311. Neil Young, "On the Beach"

 

I am neither a Neil Young super fan nor a Neil Young detractor.  I am a Neil Young semi-fan.  I had a battered vinyl copy of Harvest; "Pocahontas" was one of the first songs I ever learned on guitar and warbled during my first attempts at playing and singing.  I've been to a few Bridge School benefits, and was there for the Neil/Pearl Jam collab at GG Park.  Which is to say, I had heard of this album, but never heard it.  Apparently it was out of print for a long time and became a bootleg classic that was passed around and gained a certain underground cachet, which should neither enhance nor diminish this fact:

This is a beautiful album.

Sometimes I get an album on the list and I listen to it once, maybe go back to a couple of tracks that stood out, and then write it up.  I've been listening to this over and over for days, and I think I like it more every time.  Recorded in the wake of Harvest, which was a giant success, as well as the overdose death friend and collaborator Danny Whitten, this album is a somber meditation on the pressures of fame and, well, the pressures of just existing in this world.  Maybe that's why it seemed so immediately meaningful to me.

The album's first song, "Walk On," is also probably the most upbeat, but even the happy, loping jam overlays the simple and depressing truth that "Some get stoned/some get strange/But sooner or later/it all gets real."  A couple of songs later, "Revolution Blues" uncomfortably echoes our own time:

Well, we live in a trailer
at the edge of town
You never see us
'cause we don't come around.
We got twenty five rifles
just to keep
the population down.

(Later, the narrator issues the ominous threat "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.")

"For the Turnstiles," anchored by a scratchy banjo and Neil's stark whine, is another total downer about how nothing really matters, each verse a different image of fruitlessness.  Good thing the melody is so pretty and catchy.  

It's weird, though; this album is so fucking depressing, but it's so enjoyable to listen to.  Apparently Young and the band were on this stuff called "honey slides," a mixture of honey and weed that you would drink and Young reported was heavier than heroin, during the recording.  The album itself sounds stoned; I felt stoned just listening to it.  But when the message is this cold and this difficult, maybe being blazed out of your gourd is the only way to handle it.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Oh my gosh yes.