NEIL YOUNG SIGNED CHECK - for the serious collector! - La Cave 21/22/23 Feb 1969

Description

NEIL YOUNG SIGNED CHECK - for the serious collector! - La Cave 21/22/23 Feb 1969. This auction incudes the original accounting sheet for Neil's three-day weekend at La Cave.
What a great, rare, one-of-a-kind gift for the serious Neil Young collector! Suitable for framing.
La Cave was the legendary Cleveland folk and rock club open from '62 through '69 that hosted dozens of future Hall of Famers and Woodstock performers. Everyone from Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Lou Reed, Paul Butterfield, Jose Feliciano, Gordon Lightfoot, Judy Collins and countless others got their careers started at La Cave.
Neil's first two Cleveland appearances were at the 300-seat basement club La Cave. This is from the first appearance on 21-23 Feb 1969. This check is the one tat Stan Kain handed Neil upon his arrival at the club. Neil immediately endorsed it and gave it back to Stan in exchange for cash. Stan subsequently wrote Neil tree more checks; one for each night and a final bonus check.
The local duo Leatherwood & Lisa opened all three nights for Neil. They made per night!
All.my offerings are smoke-free. Please note my100% rating. Thank you!
Here's an excerpt from a soon-to-be-published book on the history of La Cave:
Shakey
Neil Young was not yet the star he would become later in ’69. The former members of Buffalo Springfield, Neil, along with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, had yet to become household names. For Neil and Stephen, that would change dramatically after their appearance with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at the Woodstock festival in August, where Stephen famously declared, “This is only our second concert together. We’re scared shitless, man!”
After leaving Buffalo Springfield in ‘68, Neil had kicked around doing some session work and some solo shows, and in January picked up Elliott Roberts as his manager and released his debut solo album,
Neil Young
on Reprise Records. Missing the interplay of being in a band, Neil picked up three members of the band Rocket, renaming them Crazy Horse. In only a couple of weeks they had recorded enough tracks to release
Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
on 14 May, 1969.It hung around the bottom of the charts until after his appearance at Woodstock, when it rose as high as #34 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.
Embarking on tours to support each album, Neil spent most of 1969 and 1970 on the road. His manager knew Doug Weston of the Troubadour in Los Angeles, who in
turn recommended
La Cave as a vital stop on his quest for better name recognition. When Neil picked Crazy Horse as his backing band, Elliott was insistent that Neil and the band remain separate entities. Therefore,
Everybody Knows
was credited to “NEIL YOUNG” in large caps, and in much smaller type underneath, it read “and Crazy Horse.” The singer and the band would have along-term on-again, off-again relationship in the decades to come, and while his sole debut never found its way onto a chart,
Everybody Knows
eventually went platinum, and boosted Neil into superstardom. In the
Village Voice, c
ritic Robert Christgau wrote, “Young is a strange artist and I am not all the way into him yet, but this record is haunting,” giving the album a “B+” rating, and later changing that B+ into an “A-.” Today, it is considered a classic album of any musical period, and opened the door to Neil’s double induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once as a member of the groundbreaking Buffalo Springfield, and once as a solo artist.
Neil’s 1969 tour commenced at the Bitter End in New York, where he played for six nights. Then it was off to La Cave for three nights, and then on to the Troubadour. That completed the first leg of the tour, after which he spent most of the month of April in the studio working on
Everybody Knows
, which was released on 14May. The second leg of the tour began in May and continued till the end of June, with La Cave and the Troubadour once again the final two stops.
By the time hefirst appeared at La Cave, Neil’s musical feet were planted in two separatecamps. He loved playing acoustically and connecting with his audience. He alsoloved to raise the rafters, turning his band up to “eleven” and shaking teethfillings from their sockets. To accommodate him, his appearances at La Caveconsisted of an opening, solo acoustic set, followed by an ear-bleeding CrazyHorse set. Most of the acoustic songs would appear on his third album, 1970’s
Afterthe Gold Rush,
while the Crazy Horse set played the entire song list of
EverybodyKnows This is Nowhere.
A year after La Cave closed,
Gold Rush
wouldbreak into the Top 10 and eventually garner Grammy Hall of Fame status.
Nelson and Larry were hoping for a record-breaking turnstile count for Neil’s La Cave stopover. They were severely disappointed. In the years to come, many more people took credit for seeing Neil at La Cave than actually did. Neil and the band sold 645tickets, many of them to repeat customers for both nights. Leatherwood &Lisa, the popular local opening act, was responsible for a portion of that count, too. Nelson barely broke even, after hoping for at least three grand in net profit.
I reserve the right to cancel this listing at any time for any reason.