With a Stetson-toting Texan in the White House notching record lows in popularity for a president, this is not the happiest time for cowboys. So the country fans who clamped cowboy hats on their heads and headed out west for Willie Nelson’s gig – west London that is – were hoping to renew their faith in a great American archetype. They were not disappointed.

The 75-year-old Nelson came to prominence in the early 1970s as a member of the “outlaw country” movement rebelling against Nashville’s conservatism. An outspoken marijuana enthusiast and forgetful tax-payer – in 1990 he was landed with a bill of $16.7m for back taxes – he still sports the hippy-cowboy look with his red bandana, plaited grey hair and scruffy beard. At the Apollo he played a battered guitar and performed with a backing band in front of a vast Texan flag, reclaiming the Lone Star from George W. Bush.

When he sang “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” during a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee”, he sounded like a renegade patriot, embracing a free-wheeling, Easy Rider vision of liberty. Bristling rock and roll, swinging honky-tonk and wistful lounge-jazz were woven seamlessly into the country tunes. One of the set’s highlights was an uplifting gospel number, “I’ll Fly Away”.

Being on the move is a favourite Nelson theme. A comic song called “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” was salutary: “Don’t let ’em pick guitars and drive them old trucks/Make ’em be doctors and lawyers and such”. “Red-Haired Stranger” warned of the consequences of coming between a man and his best friend: “You can’t hang a man for killing a woman/Whose trying to steal your horse.” Nelson’s cowboy fantasies are not without irony.

The man himself was not as mobile as his music: his stage movements consisted of pointing in the air and grinning at the end of each song. But he played guitar deftly and sang in a deep, gnarled voice. At the end he exited abruptly without an encore. A line from a song hung tantalisingly in the air: “Cowboys ain’t easy to love and they’re harder to hold.”