Hollywood Bowl

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Astral Weeks Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl

 “Sweet Thing”

Van’s elo­quent vocal scrawl through dis­tant lyrics, winds ’round
His rum­bling, strong rhythm gui­tar
As it punc­tu­ates the melody like his famil­iar growl.

He con­ducts with it — with pre­ci­sion of dynamic vol­ume, rhythm, and power
   While Tony Fitzgib­bon weaves like a big boxer, danc­ing with his ecsta­tic vio­lin,
      climb­ing heights of bliss

And Van leads us to the moun­tain­top
   with his intri­cate melodic poetic chant­ing
      along­side Richie Buckley’s ring­ing, bell-like flute
         and Roger Kellaway’s river­ine piano.

We shall walk and talk in gar­dens
Misty wet, misty wet with rain
Dar­lin’ and I shall never grow so old again …

Jay Berliner rocks the cra­dle of melody, coun­ter­point, and rhythm on lead gui­tar,
Until Van guides us out of the gar­den and into good­bye
With his chug­ging, train-growling har­mon­ica chants ―
    … sugar baby, sugar baby …

Happy Birth­day Van,
may you live long and strong
and your music last forever.

A thou­sand years from now,
   hoboes round a camp­fire
      and mas­ters in their dimen­sions
will be remem­ber­ing you
   and yearn­ing to re-create
      this Heaven on Earth.

Your music does not ever leave us!
We will never for­get you.

Lyrics © Van Mor­ri­son                   text © Denise Schultz 2009

(seek­ing a bet­ter credit line for his copy­right,
try www.vanmorrison.com, www.amazon.com  to buy this DVD or album of a life­time, and look for his upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary, To Be Born Again, to be released in early 2010)