Take Note, Martinez
For September 25, 2008

Meditation on Perhaps the Most Popular Song in the Last 50 Years

“Hey, where did we go/days when the rains came/we were down in the hollow/playing a new game/laughing and runnin’, hey hey/skippin’ and jumpin’/in the misty morning fog with/our hearts a-thumpin’ and you/Brown Eyed Girl”

Music is like water – it travels over time and distance, and remains refreshing and surprising no matter how far it comes. There are songs from 200 years ago that still send shivers up the spine, and a Gregorian Chant from 650 years back can cast the same spell on the secular listener today as it did on the devout when it was but a few days old. So when I propose to you, dear reader, that ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ by Van Morrison is perhaps the most loved and endearing songs of the past 50 years, I’m not being age-centric, I’m just going by what I have observed in 40 years of performing for people.

I remember hearing this tune when it was released in June of 1967. Think of that month, and that year. June, 1967. It was a watershed year for music, my friends. Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Credence Clearwater Revival Band, the Mamas and Papas, the Turtles, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Boxtops, the Young Rascals, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, Englebert Humperdink, Tom Jones. . . gives me shivers just thinking about how the radio sounded back then. It’s hard to know for those who don’t recall pop radio before 1966, when most of the tunes were about love, the loss of love, or the anticipation of love, with lots of horns and strings and syrupy voices, what the effect was of a song called “White Rabbit,” or “Manic Depression.”

Anyway, in the midst of all this phenomenal music, plus the social upheavals underway that year, a little ditty came along called “Brown Eyed Girl.” It was upbeat and perky, and featured a familiar-sounding voice, gravely but somehow also grasping, reaching for something beyond the standard “come-on-let’s-make-out” energy of songs in those days. It had a bass solo in the middle, which was new for pop music then (or even now, if you think about it).

“Whatever happened, Tuesday ends so slow/goin’ down the old mine with a/transistor radio/standin’ in the sunlight laughin’/hide behind a rainbow’s wall/slippin’ and a slidin’/all along the waterfall with you/Brown Eyed Girl”

Throughout the years, I’ve been playing lots of music by other people. I play in clubs, bars, restaurants, yacht clubs, weddings, reunions, birthday parties, service organizations. . . all over the place. In that business, you play what’s popular, and you know lots of tunes that once were popular. And I can play just about most every popular tune from 1920 through 1990, skip the decade, and take in 2000 to now. And the one single tune most all the women always wants to hear and sing along with is Brown Eyed Girl. When we hit that signature run, women and girls of all ages recognize it and hit the dance floor, faces lit with a very joyous smile. I played a block party not long ago where a seven-year-old girl came up and asked me if I knew that song. When we played it, she sang along as though she grew up with the tune, and she probably did.

Now there are other tunes people always request – Mustang Sally come to mind, sadly, as does Sweet Home Alabama. I’m not sure what the allure of Mustang Sally is, but I believe that Sweet Home Alabama has a lot of subconscious racial overtones that appeals to a lot people. And maybe folks just harbor a hidden resentment for Neil Young. I don’t know. But lots of bands hate both of those tunes, just because they have to play them all the time. But I don’t know any musician who dislikes or refuses to play Brown Eyed Girl. It’s just a pleasure to sing. And you don’t feel as thought you’re selling out or dumbing down. It’s just a great song, deep and wonderful and refreshing as a dark blue pool in a horrible desert. Van Morrison writes lots of songs like this, but this one has lived far longer than most, and I want to take this time to thank him profusely for what is, in my world, the best pop song ever written.

It’s so hard to find my way/now that I’m on my own/I saw you just the other day/My, how you had grown/Cast my memory back there, Lord/Sometimes a woman comes sneakin’ back/Makin’ love in the green grass/Behind the stadium with you/Brown Eyed Girl.