Now that the European leg of Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts’ Love Earth 2025 tour has come to a triumphant close, we’ve compiled a cornucopia of facts and figures about this historic jaunt.
This was Young’s 16th major European tour (of ten dates or more) and the final night in Paris marked his 322nd European show out of a lifetime total of 2634 gigs since the beginning of Buffalo Springfield.
Number of shows on this tour: 13
Number of countries visited: 10
Longest show: 125 minutes (The Lake Stage, Montreux, Switzerland; BST Hyde Park, London)
Largest (non-festival) attendance: 22,000 (Waldbühne, Berlin)
Confoundingly, Neil Young And The Chrome Hearts didn’t play any songs from their only album together, 2025’s Talkin To The Trees. So which albums did they draw on most for the Love Earth 2025 European tour set lists?
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)
3: Cinnamon Girl, Down By The River, Cowgirl In The Sand
After The Gold Rush (1970)
3: When You Dance, Southern Man, After The Gold Rush
Harvest (1972)
3: The Needle & The Damage Done, Heart of Gold, Old Man
Ragged Glory (1990)
3: Fuckin’ Up, Love & Only Love, Love To Burn
Zuma (1975)
2: Cortez the Killer, Don’t Cry No Tears
Greendale (2003)
2: Be The Rain, Sun Green
On The Beach (1974)
1: Ambulance Blues
American Stars’n’Bars (1977)
1: Like A Hurricane
Comes A Time (1978)
1: Comes A Time
Live Rust (1979)
1: Sugar Mountain
Rust Never Sleeps (1979)
1: Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)
American Dream (CSNY) (1988)
1: Name Of Love
Freedom (1989)
1: (Keep On) Rockin’ In The Free World
Harvest Moon (1992)
1: Harvest Moon
Mirror Ball (1995)
1: Throw Your Hatred Down
Looking Forward (CSNY) (1999)
1: Looking Forward
Silver & Gold (2000)
1: Daddy Went Walkin’
And here are those setlist choices arranged as a pie chart by decade:
Diving for deep cuts has often been a highlight for many of hardcore fans following Neil Young from show to show. There haven’t been any really rare songs played (as in less than 10 live outings ever), but there’s some interesting stats to be had around a few of the core songs that have entertained audiences this past month…
“Sugar Mountain”
Neil Young has played this familiar song over 450 times but it hasn’t featured often at all in the latter years of Young’s live career. After a run in 2019 and a Covid appearance (on the Fireside Sessions) in 2020, “Sugar Mountain” resurfaced once in 2024 and then showed up in four of the first six shows on the current tour.
“Be The Rain”
This underrated eco-blast was a cornerstone of both the acoustic and electric Greendale shows in 2003 and 2004 but hadn’t been played since, save for three surprise showings on the 2014 Crazy Horse European tour. The distinctive arced metallic Greendale mic set-up was an instant clue to long-time aficionados that it was back in favour, and indeed “Be The Rain” was played on every show of the Love Earth European tour, along with another Greendale song, “Sun Green”.
“When You Dance, I Can Really Love”
An After The Gold Rush song that’s drifted in and out of NY sets over the last 25 years but again was a feature of every Love Earth European show.
“Looking Forward”
Here’s one that no one saw coming. Debuted late in 1998 as a gentle solo acoustic song, it was rejigged to fit the CSNY album of the same name, coated in harmonies that didn’t really enhance the song (many didn’t think it worked in the band format). The Love Earth tour gave it a new lease of life, with gentle band harmonies and smart second acoustic picking from Micah Nelson.
“Name Of Love”
Written during the mid-1980s, this song was debuted on the infamous Crazy Horse Muddy Track tour of Europe in 1987. Recorded for the disappointing CSNY reunion record American Dream in 1988, the song was only played once by the reformed supergroup, and was shelved until the uninspiring 2014 Horse tour of Europe. It then lay dormant once more until this year, Young playing a not-seen-before electric piano for the opening show in Sweden, then the upright piano in Bergen, before settling on pump organ for the rest of the tour’s performances of the song.
“Throw Your Hatred Down”
Recorded and debuted live with Pearl Jam in 1995, “Throw Your Hatred Down” fell away from setlists as the millennium approached. It featured twice in 2006, once in 2014 and then popped up on several European dates with Promise Of The Real in 2019. It returned for the solo Coastal tour in 2023 before becoming part of the encore at Glastonbury and Hyde Park this year.
“Ambulance Blues”
One of the most lauded, revered works in the sprawling Neil Young canon. First coming to prominence on the famous Bottom Line bootleg of May ’74, it resurfaced later that year across eight dates of the CSNY stadium tour. For 24 years it was left as a mythic creature, unplayed live until REM agreed to play the Bridge Benefit shows in 1998, but only on the proviso that they could back Neil Young on “Ambulance Blues”. It featured throughout his 1999 solo tour and enjoyed sporadic appearances throughout the 2000s, but usually as a solo song. So fans were stunned and overjoyed when it suddenly reappeared in Groningen and established itself as a set-opener from then on.
“Daddy Went Walkin'”
You can guarantee that this curio from Silver & Gold was on absolutely no-one’s radar. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t a rare Neil Young song (77 performances now) but those were mostly on Young’s stellar solo tour of North America in 1999 and the following year’s Friends & Relatives tour. Since then, the song has been performed on just two occasions – at Bridge in 2009, and in a Fireside Session during the 2020 Covid pandemic – before resurfacing at Montreux this year, and again at the final date in Paris.
