Neil Young, Primal Scream - Hop Farm Festival

Hop Farm, Kent, July 6

When a concert closes with one of the last genuine legends of rock playing the greatest song The Beatles ever wrote, you know you've just seen something special.

Drowned in feedback, the eyes in his grizzled face screwed tight shut, Neil Young - whose own back-catalogue stretches 40 years and at least as many albums - ended a jaw-dropping two-hour set with a surprisingly faithful cover of A Day in the Life.

And what a day.

Vince Power, the famously fearsome promoter behind the original Reading and Leeds festivals, is on a mission to wrench back the summer festival from The Man. No corporate sponsors, no photo-ID registration, no VIP-only enclosures (well, just the one).

No brands - just bands.

Ad-free, family-friendly and - because you don't spend 20 years as a concert promoter without making a few friends - packing a line-up that put some of this year's three-day events to shame.

Case in point? Rufus Wainwright, still wired from headlining a concert on Hampstead Heath the night before, was a lowly fifth on the bill.

Playing a solo slot with just piano or acoustic guitar for accompaniment, his warbling tenor cut through the gloom of a rainlashed mid-afternoon.

Highlights included a pared-down Going To A Town - the prettiest five minutes of total hate since Elvis Costello got happy - and an aching take on Leonard Cohen's mighty Hallelujah.

My Morning Jacket's bourbon-soaked signature sound is an anthemic heads-down roar - but even amid a frenzy of Flying V's and facial hair they looked a little out of place, and maybe out of their depth, among this roll-call of rock royalty.

Introducing Supergrass onto the stage, compere Mark Lamarr suggested that if the lads ever fall on hard times, they should receive government funding as a British institution.

On this showing, it's unlikely they'll ever need it.

Re-invigorated by this year's return-to-form LP, the Diamond Hoo-Ha men ripped through a crowd-pleasing set mixing muscular new tunes with the classic pop hits that brightened up the 90s.

I swear the clouds lifted at the first chords of Sun Hits the Sky - and by the closing rabble-rousers Caught By The Fuzz and Alright it was a full-on summer evening.

Just the time, then, for black cloud Bobby Gillespie to come and ruin everything with his dark lords of indie Primal Scream.

Except they don't.

Gone are the scattergun pneumatic-drill techno experiments that have been the Primals' meat-and-drink for the past decade.

They're writing songs again - with choruses and tunes and everything. And Bobby, easily the best-looking 45-year-old in pop, even smiled - a bit, once - during a jubilant bluesy Rocks.

Four songs from forthcoming album Beautiful Future suggest the boys are back on form mining more gold from that Stones/MC5 motherlode - and a joyous Movin' On Up brought the crowd together in a rapturous sing-along beneath the setting sun.

Neil Young doesn't use effects pedals anymore. Oh no.

As the towering No Hidden Path jam rumbled on for a full 30 minutes it became clear he is now playing his guitar through a washing machine full of spanners. On Krakatoa. The fuzz and crackle is primordial.

And at 63, the energy and passion Young injects into live performance is never less than breathtaking - from the spit'n'sawdust rockers to hushed acoustic gems.

Songs like Heart of Gold, Old Man, and Needle and the Damage Done are part of the fabric of rock music and yet hearing them live, with Young's howl-and-mew falsetto untouched by the passing decades, they remain fresh and vital and - I'm man enough to admit - just a little bit weepy.

After the raucous encore, Young's beat-up Gibson 'Old Black', all six strings shredded, is left alone on stage propped up against a shrieking amplifier. A biblically awesome finish. 

Vince Power has spoken of making next year's Hop Farm hop a 3-day affair.

If he can get some more loos, ban those bloody camping chairs, sort out the traffic mayhem and handpick a line-up to match this one, then it well deserves a permanent place at the classier end of the jam-packed summer calendar.

SF.