Neil Young has been one of the more outspoken and careful artists when it comes to dealing with the pandemic.
He hasn’t toured since 2019 and will once again sit out Farm Aid on September 24th in Raleigh, North Carolina.
And, he’s still beating the drum about doing our part to bring the crisis to an end. In a column on his website titled Break the Chain, he writes: “I remember when COVID-19 first appeared in the world. We were all talking about how to break the chain, stop the spread — what could we do? We started staying away from the tall buildings where many of us worked. The shared air and/or poor ventilation was a threat. We stopped going to indoor restaurants. We started wearing masks. We began using Zoom and staying at home to work. Staying home with our immediate families.
“Even family gatherings spread the virus.
“Traffic was way down and all our roads cleared substantially. The skies were empty of big commercial planes. Airports were empty, their parked cars gone from the lots. Things like that happened around the world as we all grappled with our common threat.
“Charts were on big screens, updating us every day. How many people would die? A lot of people died. Our friends died. Family members also. The numbers grew.
“We faced it together. There was no vaccine. How could we break the chain without a vaccine?
“Then we started to see more birds in the skies. We noticed the air was cleaner than at any time in our recent memory. The sky was a beautiful blue in downtown Los Angeles and other big cities. Water got cleaner in our shared rivers and lakes.
“We need to remember that.”
Though Young has yet to perform during the pandemic, he did record and release Barn, an album with Crazy Horse, last December.
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