Neil Young - On the beach

[gunnamatta bay]

This album from 1974 has been unavailable on cd for years. Last I heard he refused to re release it for some reason. I was in hmv the other day and lo and behold there it was and only $22. The girl said it has been available since 2003 which is about when I last looked for it on various sites. I haven't heard it for years but have been flogging it all week. IMO his best.

 

[Rexxy]

This album from 1974 has been unavailable on cd for years. Last I heard he refused to re release it for some reason. I was in hmv the other day and lo and behold there it was and only $22. The girl said it has been available since 2003 which is about when I last looked for it on various sites. I haven't heard it for years but have been flogging it all week. IMO his best.

"You're all just pissing in the wind...."LOL

Released on CD in 2003.

Mate, I love that record. Despite still reminding me about Quaaludes
and very painful bust-up and the end to (the last?) happy period of my life. Funnily enough, it revolves around Gunamatta Bay (and thereabouts) but that's another story.

The real story of the album is the wretched twisted drug addled days recording at Shangri-la Studios...The album is a product of such madness

"Levon Helm: "Richard was still in his bungalow down by the beach when it came time to move out. I think they wanted to rent it out to defray some of the operating expenses of the place. But Richard liked it down there and didn't want to leave. So they turned off his phone, then the gas. I went down to visit him and found him cooking minute steaks on an upside-down electric clothes iron. The thing was set on "cotton." Richard would drop a pat of butter on the hot iron, slap on a steak, flip it over, drop another butter pat, and eat it right off the grill, so to speak. When they finally got him out of there it took them a couple of days to clean out the two thousand Grand Marnier bottles they found."


There is some info here
http://theband.hiof.no/albums/on_the_beach.html


Part three of the doom trilogy was actually the second to be released, as Young began to dig himself out of the depression of the previous year, noting that "Sooner or later, it all gets real" but also fearing that he's "just pissing in the wind."
-- William Ruhlmann, All-Music Guide

Young chose to include an old song, "See the Sky About to Rain." Some reviewers have suggested that it is an attempt at irony on Young's part to include a prime example of his "downer" songs here, after the sentiments expressed in "Walk On," but it's just a great song with a magical chord progression change at the last verse and superb drumming from Levon Helm. It is followed by "Revolution Blues," a song inspired by Young's meetings with Manson. One can almost hear the 10,000,000 dune buggies coming down the mountain as the song rolls along with the Band's Levon Helm and Rick Danko in the engine room, and David Crosby supplying manic rhythm guitar.
-- Sam Tennent

On the Beach was finally released on CD in June 2003 by Reprise Records, digitally remastered but without any bonus tracks.

 

[gunnamatta bay]

Released: 14th July 2003


Neil Young
On The Beach
(Reprise)


Ask any Neil Young fan about his back catalogue and they'll always mutter darkly about albums never released on CD. There were, until now, at least seven major releases that have never seen the light of day. Suddenly Young appears to have (partly) relented and allowed a new generation to hear four of them (On The Beach, American Stars And Bars, Hawks And Doves, and Re-Actor). Yet only one of these albums has websites devoted to petitioning for its release. And only one has, over the years, come to rival Young's other searingly unguarded moment - Tonight's The Night - for the title of his greatest work. So after 30 years in the dark, does On The Beach live up to its reputation?
Whereas Tonight's... has the air of a drunken wake about it, OTB is more of a singular stoner's take on his life in relation to world events. It's a wake for a whole decade. As he says on the opener ''Walk On'': 'Sooner or later, it all gets real...' You have to remember that Young lived at the centre of many of the counterculture's greatest and worst moments. Not only had he been present at Woodstock (and refused to be filmed, due to his increasing suspicion that the revolution had been commercialized), but he'd known Charles Manson personally. He'd even suggested to Warners that they give him a recording contract! 1973 was a major crossroads in his life. His marriage to actress Carrie Snodgrass was on the skids; he'd still not come to terms with the loss of guitarist Danny Whitten; his label had balked at releasing his blitzed lament to lost friends (Tonight's...) and the huge success of CSN&Y had brought him no comfort. So it was, that Young, along with a disparate crew that included Levon Helm of the Band and the larger-than-life backwoodsman Rusty Kershaw (on fiddle and Dobro), proceeded to get wasted and tape what happened.
Nothing and no one is spared. Nixon (''Ambulance Blues''), global fuel conglomerates (''Vampire Blues''), Manson and the whole West Coast 'me' generation (''Revolution Blues''), the wife (''Motion Pictures''), but most of all himself. It's as if Young needed to lay it all out to really find out where he could go next. The title track pinpoints exactly the artists need for validation, along with his need to remain apart from the pack (''I need a crowd of people, but I can't face them day to day''). It's as contradictory as Young's life itself has often seemed. But above all he realises his own place in the universe (''Though my troubles are meaningless - that don't make them go away''). Such a public catharsis scared both his audience and his label. It was the worst selling of his albums to date.
It was also entirely necessary in order for Young to retain his sense of integrity and move on. Within 12 months he'd reformed Crazy Horse and was headed for louder, rougher pastures. Thirty years on this remains an essential album if you ever want to get even the slightest glimpse of what makes Young an enigma and a genius. Raw, ragged, desultory: it's all of the above. It's also staggeringly moving and, yes, it's probably his best album. But don't take my word for it...Now can we have Time Fades Away please, Neil?
Reviewer: Chris Jones

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/classicpop/reviews/neilyoung_beach.sht

 

[Rexxy]

Side two is a whole different ball game. The mood is somber, almost narcotic.

Young has commented that this record was made mostly under the influence of

"honey slides" - a marijuana and honey concoction described by Young onstage.

at his Bottom Line show in May 1974. HONEY SLIDE RECIPE HERE

The title track is a beautiful, slow

bluesy song, with a wonderfully understated guitar solo that should come as a

great surprise to those who know Young only through his Ragged Glory period.

This is followed by "Motion Pictures (for Carrie)," a song written on the

road, in which Neil pines for the simplicity of the country life. A

beautiful, meandering chord progression and laid-back harmonica give it a

world-weary sound. The last track on the album, "Ambulance Blues," is among

the best five that Young has ever written. As he later admitted, the melody

in the verses is the same as that in Bert Janch's "Needle of Death," a song

that Young has cited as an early influence. However, the musical

implementation is stunning. With breathy harmonica and genuinely spooky

fiddle playing from Rusty Kershaw, the track has a rootless, floating feel,

leaving the lyrics as the focus of the listener's attention. On the Beach is

special to me, as it was the first Neil Young album that I bought at the time

of its release. I had gotten into Neil's music in early '74, and had acquired

all of his earlier records by the time On the Beach came out. I still

listen to it, twenty years later, more than either After the Goldrush or

Harvest. I guess this is because the record is so musically interesting.

It's full of spontaneous performances and first-take errors, which were left

on because their feel is right. It doesn't have the life produced out of it,

like, dare I say, Harvest Moon or Landing on Water. For me, this was summed

up in my favorite moment on the whole record, in which Neil catches his thumb

/ pick on the bottom E-string during "Ambulance Blues." The note booms out

over the line:

"Where men STUB their toes on garbage pails!"


It's just perfect.

 

[carcharias]

sounds good guys .

I have never been a massive fan of his ( playing " rockin in the free world in a band for the last 3 years will do that to you)
I loved his stuff with CSNY though, so I might give it a go.
I prefer his acoustic stuff to be honest.

And Rex I don't recommend Gin and Tonic for a broken heart.

 

[gunnamatta bay]

Gunnamatta Bay is littered with broken hearts Rex.

Darook Park broke my heart many times. Swarming with white pointers.

 

[millersnose]

you are a very scary person rex

 

[hrundi99]

I d'led it recently.

I've had Harvest for years and love every second of it and have bought and d'led most of his others in recent times.

I'd never seen Live Rust but I now have a copy of the DVD and it's awesome.

 

[Rexxy]

Never heard this album, but it was the one BEFORE OTB. If OTB is maudlin this sounds positively nihilist. I must find a copy. Maybe at JB HiFi, Gunna?
PMSL @ "14 Junkies Too Weak To Work".


Time fades Away _ Neil Young

Mark Deming, All Music Guide

Anyone who has followed Neil Young's career knows enough not to expect a simple evening of mellow good times when they see him in concert, but in 1973, when Young hit the road after Harvest had confirmed his status as a first-echelon rock star, that knowledge wasn't nearly as common as it is today. Young's natural inclinations to travel against the current of audience expectations were amplified by a stormy relationship between himself and his touring band, as well as the devastating death of guitarist Danny Whitten, who died of a drug overdose shortly after being given his pink slip during the first phase of tour rehearsals. The shows that followed turned into a nightly exorcism of Young's rage and guilt, as well as a battle between himself and an audience who, expecting to hear "Old Man" and "Heart of Gold," didn't know what to make of the electric assault they witnessed. All the more remarkably, Young brought along a mobile recording truck to capture the tour on tape for a live album and the result, Time Fades Away, was a ragged musical parade of bad karma and road craziness, opening with Young bellowing "14 junkies, too weak to work" on the title cut, and closing with "Last Dance," in which he tells his fans "you can live your own life" with all the optimism of a man on the deck of a sinking ship. While critics and fans were not kind to Time Fades Away upon first release, decades later it sounds very much of a piece with Tonight's the Night and On the Beach, albums that explored the troubled zeitgeist of America in the mid-'70s in a way few rockers had the courage to face. If the performances are often loose and ragged, they're also brimming with emotional force, and despite the dashed hopes of "Yonder Stands the Sinner" and "Last Dance," "Don't Be Denied" is a moving remembrance of Young's childhood and what music has meant to him, and it's one of the most powerful performances Young ever committed to vinyl. Few rockers have been as willing as Young to lay themselves bare before their audience, and Time Fades Away ranks with the bravest and most painfully honest albums of his career -- like the tequila Young was drinking on that tour, it isn't for everyone, but you may be surprised by its powerful effects