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Neil Young

On the Beach

  • AMG Review of On the Beach

    Amg
    William Ruhlmann
    All Music Guide

    Following the 1973 Time Fades Away tour, Neil Young wrote and recorded an Irish wake of a record called Tonight's the Night and went on the road drunkenly playing its songs to uncomprehending listeners and hostile reviewers. Reprise rejected the record, and Young went right back and made On the Beach, which shares some of the ragged style of its two predecessors. But where Time was embattled and Tonight mournful, On the Beach was savage and, ultimately, triumphant. "I'm a vampire, babe," Young sang, and he proceeded to take bites out of various subjects: threatening the lives of the stars who lived in L.A.'s Laurel Canyon ("Revolution Blues"); answering back to Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose "Sweet Home Alabama" had taken him to task for his criticisms of the South in "Southern Man" and "Alabama" ("Walk On"); and rejecting the critics ("Ambulance Blues"). But the barbs were mixed with humor and even affection, as Young seemed to be emerging from the grief and self-abuse that had plagued him for two years. But the album was so spare and under-produced, its lyrics so harrowing, that it was easy to miss Young's conclusion: he was saying goodbye to despair, not being overwhelmed by it.

I Am Down With My Peoples
about 1 year ago

Henry David Thoreau Said:??How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effect...

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True Blood: Vampire Blues
about 1 year ago
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The next song for my imaginary soundtrack episode of True Blood in my mind has to be Neil Young's "Vampire Blues." It's the perfect song to be added in the middle of an episode for mood and atmosphere.Think about it...

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Vampire Blues
over 2 years ago
Vampire Blues for Halloween
about 1 month ago

A solo acoustic cover of Vampire Blues. A song from Neil Young's On The Beach album.Billy Talbot from Crazy Horse has listened and sent me a message that he likes!Quite an honor:

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The Ditch Trilogy, Pt. III: "I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars..."
4 months ago

I am of the opinion that David Briggs was the best producer Neil Young would ever have, as he truly let Young be himself. Briggs had come back into the picture with Tonight's the Night after having had to sit out Harvest and Time Fades Away. With Young's magnum opus rejected, he and Briggs returned to the studio in February 1974 with Ben Keith and a rotating cast of players to cut a different k...

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REVOLUTION BLUES
about 1 year ago

My cover of this dark and disturbing song from Neil Young's On The Beach album. I have read that the song was inspired by the Manson family and in fact at one concert in 1983 Neil Young dedicated the song to Charles Manson.I never play my electric guitar but decided to use it for this one. It is a very rough unrehearsed take and the "solos" are completely made up on the spot. Playing electric ...

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For The Turnstiles with Dobro by Charlie Betts
about 1 year ago

Charlie Betts is a UK based musician and this is a collaboration on the Neil Young song For The Turnstiles. Check out the cool stereo recording on the Dobro Charlie gave me.(You can only hear the high quality audio if you have the latest Flash Player 9 plug in. If you don't update at www. adobe. com, it's quick, free and easy. Flash Player 9 is compatible with the new YouTube HQ audio format of...

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Ambulance Blues performed Live @ International Rust Fest
4 months ago

October 23, 2008 at Old Princeton Landing bar, a bar made famous for impromptu appearances and perfromances by Neil Young & Crazy Horse. First song in a 5 song set that night:

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Forever Young
over 3 years ago
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It’s possible to live inside records for a while, or if not quite that, then to remember your life as if that’s the way it happened – to a soundtrack so deeply experienced it feels as if you were the one who made the thing.Neil Young’s On the Beach is like that for me: whenever I hear it I think of Arnhem Land and my mother, how she taught me to drive on the red dirt roads of the Northern

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