Off the record: Neil Young, eco-rocker

Fuelled up: Neil Young is sponsoring a small team creating a revolutionary and eco-friendly electric car

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You won't at any given time this summer be far from a Neil Young concert. It's a gala year for fans of the cantankerous rock giant, with a new album, plenty of gigs and the long-salivated-over first of his Archives box sets on the way. Dig out the bunting and grow some grizzled mutton chops in celebration.

Londoners won't even have to leave town for an audience with rock's elder statesman, as a date in Hyde Park has been announced this week. But be prepared, because there's no likelihood of the 63-year-old veteran rattling through the old favourites at any of these gigs. Instead he'll be using the platform for a higher purpose.

Young has often given the impression of writing songs with a guitar in one hand and a newspaper in the other — Let's Roll was about the September 11 attacks, while Living With War was an entire album about George Bush's conduct in Iraq. His latest enemies, however, are the motor companies.

He's using rock 'n' roll, long the vehicle for euphoric songs about getting the engine running and heading out on the highway, to kill the car industry as we know it.

On the title track of Fork in the Road, released by Reprise on 6 April, he refers to firms such as General Motors and Chrysler: “There's a bail-out coming but it's not for you/It's for all those creeps hiding what they do.” On Fuel Line he hollers about “The awesome power of electricity/Stored for you in a giant battery”. Yes, it's a concept album about eco-driving. Form an orderly queue.

So is this just another rock star lecturing us on the environment while leaving the TV on standby in the private jet? Not at all. With its rough production and bellowed, often awkward lyrics, it's far from his best work musically and the least interesting part of a far bigger project.

Far more intriguing is Young's work with a spanner. He's part of a small team working on the Lincvolt, a 1959 Lincoln Continental MK IV convertible which used to do nine miles-per-gallon and is in the process of being converted into a 100mpg electric miracle. After a test ride through Wichita, he said: “It's fantastic, it's very eerie, very ghost-y, this beautiful, white, huge car moving down the road and not making a sound. It looks like a yacht — it's a giant, and if a beast like this can run well without petrol, there's much hope for smaller cars.”

Young owns the Lincoln, but the man with the brains is mechanic Johnathan Goodwin of SAE Energy in Wichita. Goodwin has made a name converting old cars into fuel-efficient green machines and has also refashioned a Jeep for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Young's new song Johnny Magic is a chugging tribute: “The Motorhead Messiah was tuning the system in.”

“I am focused on a goal, and it's an audacious goal: to eliminate roadside refuelling,” Young has said.

In truth, we can do without the musical browbeating, but by putting his money where his petrol tank is, Young is doing something that will have a far greater impact than a few half-baked songs. As long as he squeezes the odd hit into his summer sets as well, Glastonbury's extensive green brigade will love the new fuel-efficient Neil Young.

*Isle of Wight Festival, 14 June (08705 321 321) www.isleofwightfestival.com. £140 weekend camping ticket.
Glastonbury Festival, 26 June www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk. Sold out but a limited number of cancelled tickets go on sale 5 April at 9am from www.seetickets.com/g2009. Register first at www.glastonburyregistration.co.uk, £175 weekend camping ticket.
Hard Rock Calling, Hyde Park, 27 June . (0844 576 5483) www.hardrockcalling.co.uk. £45 day ticket.

The essential downloads
Ohio (1970)
A raging response to the killing of four student protesters by the National Guard at Kent State University, released just weeks after the shootings. Young called it his best work with Crosby, Stills & Nash.
 
Heart of Gold (1972)
A mellow acoustic number that was Young's only number one, but life in the mainstream didn't last long. “This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch,” he said.
 
The Needle and the Damage Done (1972)
Sparse, bleak ballad about the dangers of heroin, in which “Every junkie's like a settin' sun”.
 
Cortez the Killer (1975)
Slow-motion epic often cited among rock's finest guitar solos. Young tackles Mexican history over languid electric guitar.
 
Sleeps with Angels (1994)
Kurt Cobain quoted Young's song My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) in his suicide note, so Young wrote this grungy, dramatic elegy to Nirvana's frontman, the title track of another fine album.  

NEW ON THE NET
*The return of Bat For Lashes next month may whet appetites for more dreamy female pop. Try Oklahoma's St Vincent, aka Annie Clark, whose new song The Strangers, all wafting choral vocals and plucked strings, is available as a free download at www.ilovestvincent.com.

*The NME's influential C86 tape, a compilation cassette given away with the magazine in 1986, is sometimes credited as the start of indie music. Now blogger Chocolate Bobka has posted it online at http://chocolatebobka.blogspot.com/2009/03/old-c86-mix-tape.html, so you can judge whether these lo-fi oldies by The Wedding Present, The Pastels and Primal Scream are worthy of their place in history.

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