Neil Young and Crazy Horse Announce ‘A Big Unplanned Break’ From Tour

Neil Young and Crazy Horse have suspended their Love Earth Tour, which was slated to resume July 8 in Toronto, and keep them on the road through the end of the month.

“When a couple of us got sick after Detroit’s Pine Knob, we all had to stop,” they wrote in a statement on the Neil Young Archives. “We are still not fully recovered, so sadly our tour will have a big unplanned break. We will try to play some of the dates we miss as time passes when we are ready to rock again! We know many of you made travel plans and we apologize for the inconvenience. Thanks for your understanding and patience. Health is #1. We want to stay and do more shows and more albums for you… and for us.”

The July shows across Canada and the Western United States have all been canceled, according to Ticketmaster. The tour is slated to resume Sept. 19 at the Bourbon and Beyond Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. Date are also booked at the Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California, on Sept. 28, and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on Sept. 29. It’s unclear if those three shows are still happening.

The Love Earth Tour kicked off April 24 at the Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre in San Diego, California. Crazy Horse guitarist Nils Lofgren was unable to participate due to his commitments to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Micah Nelson took his place. “I would cancel just about anything I had going on to play with Neil and Crazy Horse,” Nelson told Rolling Stone in March. “It’s like if you had asked me at 15, ‘What band in your wildest vision would you love to play with and be in?’ It would probably have been Crazy Horse. It’s just very, very surreal to end up here.”

The shows were centered on vintage Neil Young and Crazy Horse songs including “Cortez the Killer,” “Powderfinger,” Down By the River,” and “Like a Hurricane.” The newest song played most nights was 1996’s “Scattered (Let’s Think About Livin’),” which Young dedicated to David Briggs, the band’s longtime producer who died in 1995.

“The songs we’re playing here tonight were all produced by this guy whose name was David Briggs,” Young told the crowd in Mansfield, Massachusetts. “A long time ago, he left this planet and went outward. He’s still out there. When he disappeared, we played our first album. We went in there without him, and we were feeling it.”

Hours before they were supposed to take the stage at Chicago’s Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island on May 23, they announced that the show was being postponed “due to illness.” Two shows later that week in Austin and Dallas were also postponed. They haven’t indicated which members of the band fell ill or when makeup dates might possibly occur.