The biggest surprise of the day isn’t the weather, which is what you might call glorious, apart from a late afternoon cloudburst that at least gives me the excuse I’ve been looking for to hide under a table, perhaps the only sensible response to an appropriately thundery set by Ben Harper and the aptly-named Relentless7. No, what the day has unpredictably in store for us – the gosh-wow-did-that-really-fucking-happen-moment – lurks ahead, preening itself in anticipation of the many jaws it will cause in due course to drop. For the moment, though, let’s enjoy The Pretenders, who are on stage now, the streaming down on them and a crowd stunned by the heat, but quickly enlivened by a bracing romp through a couple of songs from the new Break Up The Concrete Album, a fierce “Boots Of Chinese Plastic” sounding as good as any of the acknowledged ‘classics’ from their back catalogue that quickly follow. By “Message Of Love”, three numbers in, Chrissie Hynde’s eyeliner is melting, pouring down one side of her face, which makes her look in close-up a bit like Alice Cooper on the inner sleeve of Love It To Death. She’s in great voice, though, and “Message Of Love” is the first of the crowd-pleasing hits that pepper their set, everyone one of them sounding timelessly brilliant. “Talk Of the Town” is quickly followed by another new song, “Love Is A Mystery”, Eric Haywood’s pedal steel, an unexpected voice in the instrumental mix, taking the lead here. The venerable “Back On The Chain Gang” gets a predictably big cheer, the crowd really getting into this now, the momentum continuing through the hard R&B blast of “Rosalee”, also from the recent album, guitarist James Walbourne taking a solo that’s so good Chrissie makes him play it again, which he does with even greater aplomb. A sultry “Brass In Pocket”, “I’ll Stand By You” and “Middle Of The Road” take things out on a knock-‘em dead high that makes me look forward to seeing them again soon at Latitude. Seasick Steve has become an inescapable festival favourite for reasons that genuinely elude me, but he proves here as he did at last year’s Latitude and elsewhere to be incredibly popular across a broad generational bandwidth, although it should be said that everyone here is of such a sunnily uncritical disposition they’d likely applaud a barking dog or a tap-dancing seal. I’m beginning to feel like a heretical grump in the company of so many people clearly cheered by the old bluesman and his grating down-home homilies, sub-Beefheartian boogie and practised humility, but then he plays something about a chicken and I am suddenly noticeable by my absence from the enthusiastic throng at the front of the stage. The storm that not much later sweeps Hyde Park has somewhat abated and the skies are slowly clearing when Fleet Foxes perfectly catch the brightening mood with “Sun Giant”, their opening song neatly coinciding with a parting of the previously ominous clouds and the tentative reappearance of the big yeller itself, one of those moments of synchronicity familiar to festival veterans, after which, as if the band themselves have been somehow miraculously responsible for the improving weather they can’t do much wrong. What follows is a largely ecstatic 50 minutes or so of thrilling harmonies, glorious melodies, and wonderful song. “White Winter Hymnal” and “”Ragged Wood” are predictably rhapsodic, but even better from where I’m standing are “Your Protector” and “Oliver James”, two of the less celebrated tracks from their much-feted debut, and a magnificent, soaring “Mykonos”. I’m on my way at a casual dawdle from the backstage area to the front of the stage when for a moment I’m convinced by a slow ominous rumbling that what I can hear is more of the thunder that had accompanied the earlier downpour, this time with the splintery crackle of not-too-distant lightning, something elemental anyway afoot that I can’t immediately put a name to that of course turns out to be Neil Young, plugging in and without attendant ado launching into a shuddering Neanderthal riff that mutates almost reluctantly into the belligerent intro to “Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)”, a song to which an added layer of poignant significance has been added by the inescapable events of the last few days, another pop king ending up on the autopsy table. What follows is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen Neil Young play, a full-on sonic rupture, two hours of unforgiving and unforgettable guitar distortion, seismic upheaval, deafening detonations, feedback rapture, wave after wave after crashing wave of noise, uplifting and triumphant, the kind of thing that tears vents in the atmosphere, disarranging the senses, wholly transcendent, an often savage aural maelstrom out of which emerges finally a charred beauty, that old ragged glory that is oft-mentioned in talk of Neil, his music and the way he plays it. We have in astonishing succession: “Mansion on The Hill”, a barn-burning honky-tonk rave-up on “Are You Ready For The Country?”, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”, a fearsome “Spirit Road”, an astonishing version of “Words”, a crunching “Cinnamon Girl” and a thoroughly monstrous “Fuckin’ Up”. “Mother Earth” leads into what by now is a welcome acoustic set that includes a grave “The Needle And The Damage Done”, a winsome “Comes A Time”, “Unknown Legend”, a perhaps inevitable but entirely welcome “Heart Of Gold” and a version of “Old Man” that somewhat incongruously starts a mass singalong. Things turn sulphuric again in a hurry with a long and brooding “Down By The River” that seems destined never to end, but eventually does, and following the terse garage-boogie of “Get Behind The Wheel” from the recent Fork In The Road, a version of “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World” that I am sure in some alternative universe or spooky other dimension continues even now to rage unstoppably. Tonight it reaches climax after teasing climax, ecstatic and deranged and after a while just exhilaratingly hilarious, Neil grinning madly as he comes back for one more chorus, and then another and another after that, no one by now wanting the thing to be put to bed, the delirium palpable. And he’s not done yet and tops even this with what’s become a formidable version of “A Day In The Life”, a song long-regarded by many as something no one in their right mind would think of playing live, including you might think Paul McCartney, who’s been standing at the side of the stage, but is within minutes at the microphone with Neil, arm around Neil’s shoulder, clearly euphoric, the crowd a-roaring. McCartney, now that things have moved on to a guitar-shredding instrumental section seems at a bit of a loss, not sure quite what to do, a problem he solves by waving his arms in the air, grinning wildly, dancing like someone who’s just been introduced to his feet and having a grand old time and then clawing at the strings of Neil’s guitar. It’s an amazing moment, and an amazing end to an amazing show.

It’s a little strange writing an obituary, of sorts, knowing that you’re going to fill it, at least in part, with abuse. I suspect, though, that Steven Wells – who died from cancer last week - would not have wanted it, probably, any other way. Swells was one of the best, most ridiculous and infuriating journalists that I worked with at NME through the 1990s. Every conversation would turn into an argument. Every commission would be delivered as a means to bait the paper’s long-suffering readers. Most pieces, whatever their notional subject, would degenerate into the same old jokes and rants. Anything roughly approaching artrock – or, and this is a critical distinction, what Swells thought was artrock – would be wrIttEn AbOUt lIkE thIs. More or less anything that didn’t sound like Atari Teenage Riot, or Daphne & Celeste, would be dismissed as Jingly-Jangly Indie Wank, made by Indie Saddoes – who of course would flood NME’s mailbag with wounded, indignant missives. He was, however, a genius, as his old sparring partner David Quantick articulates beautifully in today’s Guardian. It’s interesting how hard it is to remember the music that Swells championed over the years, not least because so much of it was, by most high-minded critical standards, rubbish. What’s much more memorable is the demented vim, intelligence and peculiarly elegant prose which he used. I always think that music writers who create a cult of themselves at the expense of writing about music tend, in general, to be a bit tedious, but Swells was one of those gleaming, brilliant exceptions to the rule. It strikes me, today, that given some of the music writers whose work has been anthologised, it’s somewhat scandalous that a Swells primer doesn’t exist; a document which proves him to be a kind of British Lester Bangs; unfettered by good taste, driven by wild idiosyncracies, an enduring belief in the transient and explosive pleasures of pop, fierce political convictions and a strong moral compass. Perhaps it would work best as a document of one man’s intolerances rather than his enthusiasms. For perhaps Swells’ greatest work was his war on the music and culture that he perceived as spineless, fey, joyously easy to rip to shreds. His legacy, perhaps, is not the great weight of Fun-Da-Mental interviews, or that strange and brief period in the 1980s when he made the Bradford 1 In 12 Club sound like the most exciting cultural hotspot in Britain. Instead, it’ll be the pathological hounding of Belle And Sebastian, Morrissey and their like, tireless screes of invective that in some cases lasted for decades. Every singles column he filed – hilarious, unfailingly – would degenerate in this way, magnificently. And every year or two, he would stumble upon new victims; like Bis, say, one of whom once apparently nudged him slightly, allowing him to interpret it as a kind of fey assault and turn the whole thing into an even more hysterical, indignant vendetta. Hours would go by arguing with the man, who never of course changed his opinions, though he was a much better listener than some of his splenetic prose would suggest. Arguing with Swells was a fine sport, in fact, and one of his many amusing secrets was that he was a much nicer and more tolerant man than his theatrical persona would suggest; happily and enthusiastically aware of his own preposterousness. Which is probably another reason why we allowed him to insult our readers for so long – even they, or at least the sane ones, didn’t take his rage to heart. He made a rich and comic artform of it, where most anyone else would have just come across as snide. Talking of his secrets, another, I seem to remember, was his musical taste. Once, exasperated after another long argument (we disagreed about almost everything to do with music, happily enough, and agreed with a lot of things to do with politics, though still found plenty of time to argue about those, too), I asked him what he really listened to, in quiet moments – if there were any. Surely it couldn’t be Extreme Noise Terror all the time? If memory serves, he told me The Beatles and classical music. Though that could’ve been another joke I guess. Whatever, a good man: rEst In pEAcE.

“Somebody better get me a fucking elevator. I’m fucking 60!” Here’s Bruce Springsteen huffing and panting into his microphone, during “Out In The Street”. He's just pulled himself up from a prone position at the top of a set of steps that lead from the stage to the pit, and the audience beyond. Later, during “Born To Run”, he’ll actually end up on his back at the top of those stairs, calling to Miami Steve Van Zandt to help him up. It is, perhaps, a rarity to find our favourite rock stars admitting to their advancing years. Indeed, you could be forgiven for thinking that many of them seem determined to shy away from acknowledging the passing of time at all. You only need to look at Mick Jagger, for instance, and the vigour of his stage performances and that extraordinary teenage frame to see a man clearly in denial of the fact he can now travel on a bus without having to pay for it. But, perhaps, it’s different for Springsteen and The E Street Band – who are introduced tonight as “the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth- shaking, booty-quaking, Viagra-taking, love-making E Street Band.” Certainly, with the passing of organist Danny Federici in April 2008, it strikes me as disingenuous were Springsteen and co to entirely ignore their own mortality. And, certainly, when they’re racing through a three hour-plus performance like this – opening with a breakneck version of The Clash’s “London Calling” and rarely letting the pace falter – you wonder, perhaps, just how long they can carry on doing it. Springsteen’s shirt, for instance, becomes drenched in sweat in the opening 30 minutes; one camera, shooting the band for the big screens that sit on either side of the stage, catches him between songs glugging down some juice, most of it running down his chin. It must be punishing delivering a set of this intensity. But, of course, this is what Springsteen does – and has done with The E Street Band – for close to 40 years. In some respects, you might argue that it’s as familiar and polished as a Vegas show. During “Waiting For A Sunny Day”, for instance, he goes down to the crowd and passes the microphone to a small kid to sing along to the chorus. In other hands, of course, such a gesture might well be considered the height of schmaltz; but with Bruce doing it, it elicits a soft sigh from the crowd (many of them parents themselves, of course). There’s plenty of Looney Tunes-style comedy mugging, too, principally between Springsteen and Maimi Steve; during “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”, Steve seems to be complaining to Springsteen about Nils Lofgren taking an extended guitar solo. Clarence Clemons, too – with his Predator dreads – gets a cheer every time he plays a sax solo; and an even bigger one when he whips out a penny whistle on “American Land”. It’s all very convivial. Equally, Springsteen is more than happy to spread the love to a younger generation; earlier in the day, he’d already joined the Gaslight Anthem on stage for their song, “59 Sound”, and now he invites their singer, Brian Fallon, to join in for “No Surrender” (they’d done similar in Glastonbury). "It's still early!" bellows Springsteen at 9.45, 15 minutes or so off his curfew, as the remaining wisps of blue disappear into the night sky. The set winds its way through rousing, singalong versions of "Born To Run" and "Jungleland" to "Glory Days" and "Dancing In The Dark". It seems highly likely he'd have carried on playing all night - but, alas, there was no "Born In The USA" or "Thunder Road". Of course, you might wonder whether Springsteen will still be belting out sets like this in 10 or even 5 years time. But until such time as he decides to hang up his work shirt, cowboy boots and Telecaster, we should continue to enjoy shows of this calibre. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band's Hyde Park set list was: 'London Calling' 'Badlands' 'Night' 'She's The One' 'Outlaw Pete' 'Out In The Street' 'Working On A Dream' 'Seeds' 'Johnny 99' 'Youngstown' 'Good Lovin'' 'Bobby Jean' 'Trapped' 'No Surrender' 'Waiting On A Sunny Day' 'Promised Land' 'Racing In The Street' 'Radio Nowhere' 'Lonesome Day' 'The Rising' 'Born To Run' 'Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)' 'Hard Times' 'Jungleland' 'American Land' 'Glory Days' 'Dancing In The Dark' Pic credit: PA Photos