Editing Astral Weeks (section)

=== Side One – In The Beginning ===

==== "Astral Weeks" ====
{{Main|Astral Weeks (song)}}
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|title    = Astral Weeks|description= Sample from the title song featuring the opening lines of the album: "If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dream".}}
The song "[[Astral Weeks (song)|Astral Weeks]]" opens the album with the lines "If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream/ Where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop", which according to [[Erik Hage]] shows that Morrison had "once and for all pulled neck and neck with Dylan as a lyricist".  Morrison described it as  "one of those songs where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel&nbsp;... I don't think I can elaborate on it any more than that."<ref name= "HeylinPage187">Heylin (2003), p. 187.</ref> The words in the song: "Talkin' to Huddie Ledbetter/Showin' pictures on the wall" appear to be based on Morrison's real life custom of carrying around a poster of [[Lead Belly]] and hanging it on the wall wherever he lived. (This was revealed in a ''Rolling Stone'' interview in 1978.)<ref name="Collis, 1996 p. 31"/>

==== "Beside You" ====
{{Main|Beside You (Van Morrison song)}}
"[[Beside You (Van Morrison song)|Beside You]]", the second song on the album, has been described as "expressionistic poetry and a scattershot collection of images and scenarios".  It begins with the classical guitar of [[Jay Berliner]] and Morrison's voice circling each other.<ref name="HagePage42-43">Hage, (2009) pp. 42–43.</ref> Morrison described it as "the kind of song that you'd sing to a kid or somebody that you love.  It's basically a love song. It's just a song about being spiritually beside somebody."<ref>Yorke, (1975) p. 56.</ref> It was originally recorded for [[Bang Records]] in December 1967. That first recording shows the pop music intentions of [[Bert Berns]] which give it a different sound from the ''Astral Weeks'' recording.<ref name="HagePage42-43"/>

==== "Sweet Thing" ====
{{Main|Sweet Thing (Van Morrison song)}}
"[[Sweet Thing (Van Morrison song)|Sweet Thing]]" is the only song on the album to look forward instead of backward. In the words of [[AllMusic]]: "Over the endlessly descending, circular progression, Morrison sings positive lyrics about nature and a romantic partner, seemingly beginning in the middle of a thought: 'And I will stroll the merry way.{{'"}}<ref>{{cite web|url={{AllMusic|class=song|id=t2742224|pure_url=yes}}|title=Van Morrison: Sweet Thing|author=Ruhlmann, William|website=[[AllMusic]]|access-date=20 January 2010}}</ref> [[Paul Du Noyer]] wrote, "Sweet Thing puts the singer in a hazy, pastoral paradise where he wanders in 'gardens wet with rain', or counts the stars in his lover's eyes, and vows to 'never grow so old again' or 'read between the lines'. He pleads with his mind to keep quiet, so his heart can hear itself think. He yearns to obliterate experience and rediscover innocence."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pauldunoyer.com/pages/journalism/journalism_item.asp?journalismID=295#sweet_t|title=Sweet Thing: a piece for Arena magazine|date=31 March 2011|publisher=pauldunoyer.com|access-date=28 October 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111018092940/http://www.pauldunoyer.com/pages/journalism/journalism_item.asp?journalismID=295#sweet_t|archive-date=18 October 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref> It has been a more popular cover song than any of the others on the album.{{cn |date=February 2025}}

==== "Cyprus Avenue" ====
{{Main|Cyprus Avenue}}
[[File:Cyprus.Ave.Belfast.JPG|thumb|250px|Cyprus Avenue – the street in Belfast that inspired the song.]]
The song "[[Cyprus Avenue]]" is a three chord blues composition and served for many years as the closing song for most of Morrison's live shows.  Along with "Madame George", it is the centerpiece of the album and both songs are [[Belfast]] related and highly impressionistic.  The song is told from the point of view of an outsider watching from inside an automobile and getting tongue-tied as the refined school girl he fantasizes about appears and he imagines her a fine lady with "rainbow ribbons in her hair" in a carriage drawn by six white horses and "returning from a fair".<ref name="Hage 2009, p. 43">Hage (2009), p. 43.</ref> Van Morrison described Cyprus Avenue as "a street in Belfast, a place where there's a lot of wealth.  It wasn't far from where I was brought up and it was a very different scene.  To me it was a very mystical place.  It was a whole avenue lined with trees and I found it a place where I could think."<ref>Hinton (2000), p. 96.</ref>

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 | quote  ="Astral Weeks" songs&nbsp;... were from another sort of place—not what is at all obvious. They are poetry and mythical musings channeled from my imagination&nbsp;... [They] are little poetic stories I made up and set to music. The album is about song craft for me—making things up and making them fit to a tune I have arranged. The songs were somewhat channeled works—that is why I called it "Astral Weeks".  As my songwriting has gone on I tend to do the same channeling, so it's sort of like "Astral Decades", I guess.
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 | source = —[[Van Morrison]] (2008)<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2008/10/van-morrisons-f.html |title=Van Morrison's full Q&A on 'Astral Weeks' |first=Randy |last=Lewis | work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |access-date=20 January 2010 | date=31 October 2008}}</ref>
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