Van Morrison 
Lit Up Inside 
Selected Lyrics

Van Morrison is one of a handful of truly iconic twentieth century artists. Along with Bob Dylan, he was one of the first contemporary lyricists to infuse a serious poetic sensibility into popular music. A colossal influence on a wide range of fellow musicians, he has been a singular beacon of artistic integrity, soulful conviction and musical excellence.


One of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time, Morrison has been following his muse in an uncompromising way since the early Sixties. He has explored soul, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, Celtic folk, pop balladry and more, forging a distinctive amalgam that has Morrison’s unvarnished passion at its core. He has referred to his music as “Caledonia soul, ” reflecting his deep immersion in American roots music and Ulster-Scots.


This personal selection of what Morrison himself has judged to be his most important and enduring lyrical work will stand as a landmark public statement from an otherwise intensely private artist, an intimate and very intentional view onto what Morrison himself esteems as his creative contribution.


The introduction by Eamonn Hughes, of Queen’s University, Belfast, gives a career-long overview of the creative influences Morrison has absorbed and channeled through the years, and the forewords by poet David Meltzer and novelist Ian Rankin provide an appreciation of the writer’s craft demonstrated in Morrison’s evocative, timeless lyrics.


A must for any fan, and a solid introduction to this singular, iconic talent.


”Tupelo Honey’ has always existed and Van Morrison was merely the vessel and the earthly vehicle for it.’–Bob Dylan


‘I know of no music that is more lucid, feelable, hearable, seeable, touchable, no music you can experience more intensely than this. Not just moments, but extended . . . periods of experience which convey the feel of what films could be: a form or perception which no longer burls itself blindly on meanings and definitions, but allows the sensuous to take over and grow . . . where indeed something does become indescribable.’–Wim Wenders, filmmaker


‘No other Irish poets-writing either in verse or in music–have come within a Honda’s roar of Patrick Kavanagh and Van Morrison’–Paul Durcan


Van Morrison, aka Van the Man, is a famous Irish singer,  songwriter, and musician. He began his professional musical career in 1958 and is still active to this day. He can play guitar, harmonica, saxophone, keyboard, drums, tamourine, and ukulele. His music genres range from rock to country to gospel to blues. He has received 6 Grammy Awards and has been inducted into the Rockand Roll Hall of Fame as well as the Songerwriters Hall of Fame. 

Table of Content

Table of Contents:


Foreword by David Meltzer



Introduction by Eammon Hughes


The Story of Them 000

Gloria 000

My Lonely Sad Eyes 000

Mystic Eyes 000

Philosophy 000

Brown Eyed Girl 000

T.B. Sheets 000

Spanish Rose 000

Who Drove the Red Sports Car? 000

Send Your Mind 000

The Back Room 000

Joe Harper Saturday Morning 000

Madame George 000

Slim Slow Slider 000

The Way Young Lovers Do 000

Moondance 000

Into the Mystic 000

Brand New Day 000

Crazy Face 000

I’ve Been Workin’ 000

Blue Money 000

Street Choir 000

Tupelo Honey 000

When that Evening Sun Goes Down 000

Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile) 000

Gypsy 000

Listen to the Lion 000

Saint Dominic’s Preview 000

Snow in San Anselmo 000

Warm Love 000

Hard Nose the Highway 000

Wild Children 000

The Great Deception 000

Bulbs 000

Comfort You 000

Come Here My Love 000

Cul-de-Sac 000

It Fills You Up 000

Cold Wind in August 000

Kingdom Hall 000

Wavelength 000

Bright Side of the Road 000

Rolling Hills 000

And the Healing Has Begun 000

You Know What They’re Writing About 000

Summertime in England 000

Celtic Ray 000

Dweller on the Threshold (Van Morrison and Hugh Murphy) 000

Beautiful Vision 000

She Gives Me Religion 000

Cleaning Windows 000

Higher Than the World 000

River of Time 000

Cry for Home 000

Rave on, John Donne/Rave on, Part Two 00

Tore Down à la Rimbaud 000

Got to Go Back 000

In the Garden 000

One Irish Rover 000

Foreign Window 000

Tir Na Nog 000

I Forgot that Love Existed 000

Someone Like You 000

Alan Watts Blues 000

Did Ye Get Healed 000

Irish Heartbeat 000

Whenever God Shines His Light 000

Have I Told You Lately that I Love You? 000

Coney Island 000

Orangefield 000

These Are the Days 000

So Quiet in Here 000

In the Days Before Rock ’n’ Roll 000

Memories 000

Why Must I Always Explain? 000

Take Me Back 000

All Saints Day 000

Hymns to the Silence 000

On Hyndford Street 000

Too Long in Exile 000

Wasted Years (Duet with John Lee Hooker) 000

No Religion 000

Songwriter 000

Days Like This 000

Fire in the Belly 000

Burning Ground 000

Sometimes We Cry 000

Not Supposed to Break Down 000

Madame Joy 000

Naked in the Jungle 000

The Street Only Knew Your Name 000

Show Business 000

Philosopher’s Stone 000

High Summer 000

Choppin’ Wood 000

What Makes the Irish Heart Beat 000

What’s Wrong with This Picture? 000

Somerset 000

Meaning of Loneliness 000

Stranded 000

Pay the Devil 000

This Has Got to Stop 000

End of the Land 000

Song of Home 000

Soul 000

Mystic of the East 000


Index of Titles and First Lines 000

About the author

(Source Credit: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame)
One of the greatest singers of all time,
Van Morrison has been following his muse in an uncompromising way since the early Sixties. His career has been a model of artistic consistency and workmanlike devotion. He has explored soul, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, Celtic folk, pop balladry and more, forging a distinctive amalgam that has Morrison’s unvarnished passion at its core. He has referred to his music as “Caledonia soul, ” reflecting his deep immersion in American roots music and Irish mysticism.

An obvious influence on fellow musicians ranging from Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger to Sinead O’Connor and U2, Morrison has been a singular beacon of artistic integrity, soulful conviction and musical excellence. With a minimum of hype or fanfare, working with the discipline of a craftsman and the creativity of a driven artist, he has amassed one of the worthiest and most massive bodies of recorded work in modern times.

Heedless of trends and immune to fashion, Morrison has always created music with a defiant purity of intent. At one extreme, he has made raw, driving blues-rock with the British Invasion-era group Them. At the other, he has produced some of the most transcendent, inspirational music of the modern era as a solo artist. Like Bob Dylan, he was one of the first contemporary lyricists who aspired to emplace a serious, poetical sensibility in popular music.

Morrison’s discography numbers more than 40 albums. The most notable among them include the jazzy, mystical song cycle
Astral Weeks; the swinging, soulful classics
Moondance,
His Band and the Street Choir, and
Tupelo Honey; the deeply personal and revelatory
Saint Dominic’s Preview and
Veedon Fleece; and the visionary and spiritual-minded
Common One, A Sense of Wonder, Avalon Sunset, Enlightenment and
Hymns to the Silence. Over the decades he has also released some exceptional live albums, including 1974’s
It’s Too Late to Stop Now, while various later projects have found him delving into skiffle, country and jazz.

Elements of mysticism, earthiness, religiosity and Celtic roots can be found throughout Morrison work. His artistic outlook is broad and borderless, encompassing influences that include not only musicians but also poets and painters. On the musical side, many of his primary touchstones have been American blues, soul and jazz icons. Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Mose Allison and Lead Belly rank prominently among them. On the literary side, Morrison has hailed such mystics and visionaries as William Blake, John Donne and William Butler Yeats. All of those figures and many more have been mentioned by Morrison in various songs.

George Ivan (“Van”) Morrison was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as World War II drew to a close. He grew up in a household filled with music. His shipyard-worker father collected records, and his mother sang. The Morrisons consorted with the local folk-music community, including the renowned Mc Peake Family of spirited Irish folksingers. Morrison claims to have listened to blues records “since I was two or three.” As a pre-teen, he got caught up in the skiffle craze, which swept the U.K. in 1956. Strongly drawn to music, Morrison dropped out of school when he was 15 to become a full-time musician. He joined the Monarchs, a hard-working local R&B band who played military bases around Europe. He already knew how to play guitar, and he taught himself to play saxophone and harmonica, too.

It’s worth noting that on a personal level, Morrison has maintained a wary distance from the music industry and trappings of celebrity. He is a public artist and a complex, insistently private individual. His relationship with the press has been chilly and combative. In 1994, Van Morrison became the first living inductee not to attend his own induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Morrison has steadfastly rejected the mantle of rock star. As he succinctly stated in a letter to an Irish newspaper, “What I am is a singer and songwriter who does blues, soul, jazz, etc.”

His antipathy toward the music business and the media has been the subject of numerous songs. In one of them, the title track from
Keep It Simple, he wrote: ‘They mocked me ’cause I told it like it was / Wrote about disappointment and greed / Wrote about what we really didn’t need in our lives.’ What it all comes down to is his longstanding contention that it’s ultimately only the music that matters. “If you want, it’s my religion, ” Morrison said in 2005. “I feel I’m part of a lineage that goes back to John Lee Hooker and Lead Belly, and it’s my duty in a way to carry the lineage on.”


Eamonn Hughes is Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast’s School of English. He was appointed as Assistant Director of the Institute of Irish Studies in 2005 and was its Acting Director in 2007-8. He was one of the founders of the British Association for Irish Studies in 1985 and for the next five years was a member of its Executive Committee. He co-organized the Queen’s English Society for many years and sits on the management committee of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry , which now organizes literary readings and talks at Queen’s University. He was a member of the Combined Arts Committee of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and has been on the Steering Committee of the Between the Lines Literary Festival since its inception in 1996. He is also a regular contributor to Irish cultural publications and broadcasts regularly on arts and culture on BBCNI. He is a member of the Irish Studies Research Forum and of the Postcolonial Studies Research Forum at Queen’s. He has lectured on numerous aspects of Irish Literary and Cultural Studies in many countries.

A poet at age 11,
David Meltzer began his literary career during the Beat heyday in San Francisco and early on took his poetry to jazz for improv wonders, which he continues to astound listeners with today. He is the author of many volumes of poetry including
The Clown, The Process, Arrows: Selected Poetry, 1957 – 1992, No Eyes: Lester Young, Beat Thing, and
David’s Copy. City Lights in San Francisco published his most recent book,
When I Was A Poet, as # 60 in the Pocket Poet’s Series. He has also published fiction and essays including
Two-Way Mirror: A Poetry Notebook and has edited numerous anthologies such as
Reading Jazz, Writing Jazz, and
San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets. David Meltzer composed, performed and recorded as a singer/songwriter during the 60s and 70s; albums include Serpent Power, whose eponymous 1967 Vanguard Records LP was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the top 40 albums of the Summer of Love (a list which included a number of classic albums released that year, including Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles). He taught in the Humanities and graduate Poetics programs at the New College of California in San Francisco for 30 years. He is now performing in and around the Bay Area with his wife, poet Julie Rogers. In 2011 he received the SF Bay Guardian’s Lifetime Achievement Award.