On the Beach is the fifth studio album by Canadian-American musician Neil Young, released by Reprise Records in July 1974.

It is the second of the so-called "Ditch Trilogy" that Young recorded following the massive success of 1972's Harvest, and reveals the artist grappling with feelings of over-exposure, alienation and melancholy.

Looking back on the album for the liner notes to the Decade box set, Young wrote of "Heart of Gold": "This song put me in the middle of the road.

As happened with Tonight's the Night, On the Beach under-performed commercially but went on to attain high regard from fans and critics alike.

Both albums were recorded in a haphazard manner, with a variety of session musicians often changing their instruments while Young offered basic arrangements for them to follow.

In the liner notes to Decade, Young describes the song as: "My over defensive reaction to criticisms of Tonight's The Night and the seemingly endless flow of money coming from you people out there."

"Revolution Blues" was inspired by Charles Manson, whom Young had met in his Topanga Canyon days, about six months before the Tate–LaBianca murders.

"[7]"For the Turnstiles" is a country-folk hybrid featuring Young's banjo guitar and a harmony vocal from Ben Keith, who also plays dobro on the track.

The lyrics critique the music industry, with Young later stating in the Decade liner notes: "If statues could speak and Casey was still at bat, some promoter somewhere would be making deals with Ticketron right now."

[9] Young remembers in Waging Heavy Peace: "We were all high on honey slides... A couple of spoonfuls of that and you would be laid-back into the middle of next week.

In a 1992 interview for the French Guitare & Claviers magazine, Young said that song was based on "Needle of Death" by Bert Jansch, who he said was on a par with Jimi Hendrix: "I wasn't even aware of it, and someone else drew my attention to it.

The line, "You're all just pissing in the wind", was a direct quote from Young's manager Elliot Roberts regarding the inactivity of the quartet.

[14] The song also references the Riverboat, a small coffeehouse in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood which was an early venue for folk-inspired artists like Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel, and Arlo Guthrie.

Young confirms in a 2023 post to the "Letters to the Editor" section of his website that the verse about the man who tells so many lies was indeed written for Richard Nixon.

These included "Winterlong" from Decade, "Borrowed Tune" from Tonight's the Night, demos of "Traces" and "Ambulance Blues" as well as new attempts at "Bad Fog of Loneliness", "Human Highway", and "Mellow My Mind".

Ben Keith humorously remembers recording the latter song on dobro and banjo with Young and pushing his vocal abilities to the limit: "I'd sing these off, weird harmonies, and Neil'd go, 'Oh, that's cool—do that.'

The remaining sessions were held at Sunset Sound, where Young had previously recorded with Buffalo Springfield and Crazy Horse.

Young wrote in Waging Heavy Peace that it is one of his favourite covers, the idea of which came like "a blot from the blue": "Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together.

We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights... We picked up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop...

Originally Young had intended for the A and B sides of the LP to be in reverse order but was convinced by David Briggs to swap them at the last moment.

The reasons for this remain murky, but there is some evidence that Young himself did not want the album out on CD, variously citing "fidelity problems" and legal issues.

Prior to the tour, Young would also play a widely bootlegged solo acoustic set at The Bottom Line in New York, where he would debut the album's songs and famously share his recipe for honey slides.

The album peaks on Side Two, a stoned symphony of grieving whose three songs (“On the Beach,” “Motion Pictures,” “Ambulance Blues”) are among the most emotionally real in Young's catalogue.