Controversy dogged Neil Young’s 2025 Pyramid Stage headline slot before a note was ushered into a microphone. First there was the U-turn in terms his appearance, and then there were the refusals to allow BBC to broadcast his set. The latter being yet another thing that we learned he’d gone back on as we walked away across crushed cups and dirty food trays at the Pyramid Stage site.

What a set this was. The sheer grizzled musical muscle that the legend deploys on the festival circuit’s biggest stage is quite the sight to behold. Even more confounding is that this coming from a 79-year-old. Young wrestles feedback and fury from his trusty ‘Old Black’ Les Paul guitar and his voice sounds exactly as it did all those years ago: that unique blend of strength and vulnerability. While tabloid hacks have later tried to claim that the crowd was ‘sparse’ thanks to Charli XCX maximising what is surely the dying embers of her zeitgeist moment (be gone already – Brat is as hollow as a political party’s election pledge), there was substantial attendance from the heaving spot where we were standing.

No one transfixes quite like Neil Young. This is why he’s been a huge draw for over 50 years among music’s cognoscenti and lovers of the form. This is the man who has inspired more artists than you can shake a stick at, and so those bashing him with the metric of chart ‘hits’ is the jabbering of fools. It’s a ridiculous lens to frame his worth by. How many of today’s artists would even dare stake a claim of forging a legacy anywhere near his (and a number of his peers, too)? Not many, that’s for sure.

A reverent silence befell the site whenever he dusted down his acoustic-rooted gems; be it the opening song, the paean to saying goodbye to one’s youth, ‘Sugar Mountain’, or the romantic doe-eyed ‘Harvest Moon’ or the timeless track that presaged his own senior years, ‘Old Man’. These were all pin-drop moments delivered so movingly that it was a struggle not to have a tear trickle down your cheek. And then, on the other hand, was the age-defying bombast. There were some serious, old-school guitar workouts on offer across this set. Much of it sounded like molten lava being heaped upon a ladle and dished out into cupped hands. The likes of ‘Hey Hey My My (Into the Black)’ sounded apocalyptic, whilst ‘Like a Hurricane’ soared, so too a raging ‘Love and Only Love’.

An encore of ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ had arms pumped in the air and a seemingly spontaneous additional performance of Mirrorball’s ‘Throw Your Hatred Down’ ended a tremendous, awe-inducing set on a message that implored peace. A call to disarm. Peace is what his generation were all about. Watching that emerge from the weathered face of this aged, yet perennially remarkable musician, gave us all a timely reminder of what this festival was always all about. It’s spirit was evoked tonight. It was a privilege to witness.