commented to Donal Corvin in a 1973 interview: “I wasn’t really happy with it. He picked the bands and tunes. I had a different concept of it.”
However, from these early sessions, emerged “Brown Eyed Girl”. Captured on the 22nd take on the first day, this song was released as a single in mid-June 1967, reaching number ten in the US charts in 1967. “Brown Eyed Girl” became Morrison’s most played song and over the years it has remained a classic; forty years later in 2007, it was the fourth most requested song of DJs in the US.
Following the death of Berns in 1967, Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Berns’ widow that prevented him from performing on stage or recording in the New York area. The song, “Big Time Operators”, released in 1993, is thought to allude to his dealings with the New York music business during this time period. He then moved to Boston, Massachusetts and was soon confronted with personal and financial problems; he had “slipped into a malaise” and had trouble finding concert bookings. However, through the few gigs he could find, he regained his professional footing and started recording with the Warner Bros. Records label. The record company managed to buy out his contract with Bang Records. Morrison fulfilled a clause that bound him to submit thirty-six original songs within a year by recording thirty-one songs in one session; however, Eileen Berns thought the songs “nonsense music … about ringworms” and didn’t use them. Astral Weeks 1968
Main article: Astral Weeks
“Astral Weeks is about the power of the human voice ecstatic agony, agonising ecstacy. Here is an Irish tenor reborn as a White Negro a Caucasian Soul Man pleading and beseeching over a bed of dreamy folk-jazz instrumentation: acoustic bass, brushed
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35