Neil Young is returning to the road, with the dates and venues set to be announced sometime today (June 9th). During a Zoom call with subscribers to his Neil Young Archives site, he said of the upcoming West Coast acoustic shows, “I don’t want to come back and do the same songs again. I’ll feel like I was on some sort of carnival ride. I’d rather be doing these other songs I haven’t done. . . I won’t have to compare how I’m doing 'Heart Of Gold' to (how I played it in) 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020.”
Young stated the shows will feature 80 percent rare, deep cuts and launch with a stand at, “(A) tiny, little unknown theater that’s close to one of the most well-known theaters in the world. . . They’re not new songs. They’re old songs. But I wake up with them in my head every morning. They are songs that apply to my life right now and apply to everyone’s lives in this era that we’re in. Some of them were written 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, but never really played live.”
The San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Young said he has rehearsed about 15 songs for the tour, including 'Song X' from his 1995 album Mirror Ball, a collaboration with Pearl Jam; 'Prime Of Life' from 1994’s Sleeps With Angels; and 'If You Got Love,' an outtake from his 1982 album Trans. He also unveiled his plans to release a box set featuring two studio albums, 1989’s Freedom and 1990’s Ragged Glory, and a pair of live albums from 1991, Weld and Arc, remastered for the first time on vinyl on July 14th.”
Neil Young explained his constant yearning to shake things up in his career: “Well, it's always a different reason. During the '80s, I think that's when I got this reputation for changing all the time, 'cause in the '70s I never had this reputation. I didn't change that much, I just did the same thing one way and then another way, just like I've always done. But in the '80s, it got into a period where I felt like, why continue. . . I couldn't get into what I had been doing — 'couldn't get into a lot of things that formerly I could get into. They just seemed like they were old. It was more like a disguise than it was style, or something.”