Neil Young, "On the Beach" (Reprise, 1974)

Back in '72, Warner Bros. executives had plenty of reason to enjoy having Neil Young under contract.

He'd already joined the ranks of superstars through his affiliation with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young when he hit the solo jackpot with a pair of No. 1's, the single "Heart of Gold" and its album, "Harvest." On the heels of the successes, the record company accountants were already counting the dollars from whatever he had cooking next.

Come 1973, Neil released a pair of albums: "Time Fades Away," a collection of new songs recorded on the road, sounding very much like works in progress taped
on substandard equipment, and "Journey Through the Past," the soundtrack to a film that very few people to this day have ever seen. Sales of both LPs paled in comparison with "Harvest," and Warner/Reprise apparently held a grudge; to this day, those are the only two Young albums that have yet to appear on compact disc.

He then proceeded to record "Tonight's the Night," a song cycle about death and drugs that scared the execs enough to have the project shelved for a couple of years. So much for their judgment: The album is regard by many fans of Neil as his masterpiece.

The album Reprise eventually released in 1974, "On the Beach," also ranks as one of his top few releases, right up there with "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" and "Rust Never Sleeps." That being said, it's no less somber than "Tonight's the Night," a series of darkly colored compositions that offer little in the way of hope.

Although there's nothing resembling a hit on "On the Beach," the two best-remembered songs are the ones that appeared four years later on Young's "Decade" anthology: "Walk On," the opener, which tells Neil's critics exactly where they can go, and the sparely arranged "For the Turnstiles." The latter song, later the subject of a tremendous cover by Yo La Tengo, contains the type of imagery that pervades the album: "All the bush league batters are left to die on the diamond/And in the stands, the whole crowd scatters for the turnstiles."

If there is a bright spot within "On the Beach," it's tough to find. "See the Sky About to Rain" has Neil singing in one of his more melancholy voices, lamenting: "I was down in Dixieland, played a silver fiddle, played it loud until The Man broke it down the middle." The message of "Vampire Blues" - "I'm a vampire, baby, sucking blood from the earth/I'm a vampire, baby, sell ya barrels' worth" - is cedrtainly as relevant today as it was during the height of the first Energy Crisis.

And the apocalyptic "Revolution Blues" delivers the most disturbing story line, taken right from the headlines of the Manson-Tate-LaBianca mass murders: "Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon is filled with famous stars/But I hate them worse than lepers, and I'll kill them in their cars."

As effective as the lyrics are in conveying Neil's messages of doom and gloom, the instrumentation is nothing short of brilliant in setting the mood: the whiny slide guitar and Wurlitzer piano of "See the Sky," the cataclysmic thud of "Revolution" (check out Rick Danko's bass playing), the unaccompanied banjo and dobro of "Turnstiles," meshing with the agonized vocals of Young and Ben Keith. Then there's the title track, a lumbering conveyor of despair, with Young's guitar and Graham Nash's Wurlitzer competing to see whose tone is more depressing. It all adds up to the ideal music for a week of nonstop rain.

It doesn't exactly brighten up for the final two songs, "Motion Pictures (For Carrie)," Young's reflections on his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgrass, and "Ambulance Blues," nine of minutes of some of Neil venting through imagery that would make Bob Dylan proud, accompanied by the suitably scratching fiddle playing of Rusty Kershaw.

"On the Beach" is far from Neil Young's most accessible album, and the record-bying public let him know it: reportedly, it was his poorest-selling release. The record company no doubt took that into consideration when it waited until three decades after the original release to issue it on CD.

But for true, the reissue finally gave them a chance to finally put away their vinyl copies of "On the Beach," scratched mightily from countless spins on the turntable, and hear the crystal-clear sound of a genius at work.