10 Albums You Actually Need to Hear Before You Die Chapter 2: Neil Young - “On the Beach” Getting this record recommend to me and being able to push a button and listen to it is nothing short of a miracle in my mind. I was a Neil Young fan for over a decade before I was even able to listen to this record. It was so out of print from the mid 80’s until the early aughts that unless you could find a vinyl copy or a bootleg cd recorded from vinyl, you were out of luck. On the Beach, at that point, had obtained a mythical status, “the greatest Neil Young album”, a “lost masterpiece”. When it was first released on CD in 2003, and I finally got to hear it, it lived up to the hype and then some. It is easily my favorite Neil Young record, a definite candidate for his best album and one of the five best records of the 1970’s. Every song on “On the Beach” is a Neil Young classic. “Walk On” kicks things off with an upbeat (by comparison to the rest of the record) southern rock feeling. The stunning, Wurlitzer driven second track, “See the Sky About to Rain” is one of Young’s most beautiful tunes, a mournful yet psychedelic exercise. Aided by Honey Slides, an edible, highly potent, marijuana/honey amalgamation created by Neil and his band, Neil turns in one of the greatest psychedelic songs in his entire catalog on “See the Sky about to Rain”. Rick Danko and Levon Helm of The Band (along with more honey slides) provide a thundering rhythm section on “Revolution Blues”, a noisy rock stomper about the Manson murders. “Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars, but I hate them worse than lepers and I’ll kill them in their cars,” Young sings before launching into the second of two blistering guitar solos in the song. Young is at his most aggressive, maybe ever, on Revolution Blues. It’s a track that seethes with white-hot hostility. Even if David Crosby guests on rhythm guitar, Revolution Blues couldn’t be further from the pacifist hippy mentality that CSNY, Young’s side hustle, would typically traffic in. Revolution Blues is a goddamn masterpiece and what I wouldn’t give for a full album the band that recorded it: Young on Lead guitar and vocals, David Crosby on rhythm guitar, Ben Kieth on Wurlitzer, Danko on Bass and Levon on drums…now *that’s* a supergroup. We’ll call them Neil Young and the Honey Slides. I fucking love that song. “For the Turnstiles”, a plucky banjo and dobro duet between Young and Ben Keith, calms the storm a bit, if only temporarily, as “Vampire Blues” (the only one of three songs with “Blues” in the title that actually resembles the blues) lumbers in. It’s a disillusioned meditation on the state of the world in in 1974: a dire warning about our reliance on fossil fuels spurred on by the gas crisis and poor economy…”Good times are coming, but they’re sure coming slow” - if you can’t relate to that in 2023, it’s time to pull your head out of the sand. Neil Young’s world was falling apart in 1973-74, with friends dying of heroin overdoses, a relationship on the rocks and he could see the end coming. “The world is turning, I hope it doesn’t turn away,” he sings on the title track, a slow burning, introspective rumination on fame and his current state of affairs. “Motion Pictures” mines similar territory: Young’s disenchantment with fame and (possibly) his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress. Sometimes it’s all futile, you can try your best to stop the world from turning, but you just can’t stop the tide: “…there ain’t nothing like a friend who can tell you you’re just pissing in the wind”. We all need that friend who can tell us when we’re wasting our time and energy, and here, on “Ambulance Blues”, Neil Young seems to be acting as that friend not only to himself, but also to the listener. “On the Beach” is the highest of several high watermarks in Young’s impressive 1970’s output: a raw, introspective and often bleak record; a record that is completely authentic and doesn’t hold anything back. It’s a masterpiece from start to finish and is unequivocally my favorite album of all time. If it’s not yours, that’s cool…but it really should be. [Postscript: I just finished watching the season finale of Poker Face, the excellent Natasha Lyonne whodunnit, and what song played at the end of the episode? “Walk On”. The matrix is real, everything is connected, we live in a simulation…What are the odds of that? I spend all day listening to and reviewing On the Beach and the only television show I tune into today ends with an song from On the Beach? Are you fucking kidding me? Holy fuck, unbelievable. Look at the date stamp on my review, then Google the airdate for S1E10 of Poker Face…I’m going to start a religion, The Church of the Honey Slides. We meet on Sundays, imbibe of the holy honey slides and crank Time Fades Away, On the Beach, Tonight’s the Night and Zuma. Long Live Neil Young.]