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Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts have completed three concerts of their “Love Earth” World Tour and have already established a fixed setlist, the classics (“Cinnamon Girl”, “Like a Hurricane”, “The Needle and the Damage Done”) with unusual rarities (“Sun Green”, “Looking Forward”, “Name of Love ”) mixes. And hardly changed from night to night.
Every show starts differently – and ends unique
But so far, every show has been opened with another acoustic solo – “Sugar Mountain” in Sweden, “Heart of Gold” in Norway, “Comes A Time” in Denmark – and with a unique encore. Sweden ended with “Rockin ‘in the Free World”, Norway got “Cortez the Killer”, and Denmark experienced a double encore with “Down by the River” and “Rockin’ in the Free World”.
A fan near the stage filmed “Cortez the Killer” in Bergen, Norway – and it is simply majestic. Young no tone sings for almost five minutes, while the intro swells slowly. The performance extends to an impressive 14 minutes. That is a good three minutes more than the versions with which Young 2024 opened his tour with Crazy Horse. (The record, however, comes from a show in Rotterdam in 2001, in which the song lasted 22 minutes.)
Lost stanza of “Cortez the Killer” played live
In Norway, Young added the lost stanza of “Cortez the Killer”, which nobody had heard until last year. This stanza was only a rumor for decades. However, it was confirmed when Young said in a zoom call with paying members of the Neil Young Archives that he recently found his original texts. They were first presented to the audience on the opening evening of the Crazy Horse tour in April 2024.
“I floated on the water,” sings Young. “I athat Ocean Wave/Two Weeks After the Slaughter/I was Living in a cave/they can too late to get me/But there’s no one here to set me free/from this rocky grave/to that snowed-out ocean wave.”
More highlights and travel diary
“Down by the River” in Denmark was kept with relatively short nine minutes compared to the 24-minute version from Dresden from 2014 and was also filmed by a fan. .
After the show in Sweden, Young wrote a travel diary on his website. “We are now on the way to Bergen,” he wrote, “a winding beauty, past huge rock formations and lush trees and plants, incredible waterways with rapids that open to large lakes. Old buildings in wonderful condition on the shore. Snow -covered mountain peaks above. These projects.
More tour dates and new album
The tour continues on June 26th in the Malahide Castle in Dublin, Ireland. On June 28, she will be on the Pyramid Stage in Glastonbury, England. The North America stage begins on August 8th in the PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, North Carolina. It ends in September at the Farm Aid in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In July Neil Young comes to Germany, presented by Rolling Stone.
At some point Young will probably play at least one song from his brand new album “Talkin ‘To The Trees”. So far, however, he has not played anything that was written after 2003.