Neil Young cut off at huge BST headline slot after ignoring key rule
Rock legend Neil Young breached Hyde Park’s strict curfew, which forced bosses to switch off his microphone and guitar.
The star began his huge headline set in London’s Hyde Park at 8:25pm. He opened the set with ‘Ambulance Blues’ and swung merrily into ‘Cowgirl in the Sand’, followed by ‘Be the Rain’. Later, the star played ‘Harvest Moon’ which flowed into a cover of ‘Looking Forward’ before he sang ‘After the Gold Rush’ for the very first time on his current tour.
Young closed out with ‘Old Man’ as his 16th song, before a raucous demand for more came from the crowd. He began the encore with a charged political comment before launching into his huge 1995 anti-war song ‘Throw Your Hatred Down’.
It was his version of ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’, his last song, that caused issues. Young included three false endings and was still soaring through the song at 10:32pm, two minutes after the curfew. Subsequently, the power was cut.
Earlier in the day, Yusuf/Cat Stevens smiled through a set that worked to spotlight the ongoing global conflict. His song ‘The Little Ones’ was dedicated to the child victims of the Srebrenica massacre, three decades before, as well as all those victims of ongoing massacres. A song prior, he sang ‘Where Do the Children Play?’.
When introducing the song, he said, “If we aren’t careful looking at the commercial world and the West, zooming in on the children, we have to be really careful, because they may be just losing their lives in that little black square. Be careful.”
Far Out attended Neil Young’s headline Glastonbury set, giving the performance top marks. Ben Forrest wrote, “The unifying resistance of Young’s songwriting felt more impactful and important than anything else at Glastonbury. Over the course of his set, he successfully stripped Glastonbury back to its roots, but he also offered an inspiring message of hope for the future. In that sense, Young was a truly perfect headliner for this year’s festival.”
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