Astral Weeks - Songs

Songs

Side One — In The Beginning

"Astral Weeks"

The song "Astral Weeks" opens the album with the lines "If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream/ Where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop ", which according to Erik Hage shows Morrison had "once and for all pulled neck and neck with Dylan as a lyricist." Morrison described it as "one of those songs where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel... I don't think I can elaborate on it any more than that." The words in the song: "Talkin' to Huddie Ledbetter/Showin' pictures on the wall" appear to be based on Morrison's real life custom of carrying around a poster of Lead Belly and hanging it on the wall wherever he lived. (This was revealed in a Rolling Stone interview in 1978.)

"Beside You"

"Beside You", the second song on the album, has been described as "expressionistic poetry and a scattershot collection of images and scenarios". It begins with the classical guitar of Jay Berliner and Morrison's voice circling each other. Morrison described it as "the kind of song that you'd sing to a kid or somebody that you love. It's basically a love song. It's just a song about being spiritually beside somebody." It was originally recorded for Bang Records in December 1967. That first recording shows the pop music intentions of Bert Berns which give it a different sound than on the Astral Weeks recording.

"Sweet Thing"

"Sweet Thing" is the only song on the album to look forward instead of backward. In the words of The Allmusic reviewer: "Over the endlessly descending, circular progression, Morrison sings positive lyrics about nature and a romantic partner, seemingly beginning in the middle of a thought: 'And I will stroll the merry way.'" Paul Du Noyer wrote, "Sweet Thing puts the singer in a hazy, pastoral paradise where he wanders in 'gardens wet with rain', or counts the stars in his lover’s eyes, and vows to 'never grow so old again' or 'read between the lines'. He pleads with his mind to keep quiet, so his heart can hear itself think. He yearns to obliterate experience and rediscover innocence." It has been a more popular cover song than any of the others on the album and is the only Astral Weeks song that has been included in any of Morrison's compilation albums.

"Cyprus Avenue"

The song "Cyprus Avenue" is a three chord blues composition and served for many years as the closing song for most of Morrison's live shows. Along with "Madame George", it is the centerpiece of the album and both songs are Belfast related and highly impressionistic. The song is told from the point of view of an outsider watching from inside an automobile and getting tongue-tied as the refined school girl he fantasizes about appears and he imagines her a fine lady with "rainbow ribbons in her hair" in a carriage drawn by six white horses and "returning from a fair". Van Morrison described Cyprus Avenue as "a street in Belfast, a place where there's a lot of wealth. It wasn't far from where I was brought up and it was a very different scene. To me it was a very mystical place. It was a whole avenue lined with trees and I found it a place where I could think."

"Astral Weeks songs...were from another sort of place—not what is at all obvious. They are poetry and mythical musings channeled from my imagination... are little poetic stories I made up and set to music. The album is about song craft for me—making things up and making them fit to a tune I have arranged. The songs were somewhat channeled works—that is why I called it 'Astral Weeks'. As my songwriting has gone on I tend to do the same channeling, so it’s sort of like 'Astral Decades', I guess."

Side Two — Afterwards

"The Way Young Lovers Do"

"The Way Young Lovers Do" is described by Clinton Heylin as a "lounge-jazz" sound that "still sticks out like Spumante at a champagne buffet." In his review for Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus also spoke of the song as a "poor jazz-flavored cut that, is uncomfortably out of place on this record." Brian Hinton describes it as there being "a Sinatra strut to Van's voice, a blues knowingness with Stax brass, and a string section which swirls where previously it drifted." He describes it as "about growing up, an adolescent first kiss..."

"Madame George"

Called the other album masterpiece (along with Cyprus Avenue) the song is almost ten minutes long and tells of the mysterious "Madame George" "in a corner playing dominoes in drag" among other things. It also has a setting of Cyprus Avenue in Belfast with impressionistic lyrics that give stream-of-conscious details that are seemingly unrelated. Erik Hage describes the effect of the sensory experience of the lyrics, the instrumentation and Morrison's impassioned vocals on the listener and the album as being "like some kind of twilight state between sleeping and wakefulness", engaging the listener to project themselves into the spell of the song. Rolling Stone's album reviewer wrote: "The crowning touch is 'Madame George', a cryptic character study that may or may not be about an aging transvestite but that is certainly as heartbreaking a reverie as you will find in pop music." Morrison has denied that the song is about a transvestite, as others, including Lester Bangs, have believed. The original title of the song is "Madame Joy" and Morrison later changed the title although he actually sings the words "Madame Joy" in the song. An earlier recording for Bang Records with slightly altered lyrics, backing singers, a much swifter tempo and a "bizarrely inappropriate party atmosphere" changes the tone considerably from the Astral Weeks recording.

"Ballerina"

The oldest composition on Astral Weeks is " Ballerina", which Morrison composed in 1966 when still a member of Them and about the same time he first met his future wife, Janet. Inspired by "a flash about an actress in an opera house appearing in a ballet" (according to Morrison), former Them guitarist Jim Armstrong recalls the band working on the song between engagements. " had all these words", Armstrong says, "we sort of formalized it, 'cause there was no structure to it". Them performed the song one night in Hawaii, but it was not recorded until Astral Weeks.

"Slim Slow Slider"

"Slim Slow Slider" is the only song on the album to not have string overdubs and according to John Payne, Morrison had not played it live before. Like in the song "T.B. Sheets", the singer tells of watching a young girl die, but in "Slim Slow Slider" the girl seems bent on her own self-destruction: "I know you're dying, baby/I know you know it too." The songs ends abruptly with the words, "Every time I see you, I just don't know what to do." It has been said to be about a junkie but Morrison only has said that it's about someone "who is caught up in a big city like London or maybe is on dope, I'm not sure."