The Essentials: On the Beach by Neil Young | The Old Grey Cat

Tracks On The Beach by Neil Young
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Here is a look back at some of the earliest reviews of the essential Neil Young album "On the Beach".

From The Essentials: On the Beach by Neil Young | The Old Grey Cat:

Rolling Stone magazine lauded it upon its release (and has since ranked it the 311th greatest album of all time). Jack Garner of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, in his 8/16/74 review, called it “a strong, complete and exciting record.” Across the pond, in the Bracknell and Ascot Times, Geoff Thompson agreed, though he thought it had a listening curve: “On the Beach is an album that takes quite a bit of getting into, but once you are in, there’s no escaping.” A few decades later, in a capsule review that I posted to the original Old Grey Cat website in the late 1990s, I called it “a grim realization (or is that acceptance) of life, circa 1974.”

It reflects the moment when the fantasies of youth give way to self-doubt (if not self-recrimination). On the Neil Young Archives, Neil himself wrote, “Looking back on this album, somehow it makes me feel sad remembering that part of my life.” (It may be why he allowed the LP to go out of print in the early ‘80s and waited until 2003 for it to be issued on CD.)

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The original (red) Rolling Stone Record Guide (1979), I should mention, gave On the Beach two stars but no mention in John Swenson’s half page take on Neil’s oeuvre. For the 1983 (blue) edition, rock curmudgeon Dave Marsh elbowed Swenson to the side and rewrote (and expanded) the discography. The two stars remained, but a sentence description was added: “[T]his album’s apocalyptic prophecy is rendered all but unlistenable by Young’s grating, whining delivery.” (He gives Tonight’s the Night five stars and a paragraph of praise, however, so all’s forgiven.)

In a similar vein, L.A. Times rock scribe Robert Hilburn wrote in his August 27, 1974, review “[T]he tone of the new album is drab, sullen, isolated.” Newsday’s Robert Christgau, too, found little to like: “Something in the obsessiveness of this music is easy to dislike and something in its thinness hard to enjoy.” (He spent the bulk of the review praising Time Fades Away so, as with Marsh, forgive him his misjudgment.)

(I share those sentiments simply because I enjoy digging into what I like to call “the first draft of history.” It takes time for critical consensus to congeal, after all.)

Thanks OGC! Definitely essential Neil, for sure.  Also, we enjoy your digs into “the first draft of history.” Agree, yes, it sometimes takes decades -- if not more -- for critical consensus to congeal. And somewhat ironically, you know what Neil had to say about critics and pissin' in the wind ...

More  on The Essentials: On the Beach by Neil Young | The Old Grey Cat.

 

More on the essential Neil Young album "On the Beach": 

• "Time Fades Away", "Tonight’s the Night" & "On the Beach": The Beautiful, Enduring Gloom of Neil Young's Ditch Trilogy
  
• The Surrealism of Neil Young's "On The Beach" Album
  
• Tattoo of the Moment: "On The Beach Face" Neil Young's Album Cover
• On The Beach: 45 Years Later, Still Neil Young’s "Most Beautiful (and Most Depressing) Album")
  

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