Van Morrison was just 21 when he wrote and recorded this remarkable meditation on untimely death, which is stripped down to essentials even though it goes on a long while: a sparse open arrangement with moody distracted guitar licks, equally moody organ fills, piercing harmonica, and the singer trying to deal with the fact that it's the middle of the night, his woman is on her deathbed, and the room is stuffy and smells bad. "I can almost smell your T.B. sheets," he says, muttering to himself, "Gotta go. Gotta get away." "I want a drink of water," he says. "I'll send somebody around later." Legend has it that Morrison broke down in tears after the session, and it's not hard to see how that could happen with something like this, so meticulously imagined. I think the better question may be how a 21-year-old Irish rock 'n' roll lad came to dream up such a thing in the first place (which may or may not be answered in terms of psychic vibrations by the circumstances and events of Morrison's visit to the US during which this was recorded). John Lee Hooker covered it five years later, and it's a worthy version as Hooker certainly has the doomy authority to put it over. But I'm not sure even so that it touches this Morrison original, which is so bold about its stark scenario and candid themes, so rooted in the sensory details of an overwhelming and horrific moment in the lives of two people, of whom we know only their immediate circumstances and nothing else. She is dying. He can't stand it. He can't face it. He flees the scene, leaving the radio on to play for her, and he takes us with him, even if only in his mind, and for our part it's at least as much relief as any he might experience.
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