Watch Neil Young Play ‘Pardon My Heart’ for First Time in 50 Years

Three days after posting a rare live performance of the title track to his 2000 LP Silver and Gold as part of his Fireside Sessions video series, Neil Young dug deeper into his past and broke out “Pardon My Heart” in a new clip. The song appears on Young’s 1975 LP Zuma, but hadn’t been played live in 50 years. Click here to check it out.

The mournful “Pardon My Heart” was first heard live on May 16, 1974, when Young played a surprise late-night set at New York’s Bottom Line after a Ry Cooder show. “Here’s a song I learned recently,” he told the crowd. “I wrote it too. This is a love song. It’s one of the saddest love songs I’ve ever heard.” It popped up again on Aug. 15, 1974, when Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s reunion tour hit the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. Those are the only two times it was ever played to a live audience.

He recorded the track at his home studio at Broken Arrow Ranch on June 16, 1974, with Tim Drummond on bass, and the Crazy Horse rhythm section of Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot on background vocals. This is the same day he cut “Homefires,” “Love Is a Rose,” “Hawaiian Sunrise,” and “L.A. Boys and Ocean Girls.” All of the songs reflect the intense heartbreak he was feeling at the time over the collapse of his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress, the mother of his son Zeke.

“Pardon My Heart” sat in the vault for over a year. “[Joni Mitchell] writes about her relationships so much more vividly than I do,” Young told Rolling Stone‘s Cameron Crowe in August 1974. “I guess I put more of a veil over what I’m talking about. I’ve written a few songs that were as stark as hers. Songs like ‘Pardon My Heart,’ ‘Home Fires,’ ‘Love Art Blues’… almost all of Homegrown. I’ve never released any of those. And I probably never will. I think I’d be too embarrassed to put them out. They’re a little too real.”

He changed his mind just a few months later when he included “Pardon My Heart” on Zuma, but it would be another 45 years before he finally felt comfortable enough to release Homegrown in its entirety. “It’s the sad side of a love affair,” he wrote at the time of the release. “The damage done. The heartache. I just couldn’t listen to it. I wanted to move on. So I kept it to myself, hidden away in the vault, on the shelf, in the back of my mind… but I should have shared it. It’s actually beautiful.”

Young hasn’t released an album of new material since 2022’s World Record. But he recently went into the studio and cut a new LP provisionally titled Talking to the Trees with his new band the Chrome Hearts, and producer Lou Adler.

“I went for two years without writing anything,” Young recently told Dan Hesse on his podcast Mentors Radio. “I was wondering, ‘Wow, is that it?’ Who knows? I can’t tell… This record has blown my mind. I’m very, very grateful for the success of being able to be in there with Lou Adler producing and the Chrome Hearts playing and getting this music out of me, which I never even knew was there until a couple of months ago when I wrote all the songs and recorded them all.”

Young formed the Chrome Hearts earlier this year after he was forced to prematurely call off his summer tour with Crazy Horse due to an undisclosed health situation. The new band features Micah Nelson on guitar, Spooner Oldham on organ, Anthony Logerfo on drums, and Corey McCormick on bass. They were unveiled at Farm Aid on Sept. 21, and then they played two shows at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, later that week.

There are no shows on the books for next year, but Young has indicated that he’s heading to Europe with the Chrome Hearts, and may also play some shows in the United States. Because of Covid concerns, nearly all of the shows will be outdoors.