Before Neil Young has even played a note, a voice rings out from the Brixton Academy audience: "I love you Neil!" It belongs not to a callow youth awestruck in the presence of a rock legend, but a portly gentleman with a receding hairline. Young seems to inspire a peculiarly breathless devotion from people old enough to know better. One website features fans' reports of encounters with the aloof star. The prose style would shame a teenybopper ("Then I actually touched him!"), but most of the correspondents appear to be parents.
Yet, as tonight's crowd prove, it would be wrong to chalk up these outcroppings to middle-aged nostalgia for an era when Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were the world's biggest group. It is difficult to think of another artist who could draw such a diverse age range. Baggy-jeaned teenagers and twentysomething couples stand alongside men as grizzled as Young and his backing band, featuring avuncular bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn and guitarist Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, who looks like a professional darts player.
The gig itself smacks of the early 1970s. It is packed with concepts that went out of fashion with Mike Yarwood and the three-day week: extended jams on gargantuan songs, Bob Dylan covers, lengthy guitar solos, an interval. Yet there is not a hint of complacency about Young's performance. Clad in a ragged T-shirt, lurching back and forth, he seems to be wrenching every squealing note from his guitar. His solos manage to be ear-splitting and delicately expressive at the same time.
Aged songs come alive. The 35-year-old Mr Soul is a ferocious snarl. A startling version of 1969's Down By the River shifts from massed audience singalong to furious noise to shimmering soul. If the more recent She's a Healer wanders into anodyne AOR territory, Let's Roll, his tribute to those killed on September 11, sounds anything but safe, ending in an uncomfortably lengthy burst of feedback.
It is a thrilling and compelling show. Young is at an age when most rock stars are contemplating retirement or facing irrelevancy, yet the devotion of his audience seems assured and, more importantly, deserved. Like one of his own guitar solos, you suspect he could go on for ever.
