A date with the old timers who can still rock my world

These days a lot of the most exciting rock concerts are being delivered by musicians who look as though they should have retired to audiences who actually have. Many now play sitting down. Eric Clapton even brings a carpet. But the energy is still there. The moment Young began, it put a shiver down your spine, as true poetry always does.

The first half was acoustic, the second a thunderous electric set, blasting out his great warhorses like Mr Soul, Cinnamon Girl and Like a Hurricane.

Initially, Young had been affecting the appearance of a doddery old man, moving slowly, absent-mindedly picking up his instruments. Now he was bouncing around the stage, limbs loose, his guitar howling, as he riffed on and on.

Those who've seen Young before agree: it was one of his best ever gigs. An all-time great.

That was fortunate, because it was obviously physically uncomfortable for a lot of the audience. When teenagers go to a gig, getting hugger-mugger with a lot of other kids is a big part of the attraction. For an audience of this age, such compression's pure horror.

They don't like each other any more. They're ever so big and unwieldy and they don't fit in their seats. They're stiff and they don't like having to get up to let people by. They have weak bladders, prostate trouble. It's one of the few occasions I've been to where there was a long and impassioned queue for the gents and none at all for the ladies.

And the night was long, well over four hours. Some fans couldn't stay up so late. And the crammed hall became not just horribly hot but smelly too. Farty, to be precise. Gigs are hard going for the geriatric.

It was worth it to see Neil, though - just as it was worth it a couple of years ago to see Eric Clapton smoothly deliver his whole repertoire at the Albert Hall to an even older audience (they had a slightly more polished air, as though largely composed of former teachers and dentists).

These dionysiac communings of the ancients are a new phenomenon.

Rock was the music of youth and rebellion and it's quite weird seeing people of this seniority so caught up again in songs of defiance or romantic yearning that seem more appropriate to another stage of life.

But then, in his new book about dying, Julian Barnes - also, as it happens, 62 - says that he has always mistrusted the idea that old age brings serenity, "suspecting that many of the old were just as emotionally tormented as the young, yet socially forbidden to acknowledge it".

Perhaps that's right. And then too, greatness is for all the ages.