Beside You (6:04)

This song starts with lyrics evocative of childhood experiencies using poetic imagery about a young boy who wanders through his neighbourhood, and beyond. (The boy’s name appears to be an abbreviation of George Ivan Morrison).

It probably brings out nostalgia in many of us who meandered similarly.
Your present writer, in fact, sees mental images of the railroad along which he wandered, a railroad bridge over a stream, the semi rural countryside. (Research suggests that the bridge referred to in the lyrics of the longer, earlier version of this song is a road bridge going over a railway line in west Belfast).

The primary theme metamorhoses into memories of, a grieving for, and a wistful yet resigned acceptance of the loss of, a past love. This transcendence is attained through the songwriter’s rationalization that they will be together (he will be beside her) in a unique timeless fantasy, in his imagination, perhaps in his dreams, or even in his afterlife, in eternity.

There is a notion that this creation may have been assisted or inspired by Van being in an altered state projected, in the lyrics, onto his lost love…

“…You breathe in you breathe out you breathe in you breathe out
and you’re high on your high-flyin’ cloud
wrapped up in your magic shroud as ecstasy surrounds you…”


The two themes meld into a mystic fusion of beautiful, powerful, mental images and metaphors which take us to places distant and high, soulful, sad and eternal.