On the Beach is the fifth studio album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young, released by Reprise Records in July 1974. It is the second of the so-called "Ditch Trilogy" that Young recorded following the massive success of 1972's Harvest, and reveals the artist grappling with feelings of over-exposure, alienation and melancholy.
Background
Looking back on the album for the liner notes to the Decade box set, Young wrote of "Heart of Gold": "This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there." Recorded after (but released before) Tonight's the Night, On the Beach shares some of that album's bleakness and crude production — which came as a shock to fans and critics alike, as this was the long-awaited studio follow-up to the commercially and critically successful Harvest. It hinted towards a more subtle outlook, particularly on the opening track, "Walk On".
As happened with Tonight's the Night, On the Beach under-performed commercially but went on to attain high regard from fans and critics alike. Both albums were recorded in a haphazard manner, with a variety of session musicians often changing their instruments while Young offered basic arrangements for them to follow. He chose rough, monitor mixes of songs rather than a more polished sound, alienating his sound engineers in the process. Throughout the recording process, Young and his colleagues consumed a homemade concoction dubbed "honey slides", a goop of sauteed marijuana and honey that "felt like heroin", at the behest of session musician and de facto producer Rusty Kershaw. This may account for the mellow mood of the album, particularly on its second half. album exploring themes of anger, alienation, and cautious optimism.
"Walk On", the album's opener, has Young combining his melancholy outlook with a wish to move on and keep living. In the liner notes to Decade, Young describes the song as: "My over defensive reaction to criticisms of Tonight's The Night and the seemingly endless flow of money coming from you people out there."
The social commentary "See the Sky About to Rain" dates from Harvest. It had been covered by The Byrds a year earlier on their eponymous reunion album.
"Revolution Blues" was inspired by Charles Manson, whom Young had met in the days he lived in Topanga Canyon, about six months before the Tate–LaBianca murders. David Crosby and Young's other bandmates objected to playing the song live. "Man, they didn't know if they wanted to stand on the same stage as me when I was doin' it. I was goin', 'It's just a fuckin' song. What's the big deal? It's about culture. It's about what's really happening. In a 1985 interview, Young recalled meeting Manson and being spooked by him:
"For the Turnstiles" is a country-folk hybrid featuring Young's banjo guitar and a harmony vocal from Ben Keith, who also plays dobro on the track. The lyrics critique the music industry, with Young later stating in the Decade liner notes: "If statues could speak and Casey was still at bat, some promoter somewhere would be making deals with Ticketron right now."
The side closes with "Vampire Blues", a cynical attack on the oil industry, and side two opens with "On the Beach", a slow, bluesy meditation on the downsides of fame.
"Motion Pictures" is an elegy for Young's relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress, which was falling apart. Young remembers in Waging Heavy Peace: "We were all high on honey slides... A couple of spoonfuls of that and you would be laid-back into the middle of next week. The record was slow and dreamy, kind of underwater without bubbles." The song was written in a Los Angeles hotel room while watching TV. Kershaw described the song's genesis: "We didn't work every day, we only worked when we felt really inspired. Me and Ben and Neil were sittin' in Ben's room. Neil started hummin' somethin', and I started playin' along with the melody on the steel. Ben started playin' bass, it sounded so goddamn pretty. Neil picked up a pen and just wrote the words right then and put that motherfucker down while it was still smeared all over us."
"Ambulance Blues" closes the album. In a 1992 interview for the French Guitare & Claviers magazine, Young said that song was based on "Needle of Death" by Bert Jansch, who he said was on a par with Jimi Hendrix: "I wasn't even aware of it, and someone else drew my attention to it." It explores Young's feelings about his critics, Richard Nixon, and the state of CSNY. The line, "You're all just pissing in the wind", was a direct quote from Young's manager Elliot Roberts regarding the inactivity of the quartet. The song also references the Riverboat, a small coffeehouse in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood which was an early venue for folk-inspired artists like Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel, and Arlo Guthrie. The line, "Oh, Isabella, proud Isabella, they tore you down and plowed you under", references 88 Isabella Street, an old rooming house in Toronto where Neil and Rick James stayed for a period. It was demolished in the early 1970s and an apartment building now stands on its location. Young confirms in a 2023 post to the "Letters to the Editor" section of his website that the verse about the man who tells so many lies was indeed written for Richard Nixon.
Recording
Most of the album was recorded at Sunset Sound in Hollywood in late March and early April 1974. Two tracks, "Walk On" and "For the Turnstiles" were recorded months prior at Young's ranch. David Briggs fell ill and missed most of the sessions. Sideman Ben Keith took the lead in recruiting Rusty Kershaw and members of The Band to play on the album. Members of both Crazy Horse and CSNY also contributed to the sessions.
Young recorded several new songs at his ranch in November and December 1973. These included "Winterlong" from Decade, "Borrowed Tune" from Tonight's the Night, demos of "Traces" and "Ambulance Blues" as well as new attempts at "Bad Fog of Loneliness", "Human Highway", and "Mellow My Mind". The sessions also produced the album tracks "Walk On" and "For the Turnstiles". Ben Keith humorously remembers recording the latter song on dobro and banjo with Young and pushing his vocal abilities to the limit: "I'd sing these off, weird harmonies, and Neil'd go, 'Oh, that's cool—do that.' I didn't know I could sing that high—I still can't. I must've been sittin' on a crack and got my balls in there."
Album cover
The album cover was designed by art director Gary Burden with photography by Bob Seidemann. It features Young facing the ocean at Santa Monica Beach with an umbrella and a 1959 Cadillac sticking up out of the sand. The inside of the album cover matches the pattern on the underside of the umbrella. Young wrote in Waging Heavy Peace that it is one of his favourite covers, the idea of which came like "a blot from the blue":