Today’s song is ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. This is a song by Northern Irish singer and songwriter Van Morrison. Written by Morrison and recorded in March 1967, it peaked at Number 10 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. It featured the ‘Sweet Inspirations’ singing back-up vocals and is regarded as Van Morrison's signature song. ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ has remained a staple on classic rock radio and has been covered by hundreds of bands over the decades.
Originally titled ‘Brown-Skinned Girl’, Morrison changed it to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ when he recorded it. Morrison remarked on the title change: "That was just a mistake. It was a kind of Jamaican song. Calypso. It just slipped my mind [that] I changed the title……After we'd recorded it, I looked at the tape box and didn't even notice that I'd changed the title. I looked at the box where I'd laid it down with my guitar and it said 'Brown Eyed Girl' on the tape box. It's just one of those things that happen."
The song's nostalgic lyrics about a former love were considered too suggestive at the time to be played on many radio stations. A radio-edit of the song was released which removed the lyrics "making love in the green grass", replacing them with "laughin' and a-runnin', hey hey" from a previous verse. This edited version appears on some copies of the compilation album ‘The Best of Van Morrison’. However, the remastered CD seems to have the cleaner lyrics in the packaging but the original ‘racy’ lyrics on the disc.
Because of a contract he signed with ‘Bang Records’ without legal advice, Morrison states that he has never received any royalties for writing or recording this song. The contract made him liable for virtually all recording expenses incurred for all of his ‘Bang Records’ recordings before royalties would be paid, and after those expenses were recouped, the revenue would become the ‘subject of some highly creative accounting’. Morrison vented frustration about this unjust contract in his sarcastic nonsense song ‘The Big Royalty Check’. Morrison has stated that ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ is not among his favourite songs, remarking "it's not one of my best. I mean I've got about 300 songs that I think are better".
Morrison's original recording of ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ remains widely familiar today, as the uncensored version is regularly played by many ‘oldies’ and ‘classic rock’ radio stations. In 2005, Morrison received a Million- In 2011, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ joined an elite group of songs as it was honoured for having 10 million US radio air plays. As of 2015, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ remains the most downloaded and most played song of the entire 1960s decade.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The first woman who ever appeared beautiful in my eyes was my mother. A photograph of her in her late teens, just before her marriage to my father reveals her to be a dark-haired woman with hazel brown eyes. All my life, ever since my first physical attraction to the opposite sex emerged, only black-haired brown-eyed women have had the power to ‘turn my engine on and engage me at full throttle’.
Every love of my life has conformed to these unconsciously operated preferences in genetic structure. If I think hard on it, there surely must have been several women I met in life whom I could have loved, if ever my inbred bias had allowed me to get past my genetic preferences, allowing them access to my heart instead of my bed. I acknowledge having physically known a few blonde bombshells in my earlier years of ‘romancing the stone’, whilst I was waiting for the right one to come along and save me from myself.
I will also admit to secretly loving redheads, and imagining the fiery tempers on them ever since I saw Maureen O'Hara in the film, 'The Quiet Man'. Only once in my divorced years did I entertain the brief experience of dating a red-haired woman. We went out on a four-month period of only sleeping in my own bed between Monday and Friday. She was certainly a woman who loved life to the full. Unfortunately, near exhaustion led me to break with her. My conclusion would be as follows in the female comparison stakes: “You can sleep with a blonde, you can sleep with a brunette, but you'll never get any sleep with a redhead!”
So, following my mother’s sound advice, I have spent almost all my courting, womanising and marital life sticking with what I know best suits me and tickles my taste buds.
Love and peace Bill xxx
Originally titled ‘Brown-Skinned Girl’, Morrison changed it to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ when he recorded it. Morrison remarked on the title change: "That was just a mistake. It was a kind of Jamaican song. Calypso. It just slipped my mind [that] I changed the title……After we'd recorded it, I looked at the tape box and didn't even notice that I'd changed the title. I looked at the box where I'd laid it down with my guitar and it said 'Brown Eyed Girl' on the tape box. It's just one of those things that happen."
The song's nostalgic lyrics about a former love were considered too suggestive at the time to be played on many radio stations. A radio-edit of the song was released which removed the lyrics "making love in the green grass", replacing them with "laughin' and a-runnin', hey hey" from a previous verse. This edited version appears on some copies of the compilation album ‘The Best of Van Morrison’. However, the remastered CD seems to have the cleaner lyrics in the packaging but the original ‘racy’ lyrics on the disc.
Because of a contract he signed with ‘Bang Records’ without legal advice, Morrison states that he has never received any royalties for writing or recording this song. The contract made him liable for virtually all recording expenses incurred for all of his ‘Bang Records’ recordings before royalties would be paid, and after those expenses were recouped, the revenue would become the ‘subject of some highly creative accounting’. Morrison vented frustration about this unjust contract in his sarcastic nonsense song ‘The Big Royalty Check’. Morrison has stated that ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ is not among his favourite songs, remarking "it's not one of my best. I mean I've got about 300 songs that I think are better".
Morrison's original recording of ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ remains widely familiar today, as the uncensored version is regularly played by many ‘oldies’ and ‘classic rock’ radio stations. In 2005, Morrison received a Million- In 2011, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ joined an elite group of songs as it was honoured for having 10 million US radio air plays. As of 2015, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ remains the most downloaded and most played song of the entire 1960s decade.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The first woman who ever appeared beautiful in my eyes was my mother. A photograph of her in her late teens, just before her marriage to my father reveals her to be a dark-haired woman with hazel brown eyes. All my life, ever since my first physical attraction to the opposite sex emerged, only black-haired brown-eyed women have had the power to ‘turn my engine on and engage me at full throttle’.
Every love of my life has conformed to these unconsciously operated preferences in genetic structure. If I think hard on it, there surely must have been several women I met in life whom I could have loved, if ever my inbred bias had allowed me to get past my genetic preferences, allowing them access to my heart instead of my bed. I acknowledge having physically known a few blonde bombshells in my earlier years of ‘romancing the stone’, whilst I was waiting for the right one to come along and save me from myself.
I will also admit to secretly loving redheads, and imagining the fiery tempers on them ever since I saw Maureen O'Hara in the film, 'The Quiet Man'. Only once in my divorced years did I entertain the brief experience of dating a red-haired woman. We went out on a four-month period of only sleeping in my own bed between Monday and Friday. She was certainly a woman who loved life to the full. Unfortunately, near exhaustion led me to break with her. My conclusion would be as follows in the female comparison stakes: “You can sleep with a blonde, you can sleep with a brunette, but you'll never get any sleep with a redhead!”
So, following my mother’s sound advice, I have spent almost all my courting, womanising and marital life sticking with what I know best suits me and tickles my taste buds.
Love and peace Bill xxx
