Nick Lowe
The Acoustic Stage, Saturday June 29, 2025
There was a time in the ‘80s when Glastonbury’s Acoustic Stage was the only non-Pyramid venue, an outlying tent where Lucinda Williams, Stackridge and Gong Maison played while The Cure or Happy Mondays melted the Pyramid. It’s still an under sold outlier, keeping it old school with seatless, bog roll-less long drops and no TV cameras, where one-time Pyramid headliners Hothouse Flowers play on Saturday evening before Nick Lowe closes the night at the same time Neil Young plays elsewhere.
And can we talk about legends? Actual legends, not anointed Sunday evening heritage acts? This is Nick bloody Lowe: the Jesus of cool; one of pre-punk pub rock’s brightest guiding lights; former son in law of Johnny Cash (and writer of Cash’s career rehabilitating The Beast In Me); in-house producer and father figure to Stiff Records’ astonishing new wave roster; all round curator of rock’n’roll’s alchemy. Scheduling him out on the festival fringes on Saturday night seems a little disrespectful, and it’s not lost on Nick himself as he quips, “I feel I have a duty to ask - do you know Neil Young’s about to play at the Pyramid? I won’t take it personally if you leave.”
No one leaves. Lowe, with just an acoustic guitar and a sackful of history, is mesmerising, a rockabilly rebel with tinges of gospel, country and soul, stopping by for covers of The Bee Gees-penned Dione Warwick hit Heartbreaker and Paul Carrack’s Battlefield, and self-deprecatingly introducing Far Celestial Shore as “A song I wrote for Mavis Staples, but this is the far less impressive original version”.
Neil Young starts rumbling far down the hill as Lowe spins through Cruel To Be Kind (“That’s a medley of my hit”), but no one in this tent can hear him during the closing three songs: a slowed down, worn down (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding, rollicking I Knew the Bride (When She Used To Rock 'n' Roll) and humble When I Write The Book.
It’s a life affirming performance that deserved a Neil Young-sized audience.
Armed with an acoustic guitar and a sackful of history, The Jesus Of Cool is mesmerizing.