He'll be back on the road soon for an East Coast stage tour with guitarist Micah Nelson and rhythm section Promise of the Real.
Three months ago, Neil Young and Crazy Horse have decided to end their summer Love Earth tour with no explanation other than that “a couple of us got sick.” In a new Zoom Q&A with paid subscribers to the Neil Young Archives, Young gave fans a more detailed account of what happened.
“A couple of us hit a real wall,” he said. “I woke up on the bus one morning and said, ‘I can’t do this, I have to stop.’ I felt sick when I thought about going on stage. My body was telling me, ‘You have to stop.’ So I listened to my body. Then it got into all the legal stuff: ‘You can do this, you can do that, people bought tickets, they did this, they did that.’ I get that. What matters to me is the art of playing and the music. That’s what matters. That’s what people love. That’s what they come to see. But if that wasn’t there, I wouldn’t go. My body told me not to do it.”
The good news is that Young will be back on stage on September 21 at Farm Aid in Saratoga Springs, New York. Around that time, Young says he’s planning a U.S. tour with guitarist Micah Nelson and the Promise of the Real percussion band, made up of drummer Anthony LoGervo and bassist Cory McCormick.
“We haven’t announced any shows yet, but they’re mostly venues I’ve played before, small venues, and then I can play a little bit of acoustic music, and then I’ll have the band come out and play,” he said. “It’ll probably be on the East Coast and then it’s up to Michigan and then Ohio and then a few other cities. It won’t be marathons. It won’t be two hours and ten minutes of crazy rock and roll like it was with Crazy Horse.”
Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina and Crazy Horse guitarist Billy Talbot are both 80 years old. It's unclear which of them “hit the wall” with Young on tour, but he's optimistic about their future. “Crazy Horse will be back, God willing,” he said. “We've done a good service to the Crazy Horse name. [on the tour] “I respected what happened. But when it came to the point where we did it, and now we’re doing it again, that’s why I stopped. You can’t control it. You can’t know when it’s going to happen. I’m sorry to all the people who bought tickets and couldn’t go, but I listened to my body.”
