“The guitars have their own intelligence,” Young said at one point. “We just plug them in.” 

Behind him on stage was a glowing fireplace and working model train set, which Young turned on and watched choo-choo around the stage at one point without making any mention of it. He then moved over to a new instrument, a new song and new era of his legendary career. “I’m following all these notes on the floor to tell me what to do next,” Young half-joked. 

As he made clear from the tour announcement, Young wasn’t here to play the hits — something he teased the crowd about throughout. 

“You can shout out as many songs as you want,” he replied sarcastically to drunk fan barking for a rendition of “Old Man.” “Thanks for being so supportive. I’m listening to every word you say. “

While Young did eventually get to a string of crowd-pleasers, the start of the evening was a treasure trove of lesser-played songs reaching back to the Canadian’s first-ever time in California.

“This was the first song I ever sang in a studio, when I came down to the states and started playing with Stephen Stills and the guys in Springfield,” Young said before playing a pretty, acoustic version of 1966’s “Burned,” his unmistakable falsetto ringing out just as it did when he sang it at 20.

It was one of three Buffalo Springfield songs Young performed, including a woozy version of the psychedelic stomper, “Mr. Soul,” played on his pump organ. “I bought this thing in a pawn shop in Redwood City,” Young told the crowd. “It may have been a furniture store. You can’t quote me on anything.” 

Young also drew repeatedly from two ’90s grunge-adjacent records, “Mirror Ball” and the Kurt Cobain-inspired, “Sleeps With Angels,” including a magical rendition of “My Heart” on an old black piano that also was revealed to have local provenance. 

“I bought it in Berkeley. Probably in 1970-something. It was the first thing I bought for my new house,” Young said of his ranch, where he wrote and recorded a slew of classic albums in the ’70s. “It was the cheapest piano in the whole place. I call it the burned grand is because it was in a fire and is all torched underneath. It’s pretty strong.”

As more calls came in from the crowd for “Rocking in the Free World,” and other such singalongs, Young continued to tease them. “I had to call the publicist to make sure this set list was OK,” Young said sardonically. “But I found these songs way back there somewhere, buried by hits.” 

Young has always done whatever he wanted, to the dismay of his record labels and sometimes fans. He followed the four-time platinum “Harvest” in 1972 with a drunk recording featuring a song sung from the point of view of Charles Manson. In 1983, he released a rockabilly album purely out of spite to rile studio boss David Geffen — a move that resulted in a bizarre lawsuit filed against the songwriter by Geffen on the grounds that Neil Young didn’t sound like Neil Young.

This stubbornness, on display at times on Saturday night, is not just due to Young becoming a cranky old man (Although he definitely is that; he still refuses to put his music on Spotify, and there were only locally sourced snacks and sodas on sale at the Greek, at the singer’s request.)

His single-mindedness is the entire reason Young manages to somehow still be a vital troubadour today, six decades years after he drove a hearse from Winnipeg to Hollywood to find fame. Unlike many of his peers who ended up repeating themselves toward a Vegas residency or early death, Young still has a creative spark in his eye.

The hits did finally come along on Saturday night with a crackling solo rendition of one of the best protest songs ever written, “Ohio.” Young famously wrote the song while hanging out with David Crosby in Pescadero after seeing photos in Life Magazine of student anti-war protesters shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State. 

“People been talking about Crosby recently,” Young said of his friend and former bandmate who died in January. “I was with him when someone showed us this picture in the magazine. This kid had been shot. It was mind-blowing what had happened. Crosby and I were in this forest. I think I wrote this on the porch,” Young remembered before launching into the gnarled, angry riff alone. 

Sharp banter with drunk hecklers aside, including a ubiquitous boomer-with-too-much-chardonnay repeatedly requesting “Free Bird,” Young made the crowd laugh throughout with his wayward observations. In one rare moment of genuine warmth, Young looked out over the crowd and the Berkeley Hills in gratitude, maybe remembering Crosby and other pals no longer around. “I’m glad I’m here now,” he said. 

After a crowd-rousing “Heart of Gold,” Young ended the night on another ’70s hit, “Comes a Time.” The country-tinged folk song peaks with the childlike refrain, “This old world keeps spinning ’round, it’s a wonder tall trees ain’t laying down.”

The same could be said for Young, still standing strong against the prevailing winds after seven decades of doing whatever the hell he wants.