What do you make of a man who charges you 75 quid to see him and still has the decorators in when you arrive?
  Neil Young did at the Hammersmith Apollo in London on Sunday night. Throughout the first part of his set, when he was playing unplugged on his own, he did it against a backdrop of what looked like a junkshop and a man painting canvases. When he returned with his band, the start of each number was prefaced by the painter coming to the front of the stage and hanging up a new canvas on an easel, complete with song title. According to Young’s website, the painter is Eric Johnson, and his work is being sold in aid of the Bridge School, a programme for children with severe speech and physical impairments that was founded by Young’s wife, Pegi.
  Mrs Young was the opening act. Her delivery of Gram Parsons’ Hickory Wind managed to erase all the yearning from that lovely song. Her own country-rock tunes were pleasant enough, but the kind of thing you can hear from lots of other people who have been doing it longer and with a deal more assurance.
  That’s not something you could say of Young himself. Nobody else has a singing voice that quavers quite the way his does. Having heard that voice only on record, I was surprised by what a big, shambling bear of a man he is. From the moment he came out on stage, walking behind another canvas with an “N” on the front, he was compelling.
  Many an artist of his age - he’s now 62 - grows tired of his back catalogue and tetchy with those who shout requests. He was neither. His acoustic set included Heart of Gold, Old Man, A Man Needs a Maid, The Needle and the Damage Done — pretty well every track, indeed, from Harvest — along with Ambulance Blues, from On the Beach, and Old King, a tribute accompanied on banjo to “the best old hound dog I ever did know”.
 Reinterpretations? He doesn’t go in for them, either – unless you count a burst of synthesiser standing in for the London Symphony Orchestra on A Man Needs a Maid and an updating of the lyrics of After the Goldrush from the 1970s: “Look at mother nature on the run in the 21st cen-tu-ry…”
  Activist he might be, but he has a sense of humour, too. Songs about saving the planet, he observed at one stage, clearly aren’t saving the planet, before going on to talk of his spare-time involvement in a group that is trying to design a car that won’t drink oil and belch C02. “But we’re not making any promises…”
   I had to leave early and so heard only three numbers in his electric set, a hailstorm of sound that made it clear why he’s known as the Godfather of Grunge. I didn’t feel too short-changed.