Neil Young Explains Buffalo Springfield’s Aborted Reunion

Last year Buffalo Springfield reunited for a seven-date tour, but an additional planned 30 dates were called off with little explanation. In the new issue of Rolling Stone, Neil Young says he’s not completely closed off to the idea of touring with the group at some point in the future.

“That could happen,” says Young, who will release his first album with Crazy Horse in nine years this week. “But it’s not happening now. I’d be on a tour of my past for the rest of fucking time, which I can’t do. I have to be able to move forward. I can’t be relegated. I did enough of it for right then, but there is this seed of something great still there. It’s worth exploring again.” 

Buffalo Springfield broke up in 1968 after spending just two years together. They reformed for a private rehearsal in the mid-1980s, but after Young opted to not reunite, drummer Dewey Martin and bassist Bruce Palmer hit the road with new members under the moniker Buffalo Springfield Revisited. Young shocked fans in 2010 when he announced that Buffalo Springfield would play at his annual Bridge School Benefit charity concert. Martin and Palmer had both passed away by that point, and they were replaced by bassist Rick Rosas and drummer Joe Vitale.

Richie Furay spoke with Rolling Stone days before the band’s Bonnaroo set last June. “The plan is to do 30 dates this fall,” he said. “The anchors will be Los Angeles and New York. What the other cities are, I can’t tell you right now – but we’re almost certainly doing Red Rocks. There have been people from Florida, Chicago and Texas saying to me, ‘Hey, you gonna come my way?’ I have to say that with 30 shows, we’re gonna hit those cities.”

This past February, Furay explained the change of plans. “I was actually told, ‘We’re doing this 30-day tour,” he said. “And, you know, Neil is just fickle, and even though it boils down to all three of us making a decision … without the three of us, really there can’t be anything that would even resemble a Buffalo Springfield … I gotta say that we probably lost a little bit of our momentum. That isn’t to say it couldn’t be picked up again, but I certainly don’t see anything happening this year.”