Neil Young Breaks Silence on Crazy Horse Tour Cancellation: ‘I Listened to My Body’

Three months ago, Neil Young and Crazy Horse pulled the plug on their Love Earth summer tour with little explanation besides “a couple of us got sick.” In a new Zoom Q&A with paid subscribers of the Neil Young Archives, Young gave fans a much fuller account of what went down.

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“A couple of us really hit a wall,” he 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.”

The good news is Young will be returning to the concert stage Sept. 21 at Farm Aid in Saratoga, Springs, New York. Right around that time, Young says he’s plotting a U.S. theater tour with guitarist Micah Nelson and the Promise of the Real rhythm section of drummer Anthony Logerfo and bassist Corey McCormick.

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“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.”

Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina and Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot are both 80 years old. It’s unclear which of them “hit a wall” along with Young on the tour, but he’s optimistic about their future. “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.”

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