Recording and Composition
Built on a basic blues structure with an unusual arrangement, the song was recorded at the Astral Weeks sessions on September 25, 1968 at Century Sound Studio with Lewis Merenstein as producer. The strings and harpsichord were overdubbed a month later.
Calling it the central song of the album, Allmusic described it as "a chamber-music hybrid of folk-blues, jazz, and classical music, and over it Morrison sings a meditative memory lyric about his adolescence in Belfast, Northern Ireland." On the Astral Weeks recording, Morrison's vocals are backed by his acoustic guitar, Richard Davis on acoustic bass with flute, harpsichord and strings as the other instruments.
According to Roy Kane, who grew up with Morrison in Belfast, Cyprus Avenue "...was the street that we would all aspire to — the other side of the tracks ... the Beersbridge Road had the railway line cut across it; and our side of it was one side of the tracks and Cyprus Avenue was the other... there was an Italian shop up in Ballyhackamore, that's where all the young ones used to go of a Sunday... we used to walk up to the Sky Beam for an ice cream or a cup of mushy peas and vinegar... We used to take a short cut up Cyprus Avenue..."
Morrison told biographer Ritchie Yorke that along with "Madame George" (which also references Cyprus Avenue) the song came to him in "a stream of consciousness thing", "Both those songs just came right out. I didn't even think about what I was writing."
As journalist Matthew Collin described the song: "Morrison reminisced about a more innocent time, recounting the sights and sounds of a bygone life while escaping into his imagination, an oasis of romantic reverie." According to biographer Brian Hinton, "This is a song about being trapped, 'conquered in a car seat', and reduced to tortured silence, just like in (the song) 'T.B. Sheets'. The need for innocence in the earlier song is now equated to going crazy though the vision which then unfolds is out of time, and sexless. His dream lady in her antique carriage is only fourteen years old. Van's singing is totally possessed, moving from choked desire to exultation to hushed wonder."
Read more about this topic: Cyprus Avenue
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