped it back to acoustic again for The Needle and the Damage done, where ‘every junkie is a setting sun.’ Cobain was one undone by heroin but he was a true believer in rock, despite all the angst he saw survival and glory in music, and some kind of answer to the pain. No wonder he looked to Young, one of the true greats, even if he took the wrong message from it.
Rock n roll flows through Young, it gives him a special kind of magic and its almost miraculous to see him at this age absolutely spanking the guitar into feedback frenzies. The Chrome Hearts, his backing band, are an altogether younger bunch but like a bit of the old axe-wielding showmanship and Young was visibly loving their antics as the band ploughed through Like A Hurricane.
He doesn’t have much to say, other than, “thanks for coming to see me, folks,” which almost makes you weep, especially when you realise that many more people have belatedly joined the Pyramid crowd, presumably squeezed out of the pop elsewhere.
At one stage he reveals he’s playing Hank Williams’ guitar, with a certain awe in his voice that will be shared by the few not the many here. And it does make you think, will rock n roll never die? It actually might. At certain points here, and given the eerie plaintive melancholy in his voice, it feels like the last bugle over a battlefield.
But look, for those who did see it, it carried something special. Keep on Rockin in the Free World made for a fine ending, a rallying cry built around a big meaty hook, that is quite simply one of the best records ever made. And it’s message, that rock n roll represents freedom in a stultifying and corrupt society, is one that is worth carrying on. Isn’t it?
