Neil Young at Hyde Park (11 Jul 25)

I try and see Neil Young whenever he plays in the UK, the last time being with Bob Dylan in Hyde Park in 2029. I was keen to end the long wait, mainly caused by Covid, I booked to see him at Hype Park again.

I was quite interested in seeing Van Morrison and reasonably interested in Yusuf/Cat Stevens and happily paid what, with all the add-ons, eventually came to £128.75.

It was one of the hottest days of the year so rather than go when the event started at 2pm I left it until 4pm which still left plenty of time to get the lay of the land and refill my water bottle before Van Morrison came on.

This safe approach did mean that I had no chance of getting a great place to see the acts but with BST allocating the first 50m or so as VIP space that was not going to happen anyway. This approach to grabbing as much money as possible off fans is very annoying - at a previous Neil Young event in Hyde Park I was able to move in and get quite close to the stage, about five rows back.

BST had not done a lot for the extreme heat, there was very little shade and there were very long queues and the two water supply points. I saw two people collapse within 5m of me and was not surprised, standing for several hours in the sun and heat hurts, even with plenty of water and a good hat.

To be honest, almost everything about the logistics of the event was bad.

Luckily the music made up for it. That said, it was close and next time I might agree to be exploited further and get a VIP ticket.

I have several Van Morrison albums, mostly from the late 70s (Hard Nose the Highway, Veedon Fleece, A Period of Transition, Wavelength and Into the Music), but I did not expect to know many of the songs, my hope was that they would be dancy, which they were. 

He was supported by several musicians including a significant brass section and between them they made a great sound. The songs were catchy is not familiar and the hour-long set was a lot of fun. He ended magnificently with Gloria, a song he wrote in 1964 when a member of Them. That might be sixty years ago but every seemed to know and love it.

Yusuf/Cat Stevens was more of a mystery to me and I only really knew a few hit singles. He played acoustic guitar in a folky style which while not particularly exciting it was perfectly fine. Not surprisingly it was the songs that I knew, like Moonshadow, that I liked the best and what was a surprise to me was that one of his songs is First Cut is the Deepest, better known for other versions.

He got political at one point mentioning the thirtieth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre before playing a song that he wrote about it which he also dedicated to the children killed in Gaza; his shout of "Free Palestine" was received with a loud cheer.

Just before 8:30pm Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts came on stage.

This time I had a very good idea of what to expect both in terms of the songs and the way that the band would sound like. 

Of course there were some new songs, which sounded like old songs so that was okay, and while the Chrome Hearts are not Crazy Horse they played in much the same way letting Neil do his own thing and supporting him appropriately as he went in and out of extended solos.

Neil and the band played for just over two hours before the set cam to an abrupt end when the plug was pulled at 10:30pm when they were doing one of several false endings to Rocking in the Free World, always a great song to end a set with.

Along the way we had numerous classic songs like Southern Man, Harvest Moon, Cowgirl in the Sand and My My Hey Hey but even with two hours to play with there was no space for Hurricane, Cortez or Powderfinger. The Neil Young back catalogue is such an embarrassment of riches that even these were not really missed.

It was an absolutely fabulous couple of hours which even standing for hours in great heat could do little to diminish.