“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.
Neil Young headlines Glastonbury festival 2025 (Photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage)
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.
square GLASTONBURY 'I'm a free man!': Kneecap drew in the masses for an incendiary Glastonbury set
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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.
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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