I had to drop a couple in and fuc
k shit up
115. Neil Young - On the Beach (1974)
There are probably ten Neil Young records I could easily (to a degree) pick in place of this album, that match it in great quality but for various reasons. I pick
On the Beach because it represents so many facets of Neil in a very eccentric way with top notch songs throughout, all the while still being a pure, urgent document of a man in turmoil that draws the listener to his pain and how he expresses it.
Let me sketch it out just to show how odd this album truly is: The opening pair, "Walk On" and "See the Sky About to Rain", are the most upbeat songs on the album, truly sounding like a day on the beach (the latter gorgeously played, with the addition of Levon Helm's masterful drumming), yet "Walk On" starts with "I hear some people that are talkin me down/Bring up my name, pass it round/They don't mention the happy times/They do their thing, I do mine"; and "See the Sky"'s chorus mentions a locomotive's "whistle blowin through my brain", a somewhat violent impression.
Immediately after these is "Revolution Blues", where Levon's drumming turns into a military march and Neil channels Charles Manson and croons "I see bloody fountains/and ten million dune buggies comin down the mountain/Well I hear the Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars/But I hate em worse than Lepers, and I'll kill em in their cars." This fades into the front porch banjo strum of "For the Turnstiles," an eerie little ditty with Neil croaking, in a voice probably dried out from whiskey and weed, such obscurities as "All the sailors with their seasick mamas/Hear the sirens on the shore/Singin songs for pimp swift tailors/Who charge ten dollars at the door." The side ends with what is essentially a joke, "Vampire Blues," a groove driven blues number that ends up in a sense as one of the most straightforward songs on the album if it weren't for that lumberjack smirk Neil wears throughout.
Side two for vinyl users (which the album was originally intended for) is a more consistent affair, moving into a more low key folk wherein Neil divulges his innermost paranoia and depression. The title track is a cumbersome blues track that rolls along like watching nocturnal waves, with their massive power, smash the shore, the stars on the horizon staring at you. Here Neil uses the blues in a very sincere way, in contrast to the equally bluesy "Vampire Blues," revealing to the listener: "I need a crowd of people, but I can't face them day to day," and "I went to the radio interview, but I ended up alone at the microphone," before a voice seems to tell him "get out of town" and he obliges.
"Motion Pictures" is a song for his then wife, one of many songs on the marriage that you can seem to trace from
Harvest through
American Stars and Bars, and it is a marriage which only seems to devolve as the songs go on. However, it's the brightest song on this short side. It's an incredibly quiet tune, and sounds delicate and intimate; it's probably the only song on the album where you only hear Neil playing, and so represents a very personal moment. It's really more like a letter, a retelling of his time away from her and how he feels alienated from others as well as himself, and by the end promises "I'm deep inside myself, but I'll get out somehow, And I'll stand before you, and I'll bring a smile to your eyes."
Finally we have "Ambulance Blues," a ramble of a song if there ever was one. Some say it's Neil's "Desolation Row," and I wouldn't disagree: It's meandering, scatterbrained, and full of sometimes obscure meaning (though some of the messages are all too clear). I actually find this album most informed by Bob Dylan to a degree, mainly in Neil's voice, which takes on Bob's wry whine a la
Blonde on Blone or any Trinity era Bob, though I think Neil's artistic voice and ethos shines through entirely. Oddly enough, though, this song is actually somewhat lifted from a Bert Jansch tune, I believe "Needle of Death" - listen to the two back to back. And while some might see this as a weakness, I think it represents the album most truly: Neil was in a bad way, fu
cked up most of the time, death constantly in mind; but he finds a way to express himself. He picks up his guitar and plays through it. I think this line sums up the song, and the album, perfectly: "I guess I'll call it sickness gone/It's hard to say the meaning of this song/An ambulance can only go so fast/It's easy to get buried in the past/When you try to make a good thing last." Keep in mind the blank space he leaves at the end there.