Ancient Highway english

Van Morrison: Ancient Highway
(Part 1)

1. Van Morrison: author, song and context

At the time when Leonard Cohen's first record was released, Van Morrison had been a professional musician for almost 10 years. He had toured England and Germany with the band The Monarchs before starting to have commercial success as lead singer of the band Them. After Them , whose style was still in the British beat tradition, broke up, Morrison started a solo career.

Already his first regular solo release, Astral Weeks became a classic of rock history, "one of the most stunningly original albums ever recorded in the rock genre although its originality actually lay in the distance from anything vaguely resembling rock" (Turner 92). The songs, up to 8 minutes, long featured no fixed stanza and chorus structure and the instrumentation with acoustic bass, and without electric guitar or organ was very atypical for the time. As far as themes are concerned it was "an album about rebirth that stated the themes of love, childhood, ecstatic experiences and personal transformation which have preoccupied him ever since" (Turner 92).

Even though the album was not particularly successful at the time at the time, Astral Weeks was to be the basis of a remarkable career and up until today, Van Morrison remains one of the most successful and renowned singers and songwriters of of rock, even though he himself eschews the term. The themes of religion of love run through Morrisons entire body of work, which consists of more than 25 albums. In the songs Christian Celtic and a diverse mixture of other influences blend. Different from Bob Dylan, who turned into a born-again Christian, Morrisons religious view are less orthodox. Turner writes:

I asked Van, whether it was fair to describe him as a nature mystic. "To a degree," he said, "but it's not the whole picture. I would say that I'm a Christian mystic." Why Christian? "Well, because I'm not Buddhist or Hindu. I'm a Christian. I was born in a Christian environment in a Christian country, and I was born after the Christ event, so that makes me a Christian. (Turner 142)

Morrison keeps seeking the combination of spiritual experience and music outside of his songs as well. In 1987, together with the organization Wrekin Trust he organized a congress with the tittle The Secret Heart of Music: an exploration into the power of music to change consciousness at the Longborough University. "The biographical notes in the brochure revealed the way in which Van now viewed himself: (...) "His struggle to reconcile the mythic, almost otherworldly vision of the Celts, and his own spiritual satisfaction, with the apparent hedonism of blues and soul music has produced many inspired and visionary performances" (Turner 155).

In addition to the religious references, Van Morrisons songs contain a lot of literary references as well, as in the following typical passages taken from the song Summertime in England from the album Common One:

Did you ever hear about
Wordsworth and Coleridge, baby?
Did you ever hear about Wordsworth and Coleridge?
(...)

Did you ever hear about . . .
William Blake
T. S. Eliot
In the summer
In the countryside
They were smokin'
Summertime in England
Won't you meet me down Bristol
(...)

Wait a minute
With your red robe . . .
Danglin' all around your body.
Yeats and Lady Gregory corresponded . . .
And James Joyce wrote streams of consciousness books . . .
T.S. Eliot chose England . . .
T.S. Eliot joined the ministry . . .

Especially Blake keeps recurring in Morrisons songs, for example in the title Ancient of Days from the album A Sense of Wonder, which is probably taken from the Blake illustration with the same title. In an interview Morrison comments on Blake:

Blake I've read since I was at school. He was a big one, he seemed to perceive, *in a direct way*, some form of reality beyond, *outside* the ordinary one. I used to sing "Jerusalem" at Sunday School not knowing it was his song. He could put the indescribable into words.

Some songs are based on poems by authors like W.B. Yeats in Crazy Jane on God, or even by Peter Handke in Song of Being A Child (both on The Philosopher's Stone).

The mystical and meditative element, that Morrison underscores in Blake is important for his own music as well:

When the whole thing, the whole thing I'm saying, it only takes ten minutes to do it actually. If I can take the people through a meditation process, which is what I'm really about, which is what I'm saying. So, its very difficult to do this. You know, the bigger the audience is, you know then the harder and the more difficult it is to put across what you're doing. Because just in terms of when you got intimacy then you got more of a chance of, you know, taking people through this, experiental, experientally.

For Morrison, his songs are frequently meditations, and since the playing time of Ancient Highway with approximately 9 minutes lies exactly within the 10-minute span mentioned by Van Morrison, it will be an interesting side aspect to determine whether and in what respects Ancient Highway is one of these meditative songs.

The dominating musical influences in Morrisons work are the blues and rhythm'n'blues, as he points out himself in the following quote:

"I find I have to keep going back, because I don't find the same sort of... I haven't heard any music for a long time that's been as inspiring. I think, in every field, there hasn't been anything new since maybe the 70s. In jazz as well. I have to keep going back to find inspiration."

Back to what?

"I just go back to the blues. Mainly that."

What's the quality that keeps you going back to the blues?

"I don't know. The whole thing is non-intellectual. It resonates, you know? That's all I can put it down to. It's soul music, or whatever." (Du Noyer)

These blues and jazz influences can be found in Morrisons entire body of work, from the early Them records to his most recent releases. Says Morrison:

From an early age, it was the blues that captivated me more than any other type of music. The bluesmen were the first people I wanted to meet. In a way, they are my musical ancestors, my godfathers. I met John Lee Hooker in London in the 1960s. He was the first person to say that the blues had nothing to do with the colour of your skin. One word sums up the essence of the blues: truth. After that, you can always call this truth the soul or the spirit. (Cassavetti)

It is important to be aware of these influences in order to understand Van Morrison´s work and especially to be able to place Ancient Highway within this body of work. . The following sections will now focus more closely on the themes of Ancient Highway.

2. Ancient Highway: Themes

When his album Days Like This was released in 1995, Morrison was interviewed by his fiancee Michelle Rocca and, amongst other things, commented on the development of some of the songs on the record:

MR: And do you write from your subconscious?

VM: (cough/sigh) Um... (long pause) I think that's where it comes from originally. It, uh... It can be anything: ideas; it can be what somebody says; it can be, uh, from a... You get an idea from a book, you know, a line. Something you forgot about years ago. It can come from anywhere. Some of it's conscious and some of it's mainly unconscious.

MR: So with this album, Days Like This, are there any songs where the music came before the lyrics?

VM: Um... (long pause) No, oddly enough, no. All the songs I wrote on this one came lyrically first.

MR: Are there times sometimes when lyrics come into your head and you can't get them out? Like as if you've got... The only way you can get them out is to write them out?

VM: Well that's what happens. You, you know... It starts... You get like a... You get like a couple lines and they just keep coming in your head. So you get these ideas stuck and you can either reject them or write them. (Rocca)

In the same interview Morrison also talks about Ancient Highway:

MR: Your song "Ancient Highway"... What mood were you trying to evoke in this song?

VM: It was getting out of the rat race. It's sort of like... It relates to one of my... Well another song I wrote, you see, it keeps coming back to patterns again. I wrote a song called "Alan Watts Blues" and it's sort of relatable to that song. It's about just trying to get out of the rat race, basically.

MR: There's a Ray Charles feel to it.

VM: Yeah, well the closest I can get, there's a picture in, oddly enough, in a book called, um, I hate the term, but "Rock Dreams." It's paintings of, like, loads of people. There's a painting of Ray Charles in a car, driving through the desert. And it's called "The Fugitive's Dream" or something like this. (Rocca)

Alan Watts Blues, the song referred to here, appeared on Morrisons 1987 album Poetic Champions Compose. During the 1960s, Watts was a fairly popular author of books about religion and philosophy , one of which had the title Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal; which Morrison uses in the chorus of the song:

Well I'm taking some time with my quiet friend
Well I'm takin' some time on my own.
Well I'm makin' some plans for my getaway
There'll be blue skies shining up above
When I'm cloud hidden
Cloud hidden
Whereabouts unknown

Well I've got to get out of the rat-race now
I'm tired of the ways of mice and men
And the empires all turning into rust again.
Out of everything nothing remains the same

That's why I'm cloud hidden
Cloud hidden
Whereabouts unknown

In Alan Watts Blues, the song theme is mentioned explicitly in the line I've got to get out of the rat race now: the escape from everyday life with its chores and restrictions. In Ancient Highway on the other hand, as Rocca correctly notes, Morrison evokes a mood rather then making explicit statements. How he does that will be the topic of the following sections.

3. Song lyrics

for a complete set of annotated lyrics of Van Morrison´s songs see: The Van Morrison Website:
http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/van.html

4. Overview

In contrast to Famous Blue Raincoat, which lent itself to a line by line and stanza by stanza analysis because of its slowly expanding narrative structure, Ancient Highway is written in a rather associative manner. On the musical and on the textual level Morrison uses many continuously recurring motives which are are often varied, combined in new ways and put in new relations with each other. Since in the case of Ancient Highway the actual vocal performance is of essential importance for the character and the overall meaning of the song, these elements are now presented oin an overview, before the song is analyzed stanza by stanza in its development.

4.4.1. Musical structures

Ancient Highway is written in a-minor in 4/4 time. The tempo of the song is slow. The featured instruments are drums, electric bass, trumpet, tenor saxophone, oboe and flute. Brian Kennedy, a singer very well known especially in Ireland sings the backing vocals, Morrisons himself plays acoustic guitar hammond organ and sings the lead vocals.

With 8:53 minutes playing time, Ancient Highway is the longest song on Days Like This. While songs of this length are rather unusual, they are not rare within Van Morrisons body of work: Astral Weeks on the album of the same name is 7 minutes long, the above mentioned Summertime in England more than 15. The structure of Ancient Highway is similar to that of these two songs in the way Morrison does not use a strict stanza and chorus pattern but loosely repeated patterns. Altogether, Ancient Highway can be divided into 8 stanza-like blocks, none of which are exactly alike. The approximate harmonic structure can be shown using the first of these of blocks.

The chord progression Am /F is the basis of the stanza sections of the respective block; the change to the major tonic C, and then to the major dominant G marks the change to a chorus like section which on the textual level consists of the phrases don't let me down, and get my feet on the ground.

4.4.2. Structures in the lyrics

The division of Ancient Highway into eight sections mentioned above also applies to the lyrics. As the exact analysis will show, many sections of the lyrics are not cohesive in the sense of Halliday/ Hasan, and many passages also do not fulfill de Beaugrande/ Dresslers criterion of acceptability. On the level of lexical cohesion on the other hand clear connections between the stanzas can be found.

The dominating lexical field is that of movement. There are many verbs describing movement in a wider sense: run (l.18), go by (for example l. 42, 56), travel (l. 47), as well as slip away, and get away (both for example in l. 34), both with the additional component + away from current position. Go down (used for example with sun in l. 32), and sink (for example . Z. 31), both of which indicate a direction (~ downwards) can be included in this field as well.

The many other terms from the field of movement can further be subdivided into groups according to types of movement. One of these possible subfields is that of movement on the ground. This field can further be subdivided into the subcategories "movement on roads", with nouns like highway (l. 9), street (l. 14), road used as an independent noun (for example in l. 61) and as determinatum of the reiterated roadside, (l. 3, 8). Overpass (l. 51) denoting a road-related structure belongs to this group as well. As the corresponding verb Morrison uses drive (Z. 68), and as the means of movement the noun car (for example l. Z. 42). The second field, railways, is only represented by the means of transport, train as determinatum of the compound turn train whistle in l. 10.

The second category is "movement on water" represented by the the verb flow (Z. 12), the (almost synonymous) nouns river (l. 12) and stream (l. 13) and the means of transport boat (for example l. 56).

All these expressions denote means of getting away from the rat race, which Morrison mentioned as the central theme of Ancient Highway. The exact nature of this rat race remains unclear however. The noun factory (l. 14) is a typical word from working life. factory; aside from this one example there are very few concrete images from this field. Paying dues (Z. 20/ 21) and paying (Z. 28) probably represent the daily duties and burdens; the image of the organ grinder evokes associations with something regular and monotonous, which also reappears in every new generation (l.5 and 20).

The feelings caused by living in the rat race are described in more detail. The noun sadness (l. 11) and the noun compound nightmare hurt (l. 26) are expressions directly escribing feelings.; cry (l. 37) and teardrops (l. 38) are symptoms results of these feelings, with cry being the general word of the field and teardrops being the result of the process described in the verb.

Two opposites to the salvation in the mystic that Morrison is seeking so often appear in l. 23: the adjective rational and the noun understanding. In contrast to these two words is a group of words from the field of religion, including the verb pray (for example l. in Z. 6), the phrase higher self (for example in l. 6) denoting the entity the I of the song is praying to, as well as the adjective trancelike and the noun vision (both in l. in Z. 62) both from the field "meditation".

Additionally, Morrison uses names of people and place names in order to enhance the atmosphere of the piece. Examples for this in Ancient Highway are Hank Williams (l. 11) and Georgie for George Best(1). Williams (1923 - 1953) was a country singer and is considered one of the founding fathers of the singer-songwriter genre. His songs, like I'm so lonesome, I could cry, are full of emotions, often sadness and despair. George Best, who is referred to in line 15 (where Georgie knows best), was one of England’s most successful and famous football players of the 60s and 70s, before his decline. Both men have in common that the life in the rat race eventually wore them down.. By using their names Morrison can easily evoke a lot of associations in listeners familiar with them. This technique is very typical for Van Morrison(2), and Hank Williams as well as George Best often appear on other of Morrison songs(3).

One more stylistic device shall be pointed out briefly. Starting from approximately the middle of the song, Morrison uses certain phrases over and over again in different combinations and contexts and often with small but significant changes. This will be covered in more detail in the stanza-by-stanza analysis of the song, which will be presented after a brief section about Morrisons singing from a textual and musical point of view.

Part 2

Bibliography

Footnotes:

According to Quirk et al, <ie> at the end of a word as in Georgie is called a familiarity marker.Familiarity markers, different to this example often abbreviations are characterized by a "a highly informal tone and a mode of referring that indicates close community with (together with familiar and often affectionate knowledge of) what is referred to" (Quirk et al. 1584). Morrison expresses here his closeness to or sympathy for Best and creates an intimate atmosphere.

2.) Similar to the passage from Summertime in England cited above

3.) Best is for example referred to in the following passage from the song Too Long in Exile: Too long in exile, been too long in exile/ Just like James Joyce, baby/ Too long in exile/ Just like Samuel Beckett baby/ Too long in exile/ Just like Oscar Wilde/ Too long in exile/ Just like George Best, baby. Here the name Best, like the other names symbolizes living in exile. Hank Williams influence can be seen from the fact that he appears in cohen's work as well like in the following example Tower of Song: I said to Hank Williams: How lonely does it get/ Hank Williams hasn't answered yet/ But I hear him coughing all night long/ a hundred floors above me/ in the Tower of Song

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