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And Finally Artist News
Neil Young tries to book venues he played 40 years ago, finds that many are gone
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 24 February 2020
Earlier this month, Neil Young told a fan on his website not to expect any news on touring plans any time soon. Days later, he announced plans for the ‘Crazy Horse Barn Tour’, during which he and longtime band Crazy Horse aim to play vintage sports arenas around the US.
Problem is, they’ve discovered that a lot of the venues they performed in over the last 40 years no longer exist.
“Many of the old places were used to play are gone now, replaced by new coliseums we have to book [a] year in advance and we don’t want to [play] anyway”, he writes in a new post on Neil Young Archives.
“That’s not the way we like to play”, he goes on. “It sounds way too much like a real job if you have to book it and wait a year, so we have decided to play the old arenas – not the new sports facilities put up by corporations for their sports teams. Largely soulless, these new buildings cost a fortune to play in”.
“We wanted to play in a couple of months because we feel like it”, he adds. “To us, it’s not a regular job. We don’t like the new rules”.
To be fair, the new rules have been in place for so long now, they’re pretty much the old rules. But Young likes the old old rules. And also the old old venues.
But, as he shows in a list in his new post, many of those simply aren’t there anymore, with 30 of the venues contacted about the tour turning out to have been demolished. Although he also lists slightly more venues that are still there – albeit some of them renovated and made more shiny – so it looks like the tour is going ahead.
