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Evening Standard
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Neil Young at Glastonbury review: the 'ghost' show rocks hard for the lucky few
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.
Perth Now
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Neil Young stars on Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage
Neil Young joked about his dispute with the BBC after taking to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. The 79-year-old star - who made a last-minute decision to allow the BBC to broadcast his set - began his show with a rendition of Sugar Mountain, performing the song solo with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. Neil was subsequently joined on stage by his backing band, the Chrome Hearts, as he performed some of the biggest hits of career, including When You Dance I Can Really Love, and Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black). The veteran star also performed a gritty rendition of Cinnamon Girl, which appeared on his 1969 album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. At one point, Neil asked the crowd: "How you doing out there? How about you people in the back? How about you people with your TVs in the bedroom?" Neil previously threatened to pull out of Glastonbury because of the BBC's involvement with the festival. In an open letter published on his website, Young wrote: "The Chrome Hearts and I were looking forward to playing Glastonbury, one of my all time favourite outdoor gigs. We were told that the BBC was now a partner in Glastonbury and wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in. "It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way I remember it being. We will not be playing Glastonbury on this tour because it is a corporate turn-off, and not for me like it used to be." However, Neil subsequently performed a U-turn, suggesting that he had received false information about the festival. He said: "Due to an error in the information received, I had decided to not play Glastonbury Festival, which I always have loved. "Happily, the festival is now back on our itinerary and we look forward to playing!" Elsewhere, Charli xcx starred on the Other stage. The 32-year-old musician - who took the stage wearing leather hotpants, an Alexander McQueen scarf and a pair of sunglasses - began her set with a mash-up of 365, Club Classics and Von Dutch, three tracks that featured on her 2024 album Brat. However, the curtain subsequently fell and revealed the corroded artwork of the Brat album, suggesting that Charli is leaving the acclaimed record behind and looking forward to the next phase of her career.
The Independent
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Neil Young risks trying our patience on ‘Oceanside Countryside'
For greying Gen X indie kids like me, slipping back into 1970s Neil Young records feels like stretching our arms into the sleeves of our old checked shirts. As the Godfather of Grunge, his raw, plaintive, ornery spirit underpinned the Nineties indie scene and any party that ended with guitars out likely included singalongs of 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' (covered by St Etienne in 1990) or 'Hey Hey, My My'. Equal parts sensitive acoustic strummer and snarling electric cynic, he was the elder statesman who allowed us to indulge our hippie dreams and sneer at them. But has this latest collection of Young's 'lost' recordings been released to indulge fans, or to sneer at us? In the wake of his self-important shilly-shallying over appearing at this year's Glastonbury Festival (at last check, he's coming) it seems greedy to drop an album containing no new songs. Versions of these 10 tunes have already come out in the relentless flood of confusing, multi-format material that flows from Young's archives (they have appeared on Rust Never Sleeps, Hawks and Doves, Comes a Time, Live At Massey Hall 1971 and Archives Vol III). Online fan forums are filling up with annoyed collectors admitting that 'Neil's really trying my patience with this one'. For the more casual listener, the backstory is that these lovely country rock songs were all recorded in 1977 and intended to be released as a complete album, ahead of 1978's Comes a Time. The first five songs were recorded in Florida, with Young playing most of the instruments, and the next five were created in Nashville with a full band. Younger fans looking for a primer ahead of Glastonbury could do worse than download it and kick back to the classic, mandolin-flecked yearning of 'Sail Away' and 'Goin' Back'. The song 'Pocahontas', which has appeared on three previous albums in various forms, places a slightly more urgent strumming higher up in the mix, intensifying Young's tale of Native Americans fleeing European colonisers who 'killed us in our teepee, cut our women down'. One of the USPs of this release is that these are all original 1977 mixes, making it maddeningly essential for completists. Maybe you can hear the crackles of the late 20th century if you strain for them? There is a bristle of metal treble in the guitars. Young sounds like he's standing farther back from the mic – like a man outdoors, gazing up at the aurora borealis which he hymns with his creaky old barn door hinge of a voice. The lesser-known track 'The Old Homestead' (which first appeared on Hawks and Doves) finds the spooky theremin wafting to icy prominence as Young brings a rasp to his campfire ghost story of a naked horse rider galloping away from the shifting menace of the FBI and prehistoric birds. 'It Might Have Been' is a full band number. It's a mellow toe-tapper that leans warmly into the country vibe: frayed fiddle lurching tipsy heartache over 4/4 guitar chords, with drums rattling like shot glasses on a tin tray. You can almost taste the chewed straw in your mouth. Lyrically it mines Young's regular themes of regret and yearning: dreams slipping through his hands. 'It's not too late to set things straight,' he sings. 'Let's never say 'it might have been'.' Young increasingly feels like an artist determined to monetise every last syllable of recorded music in his vaults. Oceanside Countryside will be released in both clear and black vinyl versions, which feels hypocritical coming from a man who's soap-boxed all his life about environmental destruction and corporate greed. Ethical issues aside, I know I'll tune in to watch Young's Glastonbury set this summer. I'll pull on an old shirt and, I suspect, forgive him for all this nonsense. At least until he tries to sell us his Live at Glastonbury 2025! album.
