It’s all swell now in salad days of the Obama Presidency, to be swept up in the irrepressible, shiny hope of the moment and forget the last eight years. The near decade that brought the world repeatedly to its knees for yet another screwing at the clammy hands of George W. Bush, and pretend like it never happened. Now that we’re standing on the mountain, it’s easy to forget also how few artists there were writing protest music in those years. Not for lack of there being anything to be angry about, but for lack of balls, with the few notable exceptions being the Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith.

U2, who were so happy to play a rousing version of Pride, their paean to Martin Luther King at Obama’s inauguration gig on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, spent the last decade actively avoiding making the kinds of pointedly political statements that earned them their reputation in the first place.

So Neil Young, who at a sprightly 63 is still a firebrand, calling out the folly of war and the continued destruction of the environment, just as he always has been in every year of his four decade long career, from Ohio to Let’s Impeach The President. For this alone he is worthy of the devotion he inspires, and not the derision of a loutish bunch of British wannabe punk idiots, whose ecstasy-fueled moment peaked some time in 1997. Perhaps when you can get an Entertainment Centre full of people to sing plaintively, loudly along to a junkie ballad you can call yourself a fire starter.

Some people when you see them, just look so much the way you expect them to that when they’re right there in front of you it feels a little bit like you’ve fallen into the pages of a magazine. Neil Young is definitely one of those people, shaggy-haired (amen to old people who aren’t afraid go to grey!) and iconoclastic in sneakers and jeans, a t-shirt which I think had the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s likeness on it and a loose, paint-spattered jacket (was this something to do with the guy painting canvases throughout the gig? Not quite sure on that bit.). He might be getting on, but Shakey still whirls around the stage, stabbing at his Les Paul furiously, no more so than during the various devastations of a ruinous version of Cortez the Killer, which I could have happily listened to all night, perhaps even for the rest of my life.

The set drew heavily on newer material, stopping off at 1992’s Harvest Moon for a beautiful version of Unknown Legend with harmonies and piano supplied by Neil Young’s “lovely wife” Peggy (“somewhere on a desert highway, she rides a Harley Davidson/ Her long blonde hair, flying in the wind”). This was a heavily rock-leaning set with the only real acoustic section being the above-mentioned Needle and the Damage Done, proving just a little heart breaking for those us longing to hear more from Harvest, but settling instead for a bruising version, after a little false start, of Words.

Cinnamon Girl received a righteous reception, but not more so than the set closer, Rockin’ In The Free World, during which Neil Young jumped up and down at the mic with all the impassioned rage of a much younger man. Replete with busting up all six string of his guitar before using the ends to beat the humbucker into submission, leaving the place drowning in cacophonous feedback and an effusive standing ovation. The obvious question then was, “Well, how are they going to follow that up?”

Returning for the encore, the first slow chords of A Day In The Life drew collective recognition, prompting my date to learn forward in his seat, and wide-eyed shaking his head saying, “I’m seeing Neil Young cover John Lennon. This is heaven.”

So that was how. “Hey hey, my my, rock and roll will never die. Keep on rockin’ in the free world. It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” No it’s not. It’s better when you just keep on keeping on, longer and louder than everyone else.