Review: Paul McCartney and Neil Young bring tears and noise to Desert Trip festival

Perhaps the make up of the audience — many of the 75,000 grew up with The Beatles and Wings — inspired Paul McCartney to intersperse his set with career anecdotes and special dedications.

Sir Paul McCartney and Neil Young perform onstage during Desert Trip at the Empire Polo Field in Palm Springs, California. Courtesy Kevin Winter / Getty Images / AFP

After a chaotic first day plagued by traffic jams, inadequate staff training and a lack of available transport, American music super festival Desert Trip has found its groove.

Organisers have paid attention to the complaints, and in some cases downright vitriol, delivered by festival goers on social media and ironed out the necessary kinks to provide a well organised and smooth second day.

Paul McCartney capped it all off with an emotional set at the Palm Spring’s Empire Polo Club with the help of a fellow music icon.

His co-headliner Neil Young made an appearance late into the set and joined McCartney to perform three tracks, including the live debut of the 1968 Beatles track Why Don't We Do It in the Road.

McCartney’s set was a mammoth two-and-a-half hour career retrospective; 37 songs were dropped spanning the 74-year-old’s time with the Fab 4, Wings and his solo career.

With so much rich material on offer, it didn't take long for McCartney to have the crowd in the palm of his hands. Not many artists can begin a set with a trio of rock staples such as A Hard Day's Night, Jet and Can't Buy Me Love.

The always ebullient Jet, in particular, was delivered with a roaring gusto. Listen to those steady riffs, anthemic chorus and that synth piano solo towards the end and you can hear the building blocks of what would later be called the power-pop genre.

That iconic shaky guitar riff of Day Tripper continued to thrill 50 years on, while in the heady Let Me Roll It McCartney ditched his bass and took over guitar duties to deliver the track's signature stinging guitar attacks before launching into a raucous instrumental take of Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady.

Where he was in a celebrity mood during his 2011 Abu Dhabi performance at Yas Island as part of the Formula One After Race concert series, McCartney was in a more reflective frame of mind at the Desert Festival.

Perhaps the make up of the audience — many of the 75,000 grew up with The Beatles and Wings — inspired McCartney to intersperse his set with career anecdotes and special dedications.

He dedicated both the solo track My Valentine and the Wings classic Maybe I'm Amazed to his present wife Nancy Shevell and his late first wife Linda McCartney respectively. The Beatles producer George Martin also received a heartfelt mention with a solid rendition of The Beatles 1962 debut single Love Me Do.

The most poignant dedication was to late fellow Beatle John Lennon on the eve what would have become his 76th birthday.

McCartney was visibly emotional as he explained how he wrote the 1982 track Here Today in the form of a conversation he wished he had with Lennon before he was killed in 1980. He implored the crowd to heal their own broken bonds: "Don't leave it till it's too late".

Lennon's contribution to The Beatles and solo work was also praised in the form of zesty takes of A Day In the Life and Give Peace a Chance with Young.

To hear Young’s slashing guitar leads alongside McCartney’s burrowing bass lines was simply hair razing stuff.

It was the kind of pinch me moment that Desert Trip was built to deliver.

Neil Young dials up the volume

If McCartney’s performance was all heart, then Neil Young’s showing was mostly muscle.

The 70-year-old Canadian singer delivered a blistering greatest hits set that showcased the various facets and characters he had employed throughout his career, from the tender balladeer to a raging rocker and fierce environmentalist.

It was easily the most politically potent set of the festival thus far. It started gently however. Young shuffled onto the stage with trademark black hat, ragged shirt and jeans. With his harmonica attached, he launched into a four-song solo acoustic section featuring After The Gold Rush, a tastefully rendered Heart of Gold and the haunting Comes A Time.

The affair kicked up a gear with the arrival of Young's backing band, the youthful American rockers Promise of the Real.

The critics of their joint tour were correct. Always looking for new challenges — whether its building a new car from scratch or music streaming device — Young decision to play with the young bucks provides some of his vintage material with a much added boost to match his potent lyrics.

In the taught Neighbourhood, Young’s guitar is ever so brittle as he details community paranoia regarding “those with funny names”.

The tension built up further with Words (Between The Lines Of Age), with its allusion to the empty rhetoric colouring the North American political landscape.

Walk On was a set highlight, the 1974 track is about as close as Young gets to a genuine pop rock tune with its endorphin releasing chorus.

That levity only set things up for the epic Down By The River, which was an electrifying and malevolent guitar jam. For nearly 15 minutes Young and the young things were outdoing themselves in guitar theatrics as their riffs rung, raged and screeched to induce an almost hallucinogenic state.

Addressing Donald Trump use of Young's enduring anthem and set closer Keep On Rocking on the Free World as part of his campaign, Young chided the presidential nominee and suggested the use penultimate song instead, the punkish Welfare Mothers.

It was a pointed rebuke to Trump divisive style of politics; the 1979 track is a mirthful look at the struggles at the lower class.

It perhaps served as a reminder to us too. With Desert Trip five star arrangements and musical line up, Young told the crowd “look after the person next to you”. He then walked off, class was over.