Neil Young has canceled the remaining dates on his North American tour and has announced that he is taking a “big unplanned break” due to illness amongst a couple of members of his band.
In a statement, Young said that the band members fell ill after their gig on May 22 in Clarkston, Michigan. “We are still not fully recovered, so sadly our great tour will have a big unplanned break,” the veteran rocker said. “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 apologise for the inconvenience.”
The canceled shows include seven Canadian dates in July and three US dates including shows at the Hollywood Bowl and Eddie Vedder’s Ohana fest in late September. Cancelling so far in advance and with no mention of who the ill personnel are or what the unspecified illness is... it’s all a bit mysterious.
Young concluded the statement by saying: "Health is #1… we want to stay and do more shows and more albums for you… and for us… with love and thanks to all of you from Crazy Horse… Neil, Micah, Ralph and Billy… Love Earth."
Back in January, Young had shared some news about his own health, revealing in a post on his Neil Young Archives website that he had been playing with arthritis in his hand for years but that he had “finally discovered a way around the pain with no drugs that let me play as I felt.”
Young explained in the post that he discovered this new way of playing at a gig he played with Crazy Horse in November 2023 at the Toronto club The Rivoli: “The last time we played live was so amazing! I had a great time. We all did...The last show was a lifetime experience. The guys all said as we left the stage ‘That was a really good one!’”
This year had been shaping up to be a typically busy one for the 78-year-old Canadian. Indeed he releases Early Daze tomorrow (June 28), an album of archival recordings from 1969 around the time he first started working with Crazy Horse. This came just a few weeks after another new record, Fu## in’ Up, featuring re-interpreted versions of tracks from his 1990 Ragged Glory album.
