This is perhaps one of the greatest half-albums ever made. Side two is just a bit better than worthless, but side one is simply frightening in its intensity. Even side two holds a fair degree of fascination because you can almost feel the tug of war going on between those running the session, who are aiming for something conventional, and Morrison who constantly kicks the wheels off the cart.

“Blowin’ Your Mind” has been out of print for decades, so good luck finding an original copy, although it has since been reissued maybe forty or fifty times (with varied track listings) on one cheesy label after another. Up until this point, Van Morrison was remembered solely as the surly kid fronting a punky blues band from Belfast called Them. Now he’s in New York City, trying to dig up a hit to kick off a solo career. The album starts promising enough with that very hit, “Brown Eyed Girl,” a song that has since suffered heavily from overexposure (although it is worth noting that this album version is the only place you’ll hear it without the pointless, prudish edit that replaced ‘makin’ love in the green grass’ with ‘skippin’ and a-jumpin’). Then, as this memory of not so innocent love fades away, suddenly we are launched into the inner mind of a quasi-disturbed, incredibly horny young man. Essentially, “He Ain’t Give You None” find Morrison in a semi-hypnotic state, recalling a moment when he was in full-on pre-coital arousal, begging his girlfriend to finish the job they began “before her daddy came home”. He then attempts to seduce her by comparing himself to said father by pointing out “I give you my jelly roll, but he ain’t give you none.” In other words, I’m better for you than your father because he doesn’t have sex with you.

Then, it only gets weirder. Still in a trance, the band vamps on two chords while Morrison spontaneously invents a mini-play that certainly is based on some horrible reality he just left behind in Belfast. As the band unwittingly jams on, Morrison slowly unfurls a horribly claustrophobic scene inside the bedroom of a close friend suffering from Tuberculosis. There are even references to the girl’s sense of inadequacy brought on by Morrison’s stardom, while Morrison himself feels completely incapable of handling the impending sense of death that is overwhelming his thoughts. Could this be the same ‘Brown Eyed Girl” about who he had just reminisced so pleasantly? It is impossible to imagine a more vivid, personal and disturbing song, and bandmembers later told the story that sessions ended immediately afterward because Morrison broke down in tears, incapable of completing any more of the day’s work.

Side two contains a few pleasant tunes, but they are basically shells of songs, sketches that never developed into fully fleshed ideas. Ultimately, side two is rendered irrelevant because the realistic intensity of side one. “T.B. Sheets” is powerful enough to invoke incredible sympathy, not only for the victim but also the singer’s suffering sense of guilt. To my knowledge, Morrison never performed “He Ain’t Give You None” or “T.B. Sheets” live, which makes sense if you hear them as spontaneous, disturbed visions that could only be appropriately performed in the moment that they were created.

September 1967 - Billboard Charted #182