POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Springsteen: Through a Set Darkly : The rocker sings two songs from his upcoming album. Emmylou Harris, Chryssie Hynde and the Pretenders contribute memorable moments to Neil Young’s Bridge School concert.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. —  You usually know that it’s time for a concert to start when the stage crew finishes checking the last of the microphones.

Not so at Neil Young’s acoustic Bridge School concerts at the Shoreline Amphitheatre.

One sign of the warmth and informality of the star-studded event is that no one expects anything to begin until the final wheelchair is rolled on stage.

Young and his wife, Pegi, started this concert series nine years ago to help finance educational programs in the Bay Area for children with severe speech and other physical impairments--and students remain the top priority. They are seated in a place of honor behind the performers.

This generosity of spirit carries over to the performers, who use their 25 minutes to either preview new material or to revisit old songs in often revealing ways.

Though Saturday’s edition also featured stirring performances by the Pretenders, Emmylou Harris and Young, the focus was on Bruce Springsteen because he previewed two songs from his “The Ghost of Tom Joad” album, which will be released Nov. 21.

This is an important album for Springsteen because many critics and fans complained about a lack of direction in his pair of 1992 albums, “Lucky Town” and “Human Touch.” There were excellent songs on the albums, but the works overall had the feel of a man searching for his place in the ‘90s pop-rock scene, some observers felt.

The direction is clear this time--and the trail leads back to the uncompromising spirit of some of Springsteen’s most acclaimed work.

“The Ghost of Tom Joad” and “Sinaloa Cowboys,” the two songs from the album that he played Saturday, combine the stark, simmering social observation of his landmark 1982 “Nebraska” album and the poignant sense of solitary struggle chronicled in his 1993 Oscar- and Grammy-winning song “Streets of Philadelphia.”

“Tom Joad,” which he dedicated sarcastically to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, evokes the name of the main character in “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck’s celebrated 1939 novel about Oklahoma farmers who migrate to the promised land of California only to find themselves at the mercy of bullying police and inhumane employers.

Accompanied only by his own guitar, Springsteen sang the update of the Joad tale with the determination and bite of a ‘30s folk balladeer: Shelter line stretchin’ ‘round the corner/Welcome to the new world order/Families sleepin’ in their cars in the Southwest/No home, no job, no peace, no rest.

The equally dark “Sinaloa Cowboys” speaks about desperate men today who still look to California as a promised land, only this time from Mexico.

Though the microphone sputtered at several points, Springsteen seemed very much a man on a mission as he wove the new songs around some equally despairing tunes from his past, including the similar social protest of “Seeds” and the more internal conflict of “Adam Raised a Cain.”

He seemed reinvigorated and ready to tackle head-on, both with the album and a companion solo acoustic theater tour, the charges that he has lost his relevancy and will in contemporary rock. The creative fire was in his eyes.

Yet his set was far from the evening’s only highlight.

Emmylou Harris and the Pretenders’ Chryssie Hynde are arguably the most captivating female singers ever in country and in rock, respectively, and it was thrilling to hear them on the same program, even if in separate sets.

Daniel Lanois, who produced Harris’ new album and who adds a more rootsy and sophisticated edge to her music, joined Harris in a set that was more a partnership than a Harris solo affair--a move that is fresh at times, but which also sacrifices some of her individuality.

Hynde and the Pretenders also had a partner, but the string quartet that accompanied them accentuated Hynde’s vocals rather than competed with them. She dedicated a stinging version of Young’s “Needle and the Damage Done” to Shannon Hoon, the Blind Melon lead singer who was found dead in New Orleans on Oct. 21. Blind Melon had been scheduled for Saturday’s bill.

Hootie & the Blowfish, which was well received by the crowd of more than 20,000, is as unpretentious as it is ordinary, which means its success is as inoffensive as it is inexplicable.

Beck, a young singer-songwriter who is hip enough to go from Lollapalooza to “The Larry Sanders Show,” can be engaging at times, but he opened the nearly five-hour concert with a rambling and listless set.

Young, in closing, was joined by the Crazy Horse trio for passionate versions of some of his best-known tunes, including “Tonight’s the Night,” before leading the entire cast through a spirited “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

As the musicians left the stage shortly after 11 p.m., the audience yelled for more, but you knew it was hopeless. The stage crew had already begun wheeling the young students off the stage. Rock’s most rewarding annual concert affair was over.