Neil Young - On The Beach

Released - July 1974

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Neil Young; David Briggs; Mark Harman & Al Schmitt

Selected Personnel - Neil Young (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Harmonica); Ben Keith (Slide Guitar/Dobro/Organ/Percussion/Bass); Tim Drummond (Bass/Percussion); Ralph Molina (Drums/Percussion); Billy Talbot (Bass); David Crosby (Guitar); Graham Nash (Piano)

Standout Track - On The Beach

Over the last few months, Neil Young has slowly been creeping his way from my list of artists I enjoy but don't feel obsessively compelled by, into my list of artists who've come to mean a huge amount to me and who I'd like to try and get a more complete appreciation of. That's for a number of reasons, really - from my very first encounter with Young's music via After The Gold Rush and Harvest about five years ago, he'd already established himself in my mind as one of the finest American folk singer-songwriters, and somebody with a poetic and beautiful insight into life, love, ageing and the like. As I slowly started listening to Young's other records, particularly some of his albums recorded with Crazy Horse, it became clear that what Young was able to achieve and express was so much more than the faintly Dylanesque troubadour image I'd built up of him. Equally as comfortable expressing rage, frustration, despair and bewilderment as at writing a poetic little ditty about lost love or the passing of time, he was also a musician as at home playing brutal, punishing hard rock as with mellow, countrified folk. The man's obvious versatility as a musician and writer slowly caught my interest, and I'm currently in the midst of gradually trying to listen to a greater spread of his discography. The album that first prompted my further interest in him was On The Beach, which I first listened to a little over a year ago.

Musically, On The Beach feels not too far removed from the melodic country folk of Harvest, but there's a bleakness and a sense of despair at play that marks it out as a very different beast. In the wake of the enormous success of Harvest and, in particular, the classic song "Heart Of Gold," Young was dismayed to suddenly find himself heralded as some sort of pop icon. Determined to avoid being perceived as a middle-of-the-road musican, he vowed to head into "the ditch" to maintain his own integrity. What followed was to be remembered as the "Ditch Trilogy," a series of three albums that failed to capitalise on the commercial breakthrough of Harvest but that achieved his artistic ambitions in their frank and raw explorations of despair. The first such record was a live album entitled Time Fades Away that Young was ultimately dissatisfied with. During the tour that resulted in the recording of Time Fades Away, Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten had to be dismissed from the band due to his increasing instability and unreliability due to his growing drug dependency. Not long after, Whitten died from a drug overdose, an event which haunted Young for a long time. The death of Whitten, along with the simultaneous death of roadie Bruce Berry, would be the lurking presence behind the 1973 recording of Tonight's The Night, an album that I'll talk about more when we get to 1975.

Unremittingly bleak and unabashedly raw and lo-fi, Tonight's The Night wasn't met enthusiastically by Young's record label, Reprise, who refused to release it (they would eventually agree at Young's insistence a couple of years later). In the interim, Young set about recording another new album that still allowed him to explore his feelings of desolation and loss but that tried to achieve a slightly more commercial sound that would satisfy Reprise. The result was On The Beach, recorded by a lineup that included former Stray Gators Ben Keith and Tim Drummond alongside Crazy Horse musicians like Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot. The album's first half in particular feels like a bone throne to appease the people at Reprise - opener "Walk On," with its bright, clanging electric guitar riff, sounds like a sunny slice of wholesome optimism, while its lyrics espouse an acceptance of one's mistakes and problems and moving ahead with life. It's arguably one of Young's most effortlessly feelgood songs, and a mischievous piece of misdirection considering how bleak much of the rest of the album would get. "See The Sky About To Rain" is another fairly upbeat song, again suggesting a kind of "weather the storm" optimism, while its pleasant melody and gentle keyboard part make it another genuinely lovely song.

But with "Revolution Blues" Young's genuine mental state and preoccupations begin to come to the fore. A more brutal rock song driven by an angry, ringing guitar riff, it's a character study of murderer Charles Manson, replete with all the rage and highly-strung insecurity that drove him to extremes. "I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars, but I hate them more than lepers and I'll kill them in their cars," is among the most devastatingly angry lyrics Young ever wrote. The last two songs of the first half see a slight dip in quality, with the blandly meditative "For The Turnstiles" and the slightly goofy and hamfisted attack on oil corporations that is "Vampire Blues," but the album's second half is a sort of distillation of Young's creative genius. The sun-kissed, mellow mood of Harvest or the upbeat pop moments of After The Gold Rush are almost completely absent, as is the angry posing of a more attention-grabbing rock song like "Southern Man" or "Cinnamon Girl." Instead, there's an unremittingly bleak and very sad exploration of the man's feelings of isolation in response to his newfound fame.

The extended, bluesy meanderings of "On The Beach" amount to one of Neil Young's very greatest moments. In a series of wonderfully realised images he effortlessly draws the picture of a man trying to find solace in his success but still feeling a yearning for something more meaninful - "I need a crowd of people but I can't face them day to day...now I'm living out here on the beach, but those seagulls are still out of reach." It's a wonderfully sad portrait, and one reinforced even further by the following track, "Motion Pictures," on which Young reimagines himself as a normal guy with very little who hates the idea of trading his simple life for one of fame and success. It's a much more content and warm-sounding song, but one made all the more poignant by the realisation that its criticism of celebrity figures essentially involves Young admonishing himself. "Ambulance Blues" is another lengthy, slow, meditative song, and one that involves some of his most cryptic lyrics, full of oblique references to contemporary American culture and politics as well as to specific personal details of his own past and career. It's difficult to make sense of every reference, but essentially the entire thing dissolves down into one lengthy, weary, defeated reflection on the slow death of hippy counter-culture, and the growing sense of apathy that pervaded American culture in the mid-70s. It's testament to Young's ability as a writer and musician that through nine minutes of barely varying acoustic music, he still maintains a sense of compelling world-weariness that never lets up.

By the time the album winds up, the sense of world-beating optimism that enlivened "Walk On" has been long forgotten, and a sense of sad nostalgia persists. It's all wrapped up in a far more commercial-sounding arrangement and production than the grittiness of Tonight's The Night, meaning Reprise agreed to put it out, though it didn't do particularly big business. Nonetheless, in the years since it's come to be seen as one of the artistic peaks of Young's career, and on a personal note, it was the first time I began to wake up to the fact that Neil Young was far more than just a feelgood poet and songwriter, but a man of far more substance and depth. Tonight's The Night finally saw the light of day the following year and has come to be seen as the pinnacle of Young's bleak "Ditch Trilogy," even though it's On The Beach for me that wins the laurels. Having perhaps finally worked out some of the issues that had been troubling him for the last couple of years, in the wake of that album Young reunited with Crazy Horse and set about trying to record something less personal and pessimistic and more in the vein of traditional rock music, delivering the great Zuma in the same year.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Neil Young.

1. Walk On

2. See The Sky About To Rain

3. Revolution Blues

4. For The Turnstiles

5. Vampire Blues

6. On The Beach

7. Motion Pictures

8. Ambulance Blues