Read the interview Neil Diamond gave to The Times before the festival

In a Glastonbury dominated by white-rimmed sunglasses, coloured afros and tepees, perhaps Neil Diamond’s mid-afternoon croon should have found a more comfortable home.

With his backing trio, full jazz orchestra and plenty of goodwill from the crowd, all the right elements were in place. The Basher may have sold 120 million records over 40 years but yesterday he failed to convince. He was not getting traction, as ballads from his new album, Home Before Dark, skidded like Teflon over the crowd. Only I’m a Believer and Sweet Caroline really stood out since they let the crowd indulge in karaoke escapism.

“Thank you England,” he cried before leaving, but the feeling wasn’t mutual and the applause lasted less than 20 seconds as he walked off.

With his ageing frame hunched over a microphone, the barbed, sinister tones of Leonard Cohen had no difficulty commanding respect from the Pyramid Stage audience.

As the sun faded for the final time over Worthy Farm for this festival, Cohen — poet first, singer second — painted his gritty dystopian prophecies, opening with an invocation of Hiroshima, Stalin and the Berlin Wall. The pessimism of his lyrics entranced rather than dismayed, his performance knitted together by much-missed gravelly Dylanesque tones.

Where Diamond struggled to seem authentic, it came effortlessly to his Canadian counterpart. Denied for so long the chance to hear him in person — this is his first tour since his period in seclusion during which he was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk — the audience had come for that special jagged voice.

This is why there was a roar of agreement when he sang “I was born with the gift of a golden voice”. For this they had a limitless appetite.

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