Back in June, Neil Young cancelled the final 10 shows of his Love Earth tour, his first tour with Crazy Horse in a decade, citing the need for members of the band to recover from illness. He’s now discussed what happened in more detail in a Zooom Q&A with paid Neil Young Archives subscribers, viewed by Rolling Stone. “A couple of us really hit a wall,” Neil 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. 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.”
“Crazy Horse will be back, God willing,” Neil added. “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.”
Neil also said he’s planning a theater tour with Micah Nelson and the Promise of the Real rhythm section, aka drummer Anthony Logerfo and bassist 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,” he said. “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.” Stay tuned for more on that.
Neil will play Farm Aid, which is returning to New York, in September, and he also recently gave Tim Walz permission to use “Rockin’ in the Free World” at the Democratic National Convention.