On the Beach |
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Released: July 16, 1974 Peak: 16 US, 42 UK, 13 CN, 34 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.50 US, 0.06 UK, 2.0 world (includes US + UK), 2.31 EAS Genre: classic rock |
Tracks:Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 39:40 The Players:
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Rating: 4.127 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album“Following the 1973 Time Fades Away tour, Neil Young wrote and recorded an Irish wake of a record called Tonight's the Night and went on the road drunkenly playing its songs to uncomprehending listeners and hostile reviewers. Reprise rejected the record.” AMYoung responded with “On the Beach, which shares some of the ragged style of its two predecessors. But where Time was embattled and Tonight mournful, On the Beach was savage and, ultimately, triumphant.” AM It was “not quite as sparse or raw as Tonight’s the Night but as deeply melancholic (maybe even more so).” On the Beach is “Neil Young’s opus, the object of his lifelong griefs and affections.” PM On the Beach takes its title from “a Gregory Peck film about the few people left alive in Melbourne, Australia after nuclear war has destroyed the northern hemisphere. In the film they get a signal from San Diego suggesting that someone in California survived Armageddon. On the cover of the album On the Beach, Neil Young stands beside his boots in front of a Cadillac buried in the sand. He is staring out at the Pacific. He could just be that survivor.” CM “Even by Neil Young’s melancholic standards, On the Beach is one bleak trip. An odyssey of regret, disgust, and disappointment, the album marked the end of a love-in.” RD “It’s not a happy album (as if any album named after a movie about nuclear war would be?)” PK It “was not enthusiastically received on its release in 1974. The drugs then circulating in Young’s world – heroin and cocaine – were taking their toll. The Watergate scandal was ripping apart the American dream. The fans wanted escape or consolation, not a downer.” CM “But the dreary, moody feel which pervades the album makes it stand out as one of the more cohesive, consistent works from an artist who is best known for his obsessive eclecticism.” PK Young’s “barbs were mixed with humor and even affection, as Young seemed to be emerging from the grief and self-abuse that had plagued him for two years. But the album was so spare and under-produced, its lyrics so harrowing, that it was easy to miss Young’s conclusion: he was saying goodbye to despair, not being overwhelmed by it.” AM The Songs“The album kicks off sturdily enough, with the straightforward rocker Walk On.” PK Despite its “sad boogie” PM the song puts forth a “tentative optimism” 500 that finds Young “answering back to Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ had taken him to task for his criticisms of the South in ‘Southern Man’ and ‘Alabama.’” AM The song is “a statement of Young’s credo – to keep moving.” CM“The epic Ambulance Blues conjures up the meandering, folky lyricism he’d intermittently delve into over the years.” PK It is “a startling admonishment of critics, Nixon and Young’s former band Crosby, Stills and Nash (‘It’s easy to get buried in the past when you try to make a good thing last’).” AM The melody of “Ambulance Blues” comes from Bert Jansch’s “Do You Hear Me Now?” “The story begins in the Riverboat folk club, where Young started out. From there he meanders past the hippies burned out on their dreams, superstars going through the motions in arenas, John Paul Getty Jr.’s kidnapping by Italian revolutionaries cutting of his ear is covered in ‘the entertainment section’ – a remarkably prescient observation considering the way that news has now converged with pop culture.” CM Young “criticizes the sycophantic nature of the oil business” PM and “takes a bite out of hangers-on” RD in Vampire Blues,” PM “an inspired exercise in John Lee Hooker minimalism.” RD “His troubled marriage to actress Carrie Snodgress is dissected in the mournful Motion Pictures.” RD “The beautiful See the Sky About to Rain” PK “is a country lament that predates Harvest, but its mood of impending doom fits better here.” CM It is a “gorgeous ballad capturing a similar feel as his Buffalo Springfield-era ‘Expecting to Fly.’” PK The title cut “is the record’s emotional core. A grievous portrayal of loneliness and media scrutiny after tumbling into celebrity, Young pulls no punches and sets the record straight: ‘He is mad at, unsatisfied with and alienated by his place in the world. ‘I went to the radio interview, but I ended up alone at the microphone,’ he sings. ‘Now I’m livin’ out here on the beach, but those seagulls are still out of reach.’” PM |
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First posted 11/16/2010; last updated 9/9/2026. |
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