Weekly Neil: On The Beach

I hope it don't turn away

Though my problems are all meaningless
That don’t make them go away

Can you imagine writing that line? Can you imagine singing that line? That’s Neil, 28 years old and feeling washed up. A Cadillac half buried in the sand.

He was in the middle of the Ditch, right, but unlike Oscar Wilde’s rosy quote, he wasn’t looking at the stars. He was a star, but he felt like a black hole. It’s Neil alone at the microphone, in front of a crowd of people he needs but can’t face. Wanting retreat with some fried eggs and country ham.

So what the hell do I have in common with that particular life experience? Not a lot of course but when you pair it with clanging doom chords and the musical equivalent of the typical winter weather where I live — mercilessly gray and slow — it feels right on a level that can be charitably called spiritual.

The Bills lost, yeah. Half my family’s been waylaid with COVID. I haven’t sent a newsletter out in months because I got a new job that requires a daily three-hour commute and more energy than I have but have somehow managed to summon.

Why do any of this? Why even talk about it? My problems are meaningless. I’m so unbelievably privileged that it feels ludicrous to even acknowledge these bellyaches as problems. Yet here they are. Neil gets it, man. He’s living on the beach with the seagulls out of reach. The world’s still turning and any second now it’s gonna turn away (and leave him here).

They blew up Pitchfork and I really can’t believe it. Of course I can — they’ve blown up everything else — but it still hurts. When I lived in New York before the subways had cell service I kept Neil’s Pitchfork reviews open in tabs on Safari on my phone so I could spend time with them away from the world. Rob Mitchum’s On The Beach essay is too short but his points are what made the site so important:

“The real engine of the album's brilliance, though, is the trio of slow, long, lonely hotel room folk songs that closes out the album.”

A lonely hotel room folk song. I understand completely.

He also brings up Jason Molina, for whom On The Beach must’ve been foundational. I’ve got an upcoming interview where a musician says the same thing about a certain song from Tonight’s The Night. (Watch this space.) I won’t spoil it but this is why music is so good and why talking about music is so meaningful — it helps you hear it anew, even the old stuff, every time.

My annual Neil Young Archives membership fee just auto-debited and I almost canceled Spotify outright in favor of it. As many smart people have already pointed out, the corpse rots from the head. Streaming services push out the necessity of music criticism from the money people’s minds, but criticism has never been more vital. We live in a time where you can’t convince people that things that don’t make a million dollars are still worthwhile because unchained capitalism is the highest god. It’s depressing as hell. That’s a problem that actually matters. Writing about it doesn’t make it go away. I don’t even feel better spelling it all out like this.

Neil understands this. Before shit even got too weird for him he bought a ranch and hid himself away. How he survived the ‘70s without drinking himself to death is beyond me. But he’s here, and we’re here, and the problems are all here, waiting. All the time.

It’s only natural to want to follow that impulse he sings about in the song’s final verse:

I head for the sticks with my bus and friends
I follow the road, though I don't know where it ends
Get out of town, get out of town
Think I'll get out of town

Sounds good, man. I’ll see you at the cafe.

“On The Beach,” written by Neil Young, from On The Beach (1975)

Neil Young: vocals, guitar
Ben Keith: hand drums
Graham Nash: Wurlitzer
Tim Drummond: bass
Ralph Molina: drums