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On the Beach

Neil Young - On the Beach Audio CD

A fair review of the Neil Young "On the Beach" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Neil Young reviews here, or go back to the Neil Young tabs.

Band: Neil Young
Title: On the Beach
Rating:

Release Date: 2003-08-19
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 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

underappreciated
I like him when he's at his weirdest (songs like Last Trip to Tulsa) and this may be the weirdest one he made and I really dig the cover with the car tail fin sticking out of the sand. As I remember this album wasn't received well by critics but for me it's one of his best. I liked every song but my favorites were For the Turnstyles, Revolution Blues and the incredible Ambulance Blues. When cd's started to come out in the 80's I was so annoyed I could never find this (also Hawks and Doves). If you're a big Neil fan and don't have this one definitely get it

Since others posted their favorite parts to Ambulance Blues I will too - every word is great but these really hit me big time. I had just gone through a breakup with my first real love so I was in a dark phase then too like Neil.

She needs someone
that she can scream at
And I'm such a heel
for makin' her feel so bad.

I guess I'll call it
sickness gone
It's hard to say
the meaning of this song

Also :

And there ain't nothin'
like a friend
Who can tell you
you're just pissin'
in the wind.

Wow think I have to listen this again now hope I don't get misty

Cheers.

Just heard for the 1st time and listened to it 5 times this week
It is one of the best CDs I have ever heard. Wow unbelievable that this was panned by the critics when it was released.

Underrated Neil Young
In fact, the fact that Young's disabilities haven't stopped him from controlling his own career is part of why this album was unavailable on CD for so long. ON THE BEACH is yet another underrated example of how Neil Young overcame three challenges (epilepsy, diabetes, polio) to virtually turn music on its head. Digging his way out of the despair of TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT (recorded earlier but released a year later), Young creates a strange hybrid of hippie folk-rockers Buffalo Springfield and pro-law-enforcement hard rockers Montrose, which seemed to foretell what he would do for much of the second half of the 70s. This CD has a line on the first song, "Sooner or later, it all gets real", which inspired me to hang up pictures of pretty actresses as a deterrent to excessive self-indulgence. This CD is great and deserves much higher regard than it's gotten over the years.

"Though your confidence may be shattered..."
Well, okay, maybe that's an exaggeration; I'm sure he had a smile on his face when he wrote "Cinnamon Girl. Neil Young is worthless to me when he's happy. " But aside from that, Young's best songs have almost always come from the darker regions of the human experience. His music is at its most powerful when dealing with angst, disillusionment, and uncertainty. By that token, this may very well be Neil Young's best album. Released in 1974, On The Beach rounds out a trio of albums commonly referred to as the "Ditch Trilogy," the other two being Tonight's The Night and Time Fades Away. Of the three, this is probably the most fully realized and fleshed-out installment. It's a collection of tense, brittle, rock songs and sickly ballads, of apathetic insults and haunted introspection. It's an album full of bitterness and black humor, and it's dark and mean and weary and absolutely, positively perfect. Well, maybe not "perfect," per se- "See The Sky About To Rain" is somewhat tedious - but it comes close. Very few songs in this world can match "Motion Pictures" or "For The Turnstyles" in terms of sheer spooked ennui, Fewer still can hope to compete with the vicious sarcasm of "Walk On. " "Vampire Blues" is a cruel slab of mid 70s disillusionment that features, among other things, a guitar solo (or should I say anti-guitar solo?) that sounds exactly like a vampire suckling the last few drops of blood from a victim's neck. It's also got lines as deliciously bummed out as "good times are coming/ I hear it everywhere I go/ good times are coming/ but they're sure coming slow. " Brilliant! The whole thing closes with "Ambulance Blues," which is a gorgeous and absolutely epic take on life after the storm, with its weary melody (nicely lifted from a Bert Jansch tune) and lyrics that are full of poetic imagery and symbolism. Great stuff.

This is what the singer-songwriter genre was always supposed to be about.
It's ungimmicky and aggressively uncommercial: let's see, we've got 3 or 4 twelve-bar blues songs, one banjo-pickin' slice of the Ozarks, two straight folk songs, and one ponderous ballad. Neil Young's finest album by a fair margin. Not exactly Harvest, Part II.

This is the album where Young finally learned to just not give a dang what anyone else thought he should be doing with his music. "Walk On" is a stoic but upbeat kiss-off to the people who'd claimed Young was artistically 'dead,' and it's intentionally mirrored in the last song on the album, "Ambulance Blues. " The point of "Motion Pictures" has little to do with movies and everything to do with the lines "All those people think they've got it made/But I wouldn't buy, sell, borrow, or trade/Anything I have to be like one of them/I'd rather start all over again. " Similarly, the cryptic lyrics of "For The Turnstiles" (which showcases one of the most taut, finely-calibrated arrangements of any Young song, period) are clarified by the final verse, where the narrator passively observes the fickle crowd abandoning its team, leaving them to "die on the diamond" while they scatter for the turnstiles.

As for "Ambulance Blues" (the best song) it may be poor taste to go directly after your critics, but the resigned manner in which Neil does it is absolutely essential to the concept of this album, whose overriding themes speak about strength through irony and wry detachment, and about throwing off the crippling yoke of others' expectations.

So I wonder if the symbolism of the title & cover isn't often lost on people. While most of these songs may sound extremely doomy, Neil is ON THE BEACH: he's come through the fire and made it to the water's edge. This shouldn't be heard as a dark and depressing musical experience, but rather as a passionately redemptive one. Which is why, if you buy into the confessional ethos of the singer-songwriter genre in the first place, this should be your alpha-omega album. Whatever it is you're looking for emotionally: it's in here.

You can see a complete list of all Neil Young discography, or go back to the Neil Young tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.