Blowin' Your MInd

Author Pat Thomas' Third Installment in the Van Morrison LP by LP Series

Yes of course, Van hates this album. Greil Marcus called it “painfully boring” and described one song as filled with “lust, jealousy and sexual disgust” – I’m sorry, Greil, tell me, is that wrong!?!  Meanwhile, Clinton Heylin (oh, no, not him) says that Side One "makes for one of the great single-sided albums in rock," Well, compared to Greil’s opinion that is certainly more like it!

Others (usually fans or foes, rather than journalists), much like teenage boys in a high school gym locker room - love to refer over and over and over to the 30 minutes or so worth of risqué  “demos” that in the CD era has often been “grey-market” packaged with the complete original BANG sessions. Perhaps Richie Unterberger described them best when he wrote, “All of the songs are between 45 and 90 seconds, divided between the inane (numerous nonsensical variations on "La Bamba," "Twist and Shout," and "Hang on Sloopy") and the viciously uncommercial ("The Big Royalty Check," "Ring Worm," "Blow in Your Nose"), along with a few silly variations on "Madame George."”

However, I don’t find many of them funny – but I do find at least one of them quite ‘on the nose’ correct:  “I'm waiting for my royalty check to come, and it still hasn't come yet. It's about a year overdue. I guess it's coming from the Big Royalty Check in the sky. I waited and the mailman never dropped it in my letter box.”

For anyone in the music business, especially songwriters, and musicians  – you know what I’m talking about. Van “wrote” and recorded these ‘non-songs’ to escape his BANG records contract so that he’d be free to sign with Warner’s and record Astral Weeks. Van has never forgiven nor forgotten his brief tenure at BANG and wrote at least two songs about it. The first one is a personal favorite of mine. 1972’s (unreleased at the time) "Drumshanbo Hustle" in which Van declares,

“I remember the day, the "Drumshanbo Hustle" when you couldn't hear no birds, 'cause they were making not a sound They [BANG] were trying to muscle in, [on] the recording and the publishing [money/copyrights], You were puking up your guts, when you read the standard contract you just signed” (and then Van hiccups).

I played this for a friend of mine once (a slightly naïve youngster) and he said, “oh, that lyric sounds disgusting” – I was like “no, that’s just the truth.”  I find the song brutally honest and brilliant. A “theme song” for many of artists in the music biz.” You can judge for yourself, the song is found on the official compilation of out-takes and rarities titled The Philosopher’s Stone released in 1998.

The second time Van addressed BANG records in song, he was no less subtle, but perhaps a bit more melodic (for lack of a better word) with “Big Time Operators” which appeared on the 1993 album Too Long in Exile on which Van sang,

“Well, they told me to come on over, I made my way to New York….Oh, they looked like politicians, but underneath they were thugs…..They were very desperate people, riding in long black limousines, But they were big time operators, on the music business scene”

If you think Van was exaggerating (and he was a little bit), keep in mind that when Joel Selvin tried to write a Bert Berns’ biography, several ‘heavies’ suggested that he shouldn’t.  And for those who don’t know, BANG records were “Bert Berns, Ahmet Ertegün, Nesuhi Ertegün and Gerald (Jerry) Wexler.

In 1997, I was asked to do the liner notes for a CD and LP reissue of this material, which included the aforementioned  “demos” (which I ignored) and it also included BANG era renditions of “Beside You” and “Madame George” – later, both songs would appear in their definitive versions on Astral Weeks.  Since I still stand by every word I wrote then (although I would now substitute a bottle of tequila for “a good bag of weed”), I’ll reprint them here in full and besids this particular Van Morrison CD/LP are both long out of print:

“In 1977, 10 years after Van recorded the material on this album, he released an album called A Period Of Transition. In many ways, the 1967 sessions were a period of transition. Recorded after Van had quit THEM and left his native Ireland for America – and before he signed with Warner Brothers Records and recorded a series of mind-blowing LPs: Astral Weeks, Moondance, St. Dominic’s Preview, etc. These recordings find Van hanging out on the streets of New York, struggling to find a middle ground between his love of R&B and the spiritual mood music of Astral Weeks while making his first solo recordings under the watchful eye of Bert Berns. Many years later, Van would write and record a bitter and paranoid song called “Big Time Operators” about his time with Bert and Bang Records.

There’s a lot of sexual tension on these recordings from a very youthful Van Morrison: feel the joy of two young lovers balling in the grass on “Brown Eyed Girl,” listen to “He Ain’t Give You None” as Van describes the place “where he flogs his daily meat….” and even “T.B. Sheets” combines sexual tension with images of impending death.

It’s been said that Van could sing the telephone book and make it sound good and on “Ro Ro Rosey” he takes some nonsense lyrics and delivers them with power and passion. They don’t call him “Van the Man” for nothing. The acoustic version of “The Smile You Smile” brings back a thousand memories of moments we have or have not begun to share. And we get some previews into the visions of Astral Weeks with these early versions of “Madame George” and “Beside You.” The Celtic Soul Brother was busy being born during these sessions.

I always find Van’s music exhilarating and exciting and most of this album is no exception. At his best, Van makes you feel like a thousand orgasms and a thousand acid trips hitting you at once. He can be better than sex, better than a good bag of weed.

Van himself best describes the feeling I get when I hear these songs, “the sunlight shines through the windowpane….and it numbs my brain." Right on, Van! Enjoy this slice of the Belfast Cowboy and drink a pint or two of Irish Whiskey for me…”

San Francisco, March 1997.

Ok, not exactly in the style and tone that I’d write it in 2014 –but you get the idea. You need this album. Well, actually, you don’t need Blowin’ Your Mind, you need a 1973 reconfiguration of this album known as T.B Sheets which removes “Spanish Rose,” “Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye),” and “Midnight Special” and replaces them with those pre-Astral Weeks recordings of “Beside You” and “Madame George” and another Van original titled “It’s All Right” – that’s right, it is!