“Eat a peach, Neil”: When Neil Young ditched Stephen Stills in the middle of a 1976 tour
For a man whose music was brimming with empathy, Neil Young rarely showcased any such ability to his close circle of friends.
Never found bending over backwards to fulfil the wish of a friend, Young was brutally uncompromising and thus garnered a reputation within the music industry for being something of a cantankerous grump. But his music was quite the contradiction; in fact, he was one of the pioneering voices of the counterculture movement and gave empathetic strength to those otherwise unheard.
The juxtaposition made him something of a perfect partner for Stephen Stills, who spent time in his career in two bands with Young. First Buffalo Springfield and then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, where, despite all of the creative and personal difficulties that arose, the Canadian pair wrote some of the most vital and profound counterculture anthems of the era.
But those moments of greatness only came in glimmers, because the pair, often in reaction to Young’s behaviour, regularly fell out. Despite making music for the people, they would often put themselves first and in 1976, Young put his two fingers up to Stills and all of their fans, by walking out of a tour midway through.
The pair embarked on a tour together in a bid to combine their respective back catalogue of solo hits and those from their two bands, to help fans relive the glory days. And to begin with, the shows were a real killer, with the pair rattling off hits like ‘For What It’s Worth’, Young’s ‘Southern Man’ before wrapping up on an encore of a triumphant ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’.
The pair even seem reconciled for good, and not in the performative rock and roll sense, with Stills declaring after a show in Hartford, Connecticut, “There’s no place I’d rather be than right here, playing with that guy”. But god damn, we should have known better than to get our hopes up.
But then the gloss wore off, and the bad reviews came trickling in. Many questioned the guitar-playing ability of Stills while wondering why Young hadn’t committed to working solely with The Crazy Horse. Either way, it irked Stills, who spiralled back into erraticism, and would stay up after shows, drinking excessively and tormenting himself over the reviews.
Young decided he had had enough and, with several shows left to go, bailed. While Rolling Stone cited his departure as “a recurring throat illness” and “gone into seclusion at his Northern California ranch”, the truth was, he had left his old mate in the cold when the music wasn’t up to scratch. There was absolutely nothing in the way of notice, just a telegram that read “Dear Stephen. Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil”.
It was a cryptic exit that many simply believed was a reference to the tour’s next stop, ‘the Peach State’, Atlanta, one Young would miss, but more eagle-eyed fans picked up the reference to The Allman Brothers’ 1972 album, Eat a Peach, which came from Duane Allman’s belief that doing so brings peace. So does that mean Young left out of care? Who knows.
