Brown Eyed Girl

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“Brown Eyed Girl”
“Brown Eyed Girl” cover
Single by Van Morrison
from the album Blowin' Your Mind!
B-side "Goodbye Baby"
Released June 1967
Recorded 28 March 1967
Genre Pop
Length 3:03
Label Bang Records
Producer Bert Berns
Van Morrison singles chronology
"Brown Eyed Girl"
(1967)		 "Ro Ro Rosey"
(1967)
Audio sample
Info (help·info)

"Brown Eyed Girl" is a song by Northern Irish pop singer Van Morrison. Written and recorded in 1967 by Van Morrison and produced by Bang Records chief Bert Berns and first released in May 1967 on the album Blowin' Your Mind!. When released as a single, it rose to number eight on the Cashbox charts, and it reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100.[1] It featured the Sweet Inspirations singing back-up vocals and widely-considered to be Van Morrison's signature song.[2][3][4]

This song would prove to be the impetus for Morrison's whole career as a solo artist. It was to be his first single after leaving his position as lead singer for the Belfast formed band Them and would lead to his relocation to the United States and an eventual contract with Warner Bros. Records, where he would record his career-defining album, Astral Weeks.

Paul Williams included "Brown Eyed Girl" in his book Rock and Roll: The 100 Best Singles,[5] writing that:

I was going to say this is a song about sex, and it is, and a song about youth and growing up, and memory, and it's also — very much and very wonderfully - a song about singing.

Morrison's original recording of "Brown Eyed Girl" remains widely familiar today, as the uncensored version is regularly played by many "oldies" and "classic rock" radio stations. In 2005, Van Morrison received a Million-Air certificate by BMI as a "Top European Writer" for reaching 7 million US radio and television airplays for "Brown Eyed Girl" and again in 2007, Morrison was awarded another Million-Air certificate by BMI for 8 million air plays of "Brown Eyed Girl". The only song with more airplays by a top European writer was "Every Breath You Take" by The Police with 9 million.[6] [7]

Contents

[edit] Recording

After finishing out his contract with Decca Records and the mid-1966 break up of his band Them, Van Morrison returned to Belfast seeking a new recording company. When he received a phone call from Bert Berns, owner of Bang Records, he flew to New York City and hastily signed a contract (that biographer Clinton Heylin says probably still gives him sleepless nights.)[8] During a two day recording session starting 28 March 1967, he recorded eight songs intended to be used as four singles.[9] The recording session took place at A & R Studios and "Brown Eyed Girl" was captured on the 22nd take on the first day.[10] Of the musicians Berns had assembled there were three guitarists, including Eric Gale and Al Giorgioni, bassist Russ Savakus, pianist Paul Griffin and drummer Gary Chester.[11][12][13] It was released as a single in mid-June 1967.[14]

[edit] Music and lyrics

Originally titled "Brown-Skinned Girl", Morrison changed it to "Brown Eyed Girl" when he recorded it. Morrison remarked on the original title: "That was just a mistake. It was a kind of Jamaican song. Calypso. It just slipped my mind. I changed the title."[15]"After we'd recorded it, I looked at the tape box and didn't even notice that I'd changed the title..I looked at the box where I'd lain it down with my guitar and it said 'Brown Eyed Girl' on the tape box. It's just one of those things that happen."[16]

The song's nostalgic lyrics about a former love were considered too suggestive at the time to be played on many radio stations. A radio-edit of the song was released which excised the lyrics "making love in the green grass", replacing them with "laughin' and a-runnin'" from a previous verse. This edited version appears on some copies of the compilation album The Best of Van Morrison. However the remastered CD seems to have the bowdlerized lyrics in the packaging but the original "racy" lyrics on the disc.

[edit] Aftermath

Due to the contract he signed with Bang Records without legal advice, Morrison has never (in his own words) received any royalties for writing or recording this song.[17] The contract made him liable for virtually all recording expenses incurred for all of his Bang Records recordings before royalties would be paid and later, after the expenses were recouped, they would become the "subject of some highly creative accounting."[18] Morrison vented his frustration about this penurious contract in his sarcastic nonsense song "The Big Royalty Check", on his 1968 Contractual Obligation Album.[19]

[edit] Critical acclaim and influence

[edit] Cultural references

In April 2005, the White House announced that "Brown Eyed Girl" gets regular rotation on George W. Bush's iPod. Morrison announced before a university performance in England: "Yeah, it's good to hear things like that, you know. But I would have preferred if it was a new song."[28]

At the televised memorial for Laci Peterson, Morrison's original version of "Brown Eyed Girl" was played as the closing music.

It has been featured in several popular movies, including the 1989 movie, Born on the Fourth of July and the 1991 movie, Sleeping With the Enemy, starring Julia Roberts.

[edit] Cover versions

"Brown Eyed Girl" has been recorded by numerous artists including Jimmy Buffett and Everclear. It is popularly performed by beginning bands as well as performed by many popular and well-known artists such as Billy Ray Cyrus, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, Green Day, Lagwagon, John Mayer, Weezer and Ziggy Marley. Cover versions have also been performed in other languages, notably in Catalan by Els Pets (as Ulls de color mel, "Honey-colored eyes") and in Finnish by Aki Sirkesalo (as Punatukkainen).

[edit] Appearance on other albums

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Turner. (1993). p.77
  2. ^ Roy and the Sweets
  3. ^ Yorke, Into the Music, p. 42
  4. ^ Greatest Irish Bands
  5. ^ Williams, Rock and Roll: The 100 Best Singles, p. 122
  6. ^ BMI Honors Top European Writers, 2005-11-28
  7. ^ 2007 BMI London Awards
  8. ^ Heylin, Can You Feel the Silence, p.144-147
  9. ^ Turner, Too Late to Stop Now, p.76
  10. ^ Heylin, Can You Feel the Silence?, p.152
  11. ^ Rogan, No Surrender, p.199
  12. ^ Heylin, Can You Feel the Silence?, p. 150
  13. ^ Gary Chester website
  14. ^ Rogan, No Surrender, p.201
  15. ^ Collis 1996. p81.
  16. ^ Rogan, No Surrender, p.43
  17. ^ Into the Music archives Rancho Nicasio
  18. ^ Heylin, Can You Feel the Silence, p.148
  19. ^ WFMU: The Big Royalty Check
  20. ^ 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
  21. ^ All-Time 885 Greatest Songs
  22. ^ Songs of the Century
  23. ^ rockonthenet.com RS and MTV's 100 Greatest Pop Songs
  24. ^ VH1's 100 Greatest Rock Songs
  25. ^ Top 100 Songs of the Century
  26. ^ Complete list of Top 100 Songs
  27. ^ Dave Marsh the 1001 greatest Singles Ever. rocklistmusic.co.uk. Retrieved on 2007-04-08.
  28. ^ Rolling Stone Magazine (Renaissance Van)

[edit] References

  • Collis, John (1996). Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, Little Brown and Company, ISBN 0-306-80811-0
  • Heylin, Clinton (2003). Can You Feel the Silence? Van Morrison: A New Biography, Chicago Review Press ISBN 1-55652-542-7
  • Rogan, Johnny (2006). Van Morrison:No Surrender, London:Vintage Books ISBN 9780099431831
  • Turner, Steve (1993). Too Late to Stop Now, Viking Penguin, ISBN 0-670-85147-7
  • Williams, Paul (1993). Rock and Roll: The 100 Best Singles, Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., ISBN 0881849669
  • Yorke, Ritchie (1975). Into The Music, London:Charisma Books, ISBN 0-85947-013-X

[edit] External links