High water mark

I'm no Neil Young aficionado, but I generally like what I know - and genuinely love On The Beach, his bleak, cynical 1974 masterpiece.

In a pithy article marking the album's 50th birthday, the Atlantic's Elisabeth Nelson puts the release in context: five years after Woodstock, during which time the US had experienced "the circus of Watergate, the brutally pointless slog of Vietnam, and the gradual deevolution of the counterculture ethos".

Her characterisation of the record is spot on: "[a] solemn folk-rock autopsy" that "examined the rapidly corrupting values of a hippie era founded on notions of social justice and equality - an era that eventually came to embody something far darker and more compromised".

It's bold to claim that On The Beach was "possibly the first time that a minted rock star actively sought to alienate a devoted fanbase", but it certainly helped to set a precedent subsequently followed by countless artists and bands disgusted by what they've become and the followers they've attracted. If only all such deliberately repellent records sounded so good.