On the Beach

This is one of, if not the best, Neil albums there is from start to finish. Not a bad number can be found. The story behind this album is fantastic too. He turned a room in a Malibu mansion into a recording studio. Big names like Bob Dylan and David Crosby were often seen roaming the "On The Beach" set. The title track is a DOOZY. Top 10 fave Neil cuts of all time. Classic Neil.

Neil Young on the heels of his best selling album. "Harvest" decended into greatness by retreating from fame and running completely off the rails. First came "Tonights the Night", his brilliant lament on losing Danny Whitten and a roadie to drug overdoses. Next, came "On the Beach", an anti-West Coast, California Dreaming album if there ever was one. Young nicely puts both Malibu and Laurel Canyon in perspective, revealing them as the beatific, phony displays of everything gone wrong in rock music in the 70s. This album was only available as a costly Japanese import for much of the 80s and 90s. As a result, many Neil Young fans may have missed its brilliance. As someone who has been a Neil Young fan from the beginning (i.e,, Buffalo Springfield, etc) and lived most of my adult life literally "on the beach" in Del Mar, CA, this album has gotten me through many many hard times. It is one of his finest.

This album has a lot of soul, even for a Neil album.