It’s 8pm on the button when Neil Young ambles on stage wearing a grey baseball cap, Maple Leaf t-shirt, check shirt and jeans, straps on his acoustic guitar and harmonica rig to deliver the first surprise of tonight’s show. A song about the passage of the years and a changing world, “Comes A Time” – making its tour debut – introduces one of several themes that weave loosely through the setlist of Young’s first European tour since 2019. As with “Looking Forward” and “Old Man” much later on tonight, these songs have been waiting patiently for him to grow old enough to fully reveal their gifts. What once seemed like uncannily wise observations from a blossoming songwriter have taken on a pathos, humanity and warmth that comes with age. These are now songs of experience: “Look at how the time goes past,” he sings on “Old Man”; written by Young when he was 24 but now delivered by the man a few months’ shy of his 80th birthday.
Our venue, Tiøren, is a park by the beach to the south east of Copenhagen, where the vibe is more mini-festival than outdoor gig. Even the roar of an aeroplane taking off from the nearby airport can’t quite damped the atmosphere. The merch tent is doing a busy trade in t-shirts branded with ‘Make America Great’ and ‘Keep Freedom Free’ – but Young’s early start time clearly catches a lot of people unawares, causing both the merch tent and bars to clear pretty swiftly. As with the two previous shows in Sweden and Norway, the main set is locked, with only the first song and the encore changing. So tonight we get “Comes A Time” – a beautiful song for this warm evening, but it’s spoiled by a poor vocal mix. The problem persists unfortunately, even when he’s joined by The Chrome Hearts, kicking off a blazing electric run with Greendale’s “Be The Rain”, and is never satisfactorily fixed (the absence of video screens add further frustration for those towards the back of the site). For a set that otherwise leans heavily into Crazy Horse or Stray Gators material, these Greendale songs (“Be The Rain” and later “Sun Green”) are evident outliers – I can’t be the only person who wished Young had included “Ordinary People” in the tour setlist, after performing it in April for the first time since 1989. But “Be The Rain” and “Sun Green” at least allow for further head-to-head communion between Young, guitarist Micah Nelson and bassist Corey McCormick – and there is a lot of that on display tonight.
In fact, Young’s playing is incendiary, even by his lofty standards. There are multiple solos on “When You Dance I Can Really Love”, or he locks in riffing with Nelson and McCormick on “Cinnamon Girl”, moving through the grunge grind of “Fuckin’ Up” or the Sabbath-like heaviosity of “Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)” and its freak-out ending with fierce purpose. You suspect “Like A Hurricane” could have gone on for another hour, say, as Young carries on soloing into infinity while Nelson plays the Stringman synth suspended on wires, rocking back and forth as if buffeted by Young’s playing. Nelson is a good lieutenant for Young – he’s a likeable and adaptable player, a less forceful personality than Poncho Sampedro, say, but capable of following in whichever direction Young leads. A momentous “Love And Only Love” finds the pair duelling, seemingly oblivious to the 5,000 people watching their every move, with McCormick and drummer Anthony LoGerfo in dogged pursuit for the song’s 10-minute duration.
It’s moments like this where the Chrome Hearts cleave closest to the expansive dramas of Crazy Horse – the band that in some respects they are here to honour after the Horse’s abandoned 2024 tour. Mostly comprised members of the Promise Of The Real, the Chrome Hearts might lack the Horse’s ragged charm, but they more than compensate with the renewed energy they bring to their leader. Encouraged by Nelson, McCormick and LoGerfo, Young wrings solo after solo from Old Black, sending swathes of feedback into the midsummer night.
Changing pace for an acoustic section finally gives us a chance to hear Spooner Oldham, whose keyboards have largely been drowned out by Young at full pelt. “The Needle And The Damage Done”, “Harvest Moon” (which raises a collective, and rather sweet, “Ooooh” from the crowd) and a gorgeous arrangement of CSNY’s “Looking Forward” showcase Oldham’s warm, discreet playing.
The main set finishes with another CSNY cut “Name Of Love” and a rousing “Old Man”, with Young’s voice high and strong. As a setlist, you suspect it’s predicated around his Glastonbury headline shot this coming weekend: a hits set, after a fashion, with plenty of opportunity for Neil and his latest cohorts to dig in and only a handful of deep cuts. For tonight’s encore, we get a tour debut of “Down By The River”, wild and elemental, driven by LoGerfo’s pulverising drumming and Young’s monolithic solos and followed by an unexpected and entirely welcome “Rockin’ In The Free World” (only three false endings, mind).
Sound issues aside, there’s a lot to like in this set list and this latest grouping of musicians. Whether Young will get bored eventually and start swapping out songs remains to be seen – an unlikely move, I think, until after Glastonbury at least, as this set is bedded in too well to undo now. But this might just be my favourite Neil Young set since the Alchemy tour of 2013. There’s a lot of joyful playing and camaraderie – and as “Rockin’ In The Free World” finally melts away into the night air, there’s a lot of hope, too.
Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts setlist Tiøren, Copenhagen, June 22, 2025:
Comes A Time
Be The Rain
When You Dance, I Can Really Love
Cinnamon Girl
Fuckin’ Up
Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
The Needle And The Damage Done
Harvest Moon
Looking Forward
Sun Green
Love And Only Love
Like A Hurricane
Name Of Love
Old Man
Encore
Down By The River
Rockin’ In The Free World
