Bob Dylan / Neil Young
London Hyde Park
Actual legends deliver in spades.
“I’ve never played in daylight before,” says Neil Young, squinting into the sun. And until you’ve seen Neil Young squint into the sun, you’ve not seen squinting into the sun. Hunched into a battle-scarred Les Paul, his careworn flannel shirt giving every impression of exacting artisan applied to honest toil, Young practises his craft with fire and fury. Like an ancient mariner lashed to the mast in raging swells, he grimaces in rapt concentration, coaxing primal roars from his instrument while sparring out of his skin with an inspiringly vital Promise Of The Real. With a dream set-list (Country Home, acoustic Heart Of Gold, Rockin’ In The Free World, encore Like A Hurricane), Young sparks with enduring anger-as-an-energy and jazz levels of improvisational invention.
Catching Bob Dylan in action is a bucketlist shoo-in, and there are countless punters here just to tick him off. Word of mouth on Bob isn’t great: ‘voice shot, material unrecognisable, he slouches at his piano with all the charisma of laundry’. But write Dylan off at your peril. Tonight’s duded-up rhinestone swagger and assured between-song struts to centre-stage epitomise a reinvigorated, ever-evolving artist fully aware of, and determined to deliver, his legend. And from Ballad Of A Thin Man to Blowin’ In The Wind that’s exactly what he does.