PASS IT ’ROUND
The long, strange afterlife of On The Beach
FOR many years, it seemed as if Young was trying to avoid On The Beach. Even compared with its Ditch Trilogy brethren, On The Beach cut a little too close to the bone for its creator; it wasn’t reissued on CD until 2003 and Young has rarely revisited its songs in live performances.
Things started to thaw slightly when REM were invited to appear at the Bridge School in 1998. According to a source close to the band, REM and Young rehearsed both “Ambulance Blues” and “On The Beach” – although the latter never made it to the stage. Perhaps inspired by the REM hook-up, Young added “Ambulance Blues” to the setlists for his American solo tour the following year. It wasn’t until 2007, though, that European audiences got to hear it – a regular solo acoustic showstopper during the tours promoting Chrome Dreams II.
Young has clearly rediscovered the rich contours of this oblique epic – he has even warmed to “Vampire Blues”, playing it in 2016/17 with Promise Of The Real and solo during last year’s Coastal Tour.
Still, On The Beach remains somewhat obscure, a shadowy chapter in Young’s career that has proven irresistible to a certain stripe of crate-digging underground musician over the decades.
“In two LP sides it really encapsulates so many things I love about Neil and his music,” says Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. “Rough-hewn, unpolished, easily done like a magic trick. The Ditch is where it’s at, and Neil found gold there.”
Philadelphia guitarist Chris Forsyth – who recently founded Coca Leaves & Pearls, a tribute band devoted to Young’s Ditch period – agrees. “The relative unavailability of On The Beach for so long and the consequent sense of Neil having disowned it definitely built up a mystique. Like, what could be more Ditch than Neil himself not even liking it? In the period where it was not easy to hear it, the intrigue of the cover art made it all the more alluring. While it’s less sonically cohesive than the other Ditch records, they all share common themes, just expressed differently. If Time Fades Away is desperate, disillusioned and decaying and Tonight’s The Night is desperate, disillusioned and drunk, then On The Beach is desperate, disillusioned and adrift.”
“On The Beach is weird, it’s inconsistent and every note feels like it’s exactly where it should be,” says Nick Millevoi, who in addition to his own varied solo guitar adventures, plays alongside Forsyth in Coca Leaves & Pearls. “To those of us who heard this on a Sharpie-labelled CD-R, this loose collection just seemed to make sense.”
That impossibly downcast second side was a main draw. “It wasn’t until I found an original LP that I noticed how stark the mood shift is when you flip the record over,” says Brooklyn singer-songwriter Zachary Cale. “It’s almost like a whole new record! That kind of vinyl side arc seems like a lost art these days. It’s such a bold move, but in Neil’s world it makes sense. The lyrics, almost diaristic at times, still adhere to a dream logic.”
Ranaldo also fell under the spell of that deep, dark side two stretch. “What can you say? Is there a more devastating, despairing side of music on any album? Without a doubt a favourite-album-side-of-all-time for me, each of these songs comes with such strong, revealing lyrics, and such amazing, deft music. So moving. Side two has a start-to-finish late-night atmosphere hanging over it.”