Glastonbury 2025: Watch Neil Young perform anthem for peace ‘Throw Your Hatred Down’
After much deliberation, Neil Young finally agreed to allow his headline performance at Glastonbury Festival to be broadcast by the BBC. He didn’t disappoint his fans viewing the show from home, either, delivering a stunning rendition of ‘Throw Your Hatred Down’.
As the global climate worsens, the song’s lyrics about casting hate and weapons aside provided one of the many politically pertinent moments in Young’s set. The 79-year-old folk star certainly used his platform to make a point.
However, for a long time, it seemed like his messages would be restricted to the audience at Worthy Farm. Confirmation that Young’s set would be filmed only arrived this morning after a long-running saga of negotiations between Young and the BBC.
The ‘Heart of Gold’ singer is no stranger to voicing his opinions on the presence of camera crews at concerts. When speaking to Charlie Rose, he claimed that his experience of Woodstock 1969 was ruined by the extensive filming that was taking place.
Young commented, “I thought these guys with their cameras on the stage were in the way of the music. They were a distraction. So I told them, ‘Don’t come near me. I have a heavy guitar. If you come near me, I’m going to hit you with it’”.
He explained that the purity of what was meant to be an iconic event was compromised by the encroachment. “When it happened for the first time,“ he said in praise of Woodstock, “It was something special because there you were, and there were half a million people and we’re just realising, ‘We are somebody’. We’re making a difference, and everybody is with us”.
Evidently, he had similar thoughts heading into Glastonbury, but thankfully, the broadcast went ahead, unlike Kneecap’s show earlier in the day, and Young brought the house down with a string of classic hits and bold statements.
You can watch Young perform ‘Throw Your Hatred Down’ below, and catch his set on the BBC iPlayer.
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