Neil Young and Crazy Horse pulled the plug on their “Love Earth” summer tour earlier this year, citing an undisclosed illness that impacted more than one member of the group. Now, Young has revealed more about the decision to cut the tour short.
In a Zoom Q&A for subscribers to the Neil Young Archives, the singer and songwriter offered a more detailed account of what went down. “A couple of us really hit a wall,” Young said. “I just woke up one morning on the bus and I said, ‘I can’t do this, I gotta stop.’ I felt sick when I thought of going onstage. My body was telling me, ‘You gotta stop.’ And so I listened to my body.”
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He continued, telling fans “Then it gets into all the legal matters: ‘You got this, you got that, people bought tickets, they did this, they did that.’ I understand that. What matters to me is the art of playing, and the music. That’s what matters. That’s what people loved. That’s what they come to see. But if that’s not there, my going isn’t happening. My body told me to not do it.”
Previously Young and the band shared a statement that claimed a couple of members “got sick”: “We are still not fully recovered, so sadly our great tour will have a big unplanned break,” they wrote back in late June. The cancelled tour dates were mostly scheduled for July, but they had a few dates on the docket in September, including Ohana Fest and Bourbon & Beyond — Sting has stepped in to replace Young for those festival dates.
Meanwhile, Young is feeling healthy again and gearing up to head back on the road. He’s scheduled to play Farm Aid 2024 alongside Willie Nelson on September 21st in Saratoga Springs, New York, and told fans on the Q&A that he’s mapping out a theater tour to follow with Nelson’s son Micah and Promise of the Real members Anthony Logerfo and Corey McCormick.
“We haven’t announced any shows yet, but they are mostly theaters that I played before, little theaters, and then I can play a little bit of acoustic, and then have the band come out and play,” Young said of the new, unannounced tour dates. “They’ll probably be on the East Coast and then going towards Michigan and then Ohio, and then a few other ones. They won’t be marathons. They won’t be two hours and 10 minutes of blasting rock & roll like it was with Crazy Horse.”
While the upcoming Young outing won’t be with Crazy Horse, the musician confirmed that despite the brushes with illness, they’ll definitely return at some point soon. “Crazy Horse will be back, God willing,” he said. “We did a good service to the name Crazy Horse [on the tour] and paid respect to what that was. But when it got to the point where we had done it, and now we were doing it again, that’s why I stopped. That can’t be controlled. You can’t tell when that’s going to happen. I’m sorry to all the people who bought tickets who couldn’t go, but I listened to my body.”
In addition to mapping out a new tour, Young is also reissuing four of his classic albums on vinyl: Freedom, Ragged Glory – Smell the Horse, Weld, and Arc will all be back in print on October 4th.